Eugene bicyclist identified as David Morris, killed in crash on River Road

David Winston Morris, 61, died after a collision with a Dodge Ram on River Road near Rosetta Avenue, a crash that shut the busy Eugene corridor in both directions for hours and renewed questions about how safely it serves people on bikes.

Eugene police identified Morris as the bicyclist killed in the Saturday, May 2 crash. Police said the driver of the Dodge Ram was a man in his 50s. The collision happened near River Road and Rosetta Avenue, and traffic was closed between Lindgren Lane and Rosetta Avenue while investigators worked the scene. All lanes later reopened, but the cause of the crash has not been released.

The Eugene Police Department’s Major Collision Investigation team is handling the case. Officers have not yet explained how the vehicle and bicycle came together, leaving the core safety issue unresolved for a corridor where bicyclists must still share space with larger vehicles and fast-moving traffic.

Morris’s death comes as Eugene continues to track traffic deaths closely. The city’s 2025 Fatal Crash Report, released in April, said 10 people were killed in traffic crashes on Eugene streets in 2025, a 55% drop from 2024, when the city recorded 22 fatal crashes and called it Eugene’s deadliest year on record. Eugene adopted its Vision Zero goal in November 2015, setting zero traffic deaths and serious injuries as the target.

Those numbers put the River Road crash into a broader public-safety debate: whether the city’s busiest streets are being redesigned quickly enough to protect cyclists, pedestrians and drivers from deadly mistakes. The Oregon Department of Transportation says preliminary fatal-crash data can change as more information is evaluated, a reminder that the official record may still shift as investigators complete their work.

For now, Morris’s death stands as another stark measure of the risks on a corridor that carries everyday neighborhood traffic through north Eugene. The investigation will determine what happened on River Road, but the larger question remains whether the street is engineered to prevent the next death before it happens.