Thought I’d pass on some news of a good experience with the Scottsdale police.

I ride to work frequently from my house in Tempe to my office in Phoenix, roughly 15 miles each way. A good portion of my route goes though Scottsdale, specifically 68th St. On my ride home this past Friday a truck full of what appeared to be freshly graduated high school kids (in daddy’s Escalade nonetheless), buzzed me within inches heading southbound on 68th just south of McDowell. I hadn’t quite reached the start of the bike lane, and it appeared to be on purpose since the car lane is plenty wide there.

Unfortunately for them, they didn’t see the squad car that turned south off McDowell just after them. He pulled them over immediately, and I originally planned to ride on, but I stopped just past them to see what he would do. He spoke to them briefly then saw me and walked over. He explained that he didn’t need me to hang around, but that he was going to ticket them for violating the 3 foot law with intent. Not having seen or heard of this being enforced before, all I could do was smile. I shook his hand, said thanks and rode home.

So at least somebody out there is paying attention and willing to do something. Hopefully you’ll get more positive emails about this in the future.

Maybe Ed over at azbikelaw.org can help here, but I have never yet heard of a single citation being given in the state of Arizona for a three-foot rule violation, except in cases where the violation resulted in an injured or deceased bicyclist. I think this might be a first.

I have regularly submitted Public Records Act requests to the City of Tucson for copies of their three-foot rule citations, and done the best I can to cross-check them with car/bike collisions (not too hard, since rarely are there more than two or three of these citations given in a year).

Of course, it’s bittersweet because in reality, those kids in the Escalade just got away with threatening someone’s life with a deadly weapon. If I point a gun at you “just for kicks,” I don’t get off with a $124.00 traffic ticket. (Although if you are a bicyclist the penalty won’t be all that severe even if I shoot you.) (And see also the comments to this post, including one from the victim.)

Update: Oh how short my memory is! Of course, just two months ago Flagstaff bicyclist Randy Mason successfully, after a long fight, got this rule enforced against a bus driver who grazed him and then yelled at him and then called the cops on him.

In my defense, this is the first time I’ve heard of it happening the way it is supposed to.

–Erik Ryberg

Above is a sign near Flagstaff, which a reader of mine alerted to me a few weeks ago.

And this sign, above, is from Tempe. Tom Thivener, City of Tucson’s Bike/Ped Coordinator, sent me this when I asked him about the Flagstaff sign. I had asked him if the Flagstaff sign was an official DOT sign, and if we could expect to see more of them around the state.

He did some looking into it and wrote me back to say, “The State and the Feds don’t want jurisdictions experimenting with signage without an official experiment process being undertaken. Sounds like Flagstaff will retroactively apply for experimentation process for the one sign they have. Could be a long process before anything like that is accepted for mainstream use.”

I guess progress is progress! I hope they can approve a sign soon and put some up around Tucson.

–Erik Ryberg

He never came right out and said the stop-sign violation stuff was a waste of time, but he sure hinted around at it.

He also said they had spent a few months just giving warnings on the wrong-way riding. I like that. Most wrong-way riders genuinely believe they are riding in the safest manner. Many were taught to ride that way when they were young.

I was very pleased to hear the U of A has focused its efforts on a bike-riding violation that is actually dangerous and that really does result in many injuries every year.

I hope TPD follows their lead, if they have not done so yet.

–Erik Ryberg

I think the only thing I haven’t seen is a brakeless fixed-gear recumbent. Any takers?

It’s only a matter of time before this turns tragic. Tragic in the physical injury sense.

–Erik Ryberg

The gist of the report is that cyclists and pedestrians pay disproportionately — with their lives, that is — for their chosen modes of transport. We die more often than drivers do while we’re trying to get somewhere, but the government spends less on our safety.

As bad as that is, I think there is something even worse going on, which is that we are permitted to drive around in provably deadly machines in a country that does not provide health care to all, and we are permitted to do so with levels of liability insurance that are horrifically insufficient.

Here in Arizona it is perfectly legal to purchase just $15,000.00 in liability insurance. Which means, if you hit a cyclist, the most your insurance company will have to pay the poor cyclist is $15k, no matter how badly you injure them.

The thing is, even a minor accident will likely swallow up that entire amount. If there is a trip to the hospital in an ambulance and a CT scan (which is common even when a head injury is not noted), you are looking at a seven thousand dollar bill. Add a broken collarbone and a few X-rays, and you just ate up the entirety of the policy.

