On the morning of a windless Saturday in late July 2018, Chico surgeon William Doherty parked his car at the Chico airport, unloaded his Trek Domane road bike, and rode northeast along Cohasset Road.
Cycle Oregon—a weeklong ride Doherty had participated in for many years—was around the corner. Doherty was training on Cohasset, where the road climbs up to the town on the ridge, to get ready for the Oregon trip.
He rode on the narrow bike lane at the beginning of the route. After about 7 miles, the road narrows and the lane on the shoulder disappears. Cyclists consider this part of the road dangerous, and Doherty had even created a term for it—“Paranoia Alley.”
Not long after he started climbing “Paranoia Alley,” Doherty noticed a ragged crumbling at the edge of a patch of roadway and steered around it. Meanwhile, Jim Voyles, who was driving to Cohasset to work, attempted to pass Doherty on the left, according to filings by the Butte County District Attorney’s Office, which would later charge him with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter.