Is nothing sacred? Cops currently hiding on 3d Street bikeway to ticket cyclists
So say my readers. They are taking advantage of a stop sign obscured by foliage on 3rd Street between Tucson and Country Club.
Just yesterday I watched a bike cop ride the wrong way up Simpson Street in my neighborhood, make a turn onto Convent without stopping (he would have had a stop sign, but he was going the wrong way) and then ride straight across Cushing Street without stopping at the stop sign on Convent. He wasn’t in a hurry, either, or on his way to some emergency. He was just riding along. “Patrolling” I think they call it. You know, to make sure no one is breaking any laws.
Honestly, if TPD would move just ten percent of its “bike safety” efforts away from hiding in the bushes to catch people rolling through stop signs and toward citing (or warning) drivers who don’t give a cyclist three feet, it would be a miracle.
I’d even be happy if they would start warning cyclists who ride unnecessarily on the sidewalk. This single-minded focus on stop signs along bike routes accomplishes nothing except disdain for the police, which is also sad and disappointing.
–Erik Ryberg
July 7th, 2009 at 10:51 am
You see, I don’t get this.
Someone in the city should
tell TPD that they’re trying
to encourage alternative modes
of transportation. Playing
’stealth cop’ doesn’t do it.
Why this location?
This time of year…low
traffic volume.
They don’t do this at Park &
University…a truly risky
intersection where this behavior
blatantly occurs.
Or University & Fourth Ave.
It may take a day-long enforcement
process to affect a behavior change,
if that’s what they’re after. It would
take a lot of work…not as easy as
writing some cheap-shot tickets that
make it look like you’re busy. Or
they could cut away the obscurring
vegetation….I’m going to save
them the trouble. Getting my cutters
right now and going out there.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Yup – passed some girl getting a ticket on 3rd St. just this morning. While I agree that the completely ignored 3ft rule should actually start to get some enforcement, there is a real easy way to get TPD to stop trolling for cyclists… OBEY THE DAMN TRAFFIC LAWS!!
Want to be taken seriously as a vehicle? Then act like it. Yeah, it’s all about the revenue, but if cyclists didn’t blatantly and predictably flaunt basic traffic laws, there would be no ticket revenue in it for TPD to waste their time over, then maybe they’d have to target somebody else, like maybe 3ft violators.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:27 am
And the title of this post pisses me off – what the hell is so “sacred” about it? A “sacred” right to break the law without having to accept the consequences? You think that maybe laws don’t apply to cyclists? Or that they don’t apply on city bike routes? Do you think it would be equally wrong for motorcycle cops to lay in wait to ticket car drivers for running stop signs and violating other safety laws? If “carhead” annoys you, maybe you should consider toning down the “bikehead” a little.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I am sure they exist, but I have never met a cyclist who regularly comes to a complete stop — wheels not moving at all — at all stop signs. That’s my point in all of this — TPD is ticketing cyclists for behavior that is not dangerous and that is not ever going to change no matter how many tickets they write. There is a world of difference between ticketing the cyclist who flies through stop signs recklessly and the cyclist who rolls slowly through a four-way stop, like the stop signs on 3rd Street.
Scott, I don’t think breaking traffic laws is a sacred right of cyclists, I was referring to the 3rd Street bike corridor, which so far has largely been free of this kind of pointless enforcement.
And as for the consequences — they are a traffic ticket of over $200.00 and a large increase in your driver’s insurance if you don’t get a judge to keep the information from MVD. These consequences can arise any time you fail to come to a *complete* stop at a stop sign. It has happened to me twice, both times at deserted intersections, once at a roundabout.
The fact the police commit the same violation daily in front of my office, and the fact they don’t even recognize three-foot violations or enforce traffic rules that really do improve bike safety all adds to the problem.