Break a leg and, unless you can recover from the driver directly, you will owe money.

Of course, if you are encased in a giant SUV, you aren’t that likely to rack up big hospital bills when you hit something, but you are very likely to inflict them on anyone you hit.

The natural result is the never-ending escalation in the size of the vehicle, the societal rush to encase ourselves in ever-larger, ever-”safer” — for the driver — cages of steel.

–Erik Ryberg

I have had a chance to use the new bike-access or bike-crossing thing that the city installed recently at that awful intersection at Church and Toole. It used to be that if you were trying to get from downtown to, say, BICAS, you had to either ride dangerously through tunnels or on 6th Street — possibly the worst street in Tucson for bicycling — or alternatively commit a handful of traffic violations to get around this barrier.

Now the barrier is opened up for cyclists and I think it’s great! Sometimes just this intersection alone was enough to keep me from going to BICAS.

And I love seeing those “Bicyclists Exempt” signs around town. A message to all that sometimes our traffic practices simply don’t work for bicyclists.

–Erik Ryberg

Cyclist injured in crash on Tucson’s north side
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.18.2010

A collision involving a bicyclist at West Miracle Mile & North 14th Avenue has blocked off all lanes of westbound traffic on North Oracle Road at Miracle Mile.
There appear to be life-threatening injuries associated with the collision, spokesman for the Tucson Police Department, Charles Rydzak said.
Updates will be provided as more information becomes available.

78. Comment by Kevin T. (thehotelguru) — January 8,2010 @ 4:33PM
Ratings: Thumbs Down Thumbs Up -2 +1

A cyclist gets as much space when I pass as they allow themselves. I don’t cross into their lane and they should stay out of mine. If this works out, they need no more room than the car in the lane on the other side of me. My tire stays in my lane. If the cyclist crosses the white line, that’s their problem. Cyclists, in Tucson at least, are jerks. Riding along like they are in some time trial to get from light to light on River Rd. Plenty of places to act like Lance Armstrong that aren’t our roads. If you feel the need to play dress up in your spandex do it on the river paths or in a gym where the bikes are in no danger of encountering a car.

–EBR

More about the sentencing hearing here.

AZ Star article, with usual comments, here.

–EBR

Video found at Bob Mionske’s Road Rights column.

Any article in the local paper about bicyclists will be sure to attract many on-line comments about scofflaw cyclists who never stop at stop signs. And it’s been debated in this website, too, with several of my readers wondering why cyclists don’t always come to a complete stop at every stop sign. They argue that we need to start doing so if we wish to be respected by motorists.

But I’ve been thinking about this a lot and have started watching the way motorists deal with intersections more carefully. My conclusion is that whether you are on a bike or in a car, you make a series of identical calculations based on your perceived safety of the intersection, along with the chances of getting caught for rolling through the stop sign.

The difference is that if you are in a car, you can’t determine as quickly how dangerous the intersection is, and this means you tend to slow down quite a bit, or, in rare cases, come to a complete stop. On a bike, you can figure things out pretty quickly, and you aren’t going as fast to begin with.

Take a look at any intersection with a stop sign and watch for the tell-tale backwards motion of a car when its suspension deals with the weight of the chassis on fully-stopped wheels. How often do you see it? Pretty much never, if the intersection is clear. People slow down, look both ways, and carry on.

The video of the intersection above shows this behavior perfectly. The intersection is full of stop signs and flashing lights, but it appears to be very safe, and designed wholly to serve pedestrians (there is no cross traffic). Note the cyclists flying through the intersection. They can see in an instant that there are no pedestrians or oncoming cars and they keep going. The cars themselves slow just enough to make sure there isn’t a pedestrian preparing to leap into the crosswalk.

I admit that you see more cyclists doing stupid things at stop signs than you do motorists, but I think most of us are making the exact same choices based on the information we have available, whether on a bike or in a car. The only real difference is that our speed differential at an intersection is low: we only need to slow down a little bit to satisfy ourselves the intersection is safe; a motorist needs to slow down quite a bit to reach the same conclusion.

The proof would be in the accident data. I don’t know how many cyclists get injured because of stop-sign running, but I bet the percentage is about the same as it is for motorists. Anybody know?

–Erik Ryberg