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2.22.2010

visiting stanford student dies in bike crash

Some sad news out of Stanford... Yichao Wang, a visiting Chinese graduate student who suffered serious head trauma after a bicycling accident, died on Friday. He was 25: Visiting Ph.D. student dies following bike accident.

Wang was a doctoral student visiting the civil and environmental engineering department from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He was biking home from the lab earlier this month when he collided with a car:
Wang was biking east on Museum Way on Feb. 3 at about 9:30p.m., Montiel said. According to the Stanford News Service, Wang was headed from his lab to his Palo Alto home. It is unclear whether he had a bike light.

In the Palm Drive intersection, Wang failed to yield to a Honda Civic, Montiel said. At 20 miles per hour, the Civic was driven by a 79-year-old San Jose man.

Wang was thrown off his bike, onto the hood of the car and then to the roadway, where he was found 128 feet north of where he first collided with the car. Without a helmet, he suffered major head trauma and was taken to Stanford Hospital, Montiel said.
Wang was taken to Stanford Hospital after the accident, where he remained in a coma until Friday. His family, who arrived in the U.S. last week and now face huge medical bills, has found help from a network of community members: Campus groups raising funds for visiting researcher who died after campus bike crash.