I have reviewed hundreds of bike accident reports from the last few years in Tucson. It is exceedingly rare that an accident comes from failure to stop at a stop sign, unless it is the motorist who does not stop. A hundred times more common is the left-hook, right-hook, or, most common of all, a bicyclist on a sidewalk riding against the traffic direction. And the most dangerous to bicycles is the hit-from-behind incident, which often results in the bicyclist’s death.
So if you care about bike safety and you are the Tucson Police Department, you go after that behavior, not stop-sign roll-throughs. I was hoping maybe 3rd Street would be one place where we could dispense with the dishonesty of the whole program.
Anyway, I don’t like it that cyclists are being treated like a bank account, and then told it is for their own good when it manifestly is not for their own good, and the people saying it is for their own good demonstrably know it is not for their own good. Scott, my guess is that you ride like I do. You wear a helmet, you light up like a Christmas tree at night, you obey traffic lights, you avoid suicidal traffic corridors, you rarely if ever ride on a sidewalk, and you mainly stop at most stop signs. If that is true, then one day you are going to get a ticket that is really going to piss you off, and you may see things from a different point of view.
EBR
July 7th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
In other cities, cops are attacking bicyclists:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/07/bicyclist-suing-over-alle_n_226977.html
July 7th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Well, I failed. The offending limb
was too high for me to reach and
too thick for my cutters. There is
evidence that the owner has pruned
the tree away from the sign in the
past and probably will in the future.
However….that stop sign is totally obscured
from one block away (at Stewart) by the
city’s own “3rd St. bikeway” sign and is
only partially clear half way down the
block.
Tom Thivener: Can you move that sign?
Oh, and while I was there, two cyclists
blew the intersection, one riding on the
wrong side. As long as cyclists ride
in an ‘entitled’ manner, comments like
Scott’s above carry a lot of weight.
I was watching traffic at Fourth Ave.&
University on my way back….what is it
about four-way-stop intersections that
so disrupts cognitive processes?
July 7th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
What is a stop sign doing on the bike corridor? Bike routes should be reasonably free of impediments to bicycle traffic including unnecessary stop signs.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I was riding with a couple of cyclists on a side street during the street fair–they rode past us and blew threw a stop sign– when we caught up someone questioned them “howcome you guys can do that” the reply from one was-”because we got guns-huh huh huh.” I don’t generally like cops–some are ok–but this cheapshot crap has got to stop–next time ask them if they have better things to do– Or if you need a highschool education to get that job?– dg
July 7th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
“There is a world of difference between ticketing the cyclist who flies through stop signs recklessly and the cyclist who rolls slowly through a four-way stop”
That may be so, but one sure doesn’t have to hang out on the 3rd St bikeway (at least on the East side of campus) for very long to see that the vast majority of cyclists fly through the stop signs recklessly just like you mention. I’ve personally witnessed a bunch of near-collisions due to stupid cyclists ignoring stop signs and other implied ROW such as exiting a driveway, even when there is cross-traffic with the right-of-way – tragedy averted only because the ROW car or bike (including me) was paying attention enough to react and avoid the entitled dumbass. And you know darn well that if that weren’t the case then TBD wouldn’t be over-reacting by ticketing even those slow “rolling-stops.”
July 7th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Personally I would make a point to stop extra long and hard and go really really slow through the intersection, maybe even dismount and walk my bike really slow. If the cops were targeting cyclists in my town.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Here are two tools that might help with TPD misallocation of resources:
1) Citizen Police Advisory Review Board
http://www.tucsonaz.gov/cparb/index.html
2) Office of The Independent Police Auditor
http://www.tucsonaz.gov/eoo/ipa.html
Has there been any effort by cyclists to work these?
July 7th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
# Red Star Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Here are two tools that might help with TPD misallocation of resources:
1) Citizen Police Advisory Review Board
http://www.tucsonaz.gov/cparb/index.html
2) Office of The Independent Police Auditor
http://www.tucsonaz.gov/eoo/ipa.html
Has there been any effort by cyclists to work these?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And we hope the moderation Red Star is subject to is prompt and intelligent…
July 7th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
People tend to ride on the sidewalks because:
1. They are rarely, if ever, used in Tucson. (I only see literally 10-15 pedestrians a day on the East Side, and only half as many bicyclists.)
