“Bike riders–get out of my way.”
The comments section to the Tucson Citizen article on George Goode, Jr. has hit a new low. Commenters kicked it off with this post:
Another Tucson no-brainer dead.
Was he ticketed for not wearing a helmet postumously? Was he ticketed for
not crossing the street/intersection properly, postumously? I GUESS HE JUST
THOUGHT HE WAS A CAR, JUST LIKE ALL THE
OTHER BIKE RIDER’S THAT ALSO DO THE SAME.
And it kind of fell apart after that.
I witnessed the very same kind of accident yesterday. Cars were backed up on Broadway and two lanes had left room for a driver coming across Broadway to pass in front of them. But the third lane was open and a car sped through and broadsided the driver that was crossing Broadway. This is pretty close to what happened to Mr. Goode.
Here is what one commenter had to say, and I think it is pretty perceptive:
I don’t know all the circumstances of this accident, but this may be a consequence of some drivers being too nice. Have you ever been in a situation where another driver ignores the rules of the road and thinks they’re being courteous to you by doing such things as waving you on, or stopping to let you go because you’d been waiting so long to turn? This may have been what happened here. The cars in the left through lane heading north on 1st probably saw the bicyclist hanging out in the median, waiting to turn, and the motorist stopped to wave the bicyclist through. This caused a blind spot for the bicyclist, and he proceeded to cross and got slammed. You see this all the time in Tucson. Overly friendly people can put you into a dangerous situation, if you accept their invitation. Trust your own line of sight, not what someone’s suggesting you do.
I’ve been in exactly that situation so many times.
I believe the appropriate thing for TPD to do was to ticket the drivers who stopped for Mr. Goode. I am sure they are having a bad enough time with this as it is, but TPD should help make the statement that drivers should not stop for cyclists out of courtesy. The basic rules of the road keep the whole system fairly stable. Cyclists can know how to operate within those rules. But once drivers begin stopping where they shouldn’t, the system loses its stability fast. And in this case, it cost Mr. Goode his life.
I hope we can learn more about Mr. Goode. It seems we have many ghost bikes to install this year.
–Erik Ryberg
September 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I hate it when car drivers try to direct traffic!
I know they think they are being courteous, but
their direction is almost always against the rule
of traffic laws.
Laws should be followed so we can reasonably know
what to expect from our fellow road users.
Lesson to cyclists: NEVER NEVER NEVER rely on someone
else’s judgement out there.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
“Cars were backed up on Broadway and two lanes had left room for a driver coming across Broadway to pass in front of them. But the third lane was open and a car sped through and broadsided the driver that was crossing Broadway.”
This exact situation has happened to me before. Older woman in a mini-van pulls out through a blind left turn after some schmuck decides to let her through. Well instead of checking the additional lane for traffic before going, she just blasted through it, straight into the path of my car. So yeah, it pisses me off when motorists do that sort of thing. Just follow the same traffic rules that everyone else is doing and then maybe people around you can predict your path.
As for cars stopping for you on a bike, it annoys me just as much, if not more. If a car stops for me to let me go, I will stand there for 5 minutes until they finally get the hint and I can pass through once the intersection is clear. Because I know the moment I start to move after the guy has stopped for me, he will think that I hesitated and then start moving. Which of course will cause me to stop moving. And then it turns into a game of chicken, where at best case, you get through the intersection slower than if he had not stopped for you at all, and at worst you get nailed by a driver. So instead I just stand there to start with, letting the driver go, who probably thinks I am a jerk for not accepting his favor.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
“…thinks I am a jerk for not accepting his favor.” I do the same as Mickey, just stand and wait until the car with the right of way gets going. Often the driver will holler at me, “You’re welcome, a-hole!!”
September 30th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
What sort of violation could TPD issue in this instant, which I agree happens far too often?
September 30th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Apparently, when a cyclist holds his left hand out, it means “please stop for me,” and when a cyclist holds his left hand up, it’s some kind of salute. Motorists don’t pay attention when they’re told what these signals mean …
October 1st, 2008 at 3:26 am
Whether driving a motor vehicle or riding a bicycle, I find no excuse for a person that does not pay attention to what other people are doing around them, especially when their actions lead directly to the cause of death or serious injury to another person (or anything else alive for that matter). There is a common sense about looking around, watching, serving to remind people (as long as they do pay attention) that unexpected things happen all the time. A motorist that cannot cope with the reality of driving a vehicle on roads that are seeing increasing numbers of bicyclists, frankly should not be driving; who knows, maybe people will start car-pooling more often to avoid having to deal with the increasing ‘nuisance’ (as it seems to be for many) of bikes on our public streets.
As far as I am concerned, courtesy is not a crime, rather more a common law. The drivers that did stop where doing a nice thing, whether the offer was accepted or not, the gesture was a polite on, and I do not favor the idea of these people (the stoppers) being ticketed.
October 1st, 2008 at 10:59 am
The Tucson cycling community should think about respectfully dressing up as ghost riders on ghost bikes for the All Souls Procession.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
After reading this sad, terrible story in the paper, I talked to my kids (both young drivers and one a bicyclist) about what all three people involved should have done differently. The cyclist should never have proceeded into the second lane, but he probably felt pressured to hurry up because a lane of traffic had already stopped. The first driver to stop should never have done so, and the guy who hit the cyclist should have observed that all traffic to his left had stopped, and wondered why. We’ve got to pay attention to our surroundings while driving. I’m sure both drivers feel horrible and I do sympathize with them, but the rest of us need to learn from this situation which has the potential to happen any time if everyone isn’t careful.
Mindy