But after Sgt. Tim Beam got moved out of traffic investigations, things improved a lot, and most of my clients have reported fair treatment from TPD officers. It’s also been a little while since I had a cyclist charged with, say, failure to yield after being hit by a driver who ran a stop sign. That sort of thing used to happen a lot.

But in the last few weeks I’ve gotten several reports that have me worried. I’ve been hearing about cyclists being charged with failure to control speed after getting right hooked or hit in intersections where they had the right-of-way. And now this: a cyclist who took the lane in a construction zone was yelled at, honked at, and then challenged to a fight by a motorist who sped ahead of him and pulled over. The motorist also pointed a semi-automatic weapon at him.

The cyclist got the license plate and a good look at his assailant, but the police refused even to visit the address to which the vehicle is registered. The advice given by TPD was simply that the cyclist should find another route to commute to work.

What am I missing? They have the license plate, they have a victim who can identify his assailant — why not pay the registered owner of the vehicle a visit? Is it because the victim is a cyclist, and TPD is resurrecting its former institutional disdain for people who commute by bike?

–Erik Ryberg

Why do we tolerate this in our city? Our freeway interchanges have far better landscaping — and shade — than this.

–EBR

Which has led him to the same place it led me: maybe bike infrastructure isn’t going to get us where we want to go. Maybe we need something more.

So he’s been pondering what makes for awesome bikey-ness. When I did that, I concluded that we are doomed and should give up, but I think McKisson is a little more hopeful and not quite so ready to throw in the towel. On consideration, I like his approach better.

Check out what he has to say.

–Erik Ryberg

Milford bicyclist heard words ‘kill him, run him over’ before being hit by car, cops say

By Brian McCready, Milford Bureau Chief
bmccready@nhregister.com / Twitter: @nhrbmccready

MILFORD — The 42-year-old bicyclist told police he heard the words “kill him, run him over.”

Then the car allegedly hit the bike the man was on, police said.

The man was thrown from the bike but was not seriously injured, police said.

But then the motorist turned the car around and this time allegedly ran the bike over, police said.

When police responded to the incident in the area of Edgefield Avenue at the intersection of Yale Avenue around 5:30 p.m., the bicyclist was able to recall the license plate number on the car and that led investigators to arrest a 20-year-old Bird Lane resident, police spokesman Sgt. Vaughan Dumas said.

Louis A. Melfi III, is charged with evading responsibility, and reckless driving, police said. Melfi told police there was a problem with a bicyclist but denied striking the bike, police said.

But the bicyclist, who was not identified, told police he was on a leisurely ride Wednesday evening when he heard a female voice shouting from a car “kill him, run him over,” Dumas said.

The bicyclist was driving in the shoulder of the road eastbound on Edgefield Avenue and told police he also heard a male voice yelling, “I’m gonna run you off the road,” police said.

The vehicle hit the bike’s rear tire and the man was knocked off the bike, he told police. He also told police the car continued a short distance, and then stopped, backed up and ran the bike over a second time before being driven off, police said.

In addition to the license plate number, the bicyclist provided a description of the vehicle. The vehicle was located at Melfi’s residence. Investigators determined based on physical evidence from the car that it did strike the bicycle and Melfi was arrested. He was released after posting $500 bail and is due to appear in Superior Court in Milford Aug. 11.

–EBR

A couple of years ago I had a case in Sells that required me to travel there with maddening frequency.

During my many visits, I got to watch ADOT complete the drainage project portrayed in the photo above. It runs alongside Highway 86, which bisects town in a long, hot swath. I remember thinking how it might be fun to ride a bmx bike into that drainage ditch, if only I owned or knew how to ride a bmx bike.

But crossing that drainage structure on anything but a bmx bike seemed a little daunting. And it’s not like there are many available spots to do so — it’s a long walk between road crossings.

So what I have been puzzling over for some time now is, what were the ADOT planners thinking when they designed this? Did it not occur to anyone that people have to cross this highway to get from the north side of Sells, where many people live, to the south side, where many of the tribe’s services and the stores are? (Satellite image of Sells here.)

Did the ADOT planners ever go to Sells? Did they build a model of this drainage system and look at it? Because it seems like if they had done so, it would have been really obvious that some pedestrian facilities should maybe be included.

I don’t know how much was spent on this thing and I don’t know how bad the problem was that it was designed to solve (I am hoping it was designed to solve an actual problem). But I do know that it shouldn’t take a wild-eyed, university-educated, free-thinking, bike-riding vegetarian pedestrian activist to notice that people in Sells might like to be able to walk across the high-speed highway that goes right through the middle of their town.

It makes you wonder if the Fourth Avenue Underpass debacle, whose awful design has been the subject of mitigation studies and the site of one fatality, was so unusual.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the traffic engineers could find a way to make sure these things stop happening?