2. They have much less debris than the so-called “bike routes” on the side of the roads do.
3. Since concrete is a much lighter color than asphalt, any debris that is on the sidewalk is much more visible (dark colored beer-bottle glass, for example.)
4. Bicyclists on the sidewalk are further away from vehicles that do not observe the 3 foot rule.
5. The average sidewalk in Tucson is better engineered than the average “bike route/path” (no cracks, potholes, or other deteriorations of the sidewalk.)
So why should I ride on the far right of the road when the sidewalks are so much nicer and possibly safer?
I say bicyclists should be allowed to ride on the sidewalks (in the direction of traffic!) so long as they yield to pedestrians and people in wheelchairs.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
When the cops announced they were introducing the automated speed trap ticket-issuers, it did occur to me that the proper response might be a campaign to “depress a cop, drive the speed limit”. Same for bike violations.
And what did anyone expect when it was rumored around that the bike cops might get the budget axe? Of course, they are going to go out there and “prove” they can bring in the bacon. This morning I saw two on Columbus with some poor guy in between them. I didnt stop to ask, and when I reached Broadway, there was a third bike cop turning down onto Columbus. Thats a 200% increase in bike cop sightings in this area this year.
Time for us to watch very carefully, as well as bike defensively.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Erik, quick Q. ARS law says a bicycle is defined as such:
“Bicycle” means a device, including a racing wheelchair, that is propelled by human power and on which a person may ride and that has either:
(a) Two tandem wheels, either of which is more than sixteen inches in diameter.
(b) Three wheels in contact with the ground, any of which is more than sixteen inches in diameter.
What if one was to ride a folder with 12″ wheels, is that NOT legally a bicycle? Can you get ticketed for blowing a stop sign on a tricycle or something that cannot be legally classified as a bicycle? Does Tucson or Phoenix or Tempe for that matter have additional city laws that further define a bicycle?
July 7th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Hi Tom, I’m a little rusty actually on some of these details but Tucson either does or did have a wheel diameter limit that I think was ten inches.
I know that several folks in the Statehouse are trying to clean up some of the ambiguities in the AZ Revised Statutes, and two of the dicey ones are wheel size and the relationship of “motorized” bicycles to the pedal-powered variety. You get tied up in all kinds of knots trying to distinguish some of the motorized wheelchairs from bikes in the statutes.
I think Ed over at AZBikelaw.org is probably much more up on this stuff than I am.
–EBR
July 8th, 2009 at 7:27 am
When I got a ticket a while ago at 6th Ave and University, I slowed down, looked both ways (even though it is a one way street), made sure there was no traffic before I went through the intersection. I just didn’t happen to see the police officer parked near the bus stop.
Getting a really expensive ticket when I being very careful seems ridiculous. If someone completely blows a stop sign, I wouldn’t have much sympathy for them getting a ticket.
But when they sit a police officer at an intersection with the express purpose of targeting any cyclist who technically violates traffic law whether they are *obviously* being careful or being reckless erodes any trust that people have for law enforcement.
I didn’t end up giving them any money though. I did community service, which worked for me rather well.
My favorite part of the whole incident was when he was lecturing me about how I should take care of this or it will affect my driver’s license negatively. Then he looked at my Arizona ID (not a DL) and said “Oh, I guess this doesn’t affect you.”
July 8th, 2009 at 8:00 am
It is interesting Radar Man brought up the issue of riding on sidewalks. I just got back from Fort Collins, CO. It is legal there to ride on the sidewalks, even though they have miles of bike lanes.
Interestingly enough the non-cyclist friends we were visiting really only complained about the cyclist who would jump from street to sidewalk and back. He said it is scary to see them weaving from one to the other and never know what they have planned.
