MIT Professor Dies of Injuries Sustained In Previously Unreported Crash On Memorial Drive
On Thursday, MIT issued a press release announcing that one of its professors, Thomas Rose, had died of injuries he’d sustained in an August 21 crash near the intersection of Memorial Drive and the Massachusetts Avenue bridge.
MIT’s press office described Rose as “an expert in ancient metallurgy” and “an enthusiastic and gracious friend who had recently started a promising research track at MIT.”
Very little information is available about the crash that killed Rose, which reportedly happened on August 21, but MIT reported that he had been riding his bicycle when the crash occurred.
At 6 a.m. on that date, someone on the City of Cambridge police radio alerted units that there had been an incident at “Mass. (and) Memorial Drive, for a bicyclist struck by a vehicle,” but StreetsblogMASS has been unable to confirm whether Rose was the victim in that crash.
MIT’s press office described the crash as an “accident,” implying that nobody was to blame, but StreetsblogMASS has been unable to confirm the validity of that judgement.
Cambridge police regularly report injury-causing crashes on city-controlled streets, but Memorial Drive is technically state parkland under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts State Police.
State police referred questions about the crash to the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office, but Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan has have not yet responded to our inquiries. We will update this story if we hear back from them.
In a statement, Cambridge Bicycle Safety said that “we are heartbroken by the death of Professor Thomas Rose… No one should lose their life while bicycling through our community.”
Cambridge Bicycle Safety noted that drivers have killed 4 other people walking or biking on Memorial Drive since 2014, including John Corcoran, who was killed nearly two years ago when Junming Zhu drove his Mercedes SUV off the roadway and onto the Paul Dudley White bike path, and Juzhen Feng, a 74-year-old killed by a pickup truck driver when she had been attempting to cross Memorial Drive on foot near Ames Street.
Cambridge Bicycle Safety has set up an online petition calling on the state agencies that control Memorial Drive “to make major, permanent safety improvements now.”
This breaking news story will be updated.
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