–Erik Ryberg

Pedestrian struck in crosswalk dies

A 79-year-old man who was struck by a vehicle on the west side last week died Sunday.

The vehicle hit Jose Jesus Garcia in a marked crosswalk near the intersection of West St. Mary’s Road and North Cherokee Avenue around 4 p.m. Wednesday, said Sgt. Diana Lopez, a spokeswoman for the Tucson Police Department.

The driver, whose name hasn’t been released, is facing a citation.

Marisa Gerber

I was talking to my friend Collin the other day. He has invented some clever computer robots that compile crash data in Tucson and he runs various analyses on the data. He has enough information now to learn some interesting things about when most crashes occur and (possibly) why. For example, his database showed that cyclists are less likely to be hit on Mondays. He found that to be puzzling until he realized that some Mondays are holidays, which probably accounts for the dip.

Anyway, during the conversation he said, “After looking at this crash data all I can say is I am glad I’m not a pedestrian. Those guys have it way worse than us cyclists do.”

My condolences to Mr. Garcia’s family. I hope one day this city is safer for all of us who, like Mr. Garcia, choose alternative means to get to the places we want to go.

–Erik Ryberg

Asta told the Arizona Daily Star’s Josh Brodesky that his killing of 18 year old Jennifer Reeves when he ran a stop sign in 1994 was merely “an accident.” Well, it was an “accident” in the sense that he surely did not mean to kill this girl, but his continued driving is something that makes me afraid to share the road with him.

According to Brodesky, who includes an anecdote about being a terrified passenger in a car Asta is piloting, Asta has received 13 traffic tickets since 1992 and has attended Defensive Driving School six times. He admits that he is a dangerous driver, yet continues to drive.

I wish there were a way to keep such people off our streets, never mind out of City Hall.

–Erik Ryberg

More and more often though, these scammers are not from floor polishing companies as they are from law offices, which depresses me. It seems that the economy has hit lawyers and they are doing whatever they can to increase business.

One site, which appears to be some kind of nascent lawyer portal that isn’t even fully functional yet, has been bombarding me with pretend comments in the past few days, and I’ve gotten really tired of sending their messages into the trash. Check these internet lawyer scammer folks out: www.tempe-lawyer.com. If you click on the “Criminal Law” tab you see this:

THE LAW OFFICE OF [Your Tempe Law firm here!] is a professional corporation engaged in the practice of law and is committed to the defense of individuals charged with a crime. The firm focuses its scope of representation . . .

And if you click on the “Personal Injury” tab you learn all about a law firm that will FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS in all capitals. Except they are based out of Los Angeles, not Tempe. They are Crane Flores, LLP and can be found at www.cranefloresllp.com. I don’t know if they are an internet scamming law firm or not.

Anyway, these unsavory tempe-lawyer.com folks have taken to the internet and are most likely using robots to find blogs that contain keywords like “law” and “tempe” and comment on them. When they get enough they’ll probably sell the website to some Tempe lawyer who doesn’t know better. And hopefully the highest ranked link will be . . . this one. You’re welcome, guys.

–Erik Ryberg

The obvious idea — and the practical result — of the ordinance is to make it nearly impossible to open a marijuana dispensary in Oro Valley, and I am sure the town fathers are proudly patting themselves on the back over their clever application of zoning laws to keep Oro Valley free of dope. (The link above includes a map of what properties in Oro Valley would still be available to marijuana dispensaries, and they are precious few.)

But the thing I’ve noticed about marijuana is that it does not produce the same kinds of dumb-ass, testosterone-fueled violence and uproar that, say, alcohol does. In fact it seems like a pretty innocuous drug, actually. I can actually only think of one thing that makes marijuana dangerous, which is when you smoke it and then get behind the wheel of a car.

Which is, of course, the one thing the Town of Oro Valley is going to encourage by this ill-thought ordinance. They are going to protect themselves from all the things that marijuana doesn’t do — create a danger to churches, parks, libraries, and child-care centers that are within 1000 feet of a dispensary — and they are going to increase the danger that marijuana already poses, by making people drive to Tucson for their prescription.

And let’s not fool ourselves: a large portion of those people are going to light up and drive home.

Who are they most likely to hit on the way home? I’d say that would be us — bicyclists and pedestrians. If I happen to be a victim of a stoned Oro Valley driver heading home from the Tucson dispensary, I hope you, readers, will flood the Oro Valley lawmakers with copies of this blog post!

(Note: Tucson resident Charles Nystrom, a husband, father, grandfather, decorated Air Force pilot, school-teacher, and bicyclist, was struck and killed by a driver who was under the influence of marijuana. So don’t take any light-hearted language in this post to mean I am not serious.)

–Erik Ryberg

I sure hope the local authorities determine that something worse than just leaving the scene of an accident occurred here.

–EBR