I was pretty turned off by the idea until I saw how many young children were riding on the sidewalks next to fairly busy streets. Streets that their parents would likely not allow them to ride on, but because it is legal to ride on the sidewalk, the kids were getting where they needed to go by bike instead of having their parents take them in a car.
I only used the road when I was out there, but I can certainly see the appeal for allowing kids on the sidewalks.
At some point tonight I am going to post a blog about the bike culture in Ft. Collins on my blog at http://www.michaelmckisson.com/blog if anyone is interested. They are also a “Gold” cycling community, but they are leaps and bounds ahead of us.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Phoenix area allows sidewalk riding and their a lot of them. I am all alone on the road. Scottsdale looks at crash data and then creates a list for officers. Obeying traffic signals is at the bottom. Wrong way riding is at the top. Maybe you should fight it with this angle. You have crash data right? Show them it is not a concern for cyclist’s safety. You already are trying the second and changing the law. I would like to see a definition myself. Do I need two feet on the ground really to stop and yield?
July 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
[...] yesterday’s post, which many found overly strident, I found myself this morning staring aghast as a young woman came [...]
July 8th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Would someone please explain why bike infractions affect mvd record when a license is not required to operate a bike?! Can you get an az id if you already have az dl? Then you could just hand over the id and not a dl? I guess a passport or some other form would work too… This makes no sense to me a bicycle is not a motor vehicle ahy does the motor vehicle division get involved? Do you get points for jaywalking too?
July 8th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Karlito– It doesn’t matter what form of id you give them, as far as I know. Anything that MVD takes points off for will automatically be sent to MVD unless you get yourself in front of a judge and ask him or her not to forward the ticket to them. You make just the argument that you identified — you don’t need a driver’s license to commit a bicycle infraction. Two years ago it was a bit of a tough argument to win, but at this point I think every Tucson City Court judge buys the argument and will not forward the info, thanks to the fact that many people have now made this argument to them. But you have to get in front of the judge. If you just pay the ticket, it gets forwarded and GOOD LUCK getting your insurance company to believe you and not penalize you!!
I am still paying inflated driver’s insurance for one of my stop sign violations. It was that experience that put me on the warpath on this issue and got me appearing time and time again in City Court for bicyclists.
EBR
July 8th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I still don’t understand why a non motorized incident is forwarded to mvd. Just more revenue garnering for the system I guess. Do you have to give a police officer id?
July 9th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
localmusicfan, I totally agree with your comment. 3rd st has a four way stop at almost every intersection. This is a commonly used mechanism to slow down traffic through neighborhoods. Bikes are already going slow and are much more burdened by having to stop at them than cars. To have the 4-way stops on a main bikeway is a broken system. For police to go out of their way to ticket bikes not coming to a complete stop at them is breaking the system further. There needs to be a better solution for the bikeways and the police need to lay off. TPD raised a lot of noise about being extremely short handed and spread thin when the city budget was being debated, but they have time for this pointless exercise…
July 9th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I wouldn’t mind the nitpicking and hairsplitting so much if it applied all around. But TPD doesn’t go looking for motorists violating the 3 foot law and it doesn’t set up stings at crosswalks and ticket cars that don’t yield to pedestrians. So why target cyclists who only slow down to a near stop and look both ways at stop signs while looking the other way on other, less minor, traffic violations?
Mindy
July 10th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I learned about this blog after posting to FaceBook about my experience on 3rd at Tyndall. I, too, was stopped by an TPD officer for not coming to a “complete” stop at 3rd & Tyndall. No ticket this time – just a warning, but I learned that tickets are $199 and the officer said he’d already written 15 that morning (or was it this past week?) He also said that over 100 cyclists had been hit in the past 2 weeks. ….So this explains why he’s stopping and ticketing cyclists doing the 99.9% of the right thing in Sam Hughes?
In any case, I must admit I was COMPLETELY surprised about being stopped. Why?
I mean, seriously: a) I used a hand signal to indicate that I was slowing down/stopping; b) I DID slow WAY down; c) for a 4-way stop; d) in a residential area (Sam Hughes); e) I looked both ways, heard and saw nothing; f) I used a hand signal to turn L; g) I was even wearing a helmet; and h) I was doing all this hand signaling and such even when there was seemingly NO ONE around — doing it simply out of safe cycling habits. And the officer stops me for not coming to a “complete” stop? Agreed, the officer had a right to stop me, and agreed, I didn’t come to a “complete” stop. But come on. I seriously think the officer could have picked a more worthwhile target.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Sad day for the cops. The tree
obscuring the stop sign has been
pruned very sufficiently. The
view of the sign now is only
blocked, from a distance, by
the bikeway sign.
July 16th, 2009 at 10:42 am
I’m glad I came across this – I should have googled for it earlier. Anyway, I was one of those girls who got stopped at 3rd and Treat last week along with someone else. I feel compelled to share my story. Just to be clear, I slowed down, tried to stop, and hit a sand pit and skidded, at which point, for my own safety I had to let up on my breaks and roll through the stop sign. I was wearing a helmet. I use turn signals when turning. I use lights when I bike at night. I am a very conscious biker and there is NO good reason that I have to go to sit in bicycle safety school to erase a nearly $200 ticket, but since I’m a grad student on a fixed income I certainly cannot afford to pay it. On the other hand, during the course of our converstation, the cop who pulled us over told us that he had the right to do whatever he wanted because he was a motorcycle cop. Scary that he thinks this is true!!! Additionally, he never explained to us why he gave us the tickets and what we had done wrong, which he is supposed to do, and he did not turn on his lights and siren until after he had run the stop sign himself. If anyone needs more training, it is the officer who pulled me over! I explained this (in a lot more detail) to the TPD complaint website; I’m still waiting for a response, although not holding my breath.
Also, I’m not sure why there is a stop sign there in the first place. Additionally, talk about messed up priorities from TPD! I’ve lived here 2 years and had 2 bikes stolen. Where were they then? Ok, back to the point, does anyone know how to properly petition the city to turn the 4-way stop at 3rd and Treat into a 2-way stop on Treat? I mean EVERY time I have seen cars there, they just wave me through when I’m on my bike. Since I stop when I see cars in the intersection, it just messes up the flow of traffic, so I think this would be better for both cyclists and cars. It would be nice to have some statistics on accidents at that intersection as well, so if anyone has that, please share!
July 16th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
The immediate neighborhood would have to
be petitioned for stop sign removal…and
if by chance that happened, the city might
do a traffic count to verify the appropriate
pair of signs to remove. All very not likely!
And Jenna…I never do what a driver signals
me to do. They have no right to direct traffic
and what they signal you to do is almost always
counter to traffic laws. If something were to go
wrong in that scenario, YOU would be on the hot
seat.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Really? Once again I have to be the one to call “Bullshit?” You know, I ride that stretch of road twice daily – sometimes four times daily depending on where I go for lunch – and not only have there been no stop signs obscured to the point that they weren’t instantly recognizable as a stop sign out to at least 10x of the typical bicycle braking distance; there are also no “sand pits” to be found. There is an occasional smattering of surface sand after a rain, but nothing so severe as to relieve even a completely oblivious and skilless rider of the ability to stop, and even if there were, all one has to do is exercise even the slightest degree of basic awareness to see and avoid it. C’mon kids – man up (or woman up as the case may be), you blew off a stop sign, most likely because you typically do so whether you admit it or not, and you got caught. At least I hope so for your sake, because the alternative excuses offered look a lot worse on you. Lets see – according to the person who originally reported to Eric, they were ticketed because they failed to see an “obscured” stop sign that in reality wasn’t really obscured. Even more damning is that they also failed to see the stern looking gentleman in uniform astride the large and rather obviously Orca-painted motorcycle with red and blue running lights. Another was “forced” to ride through the intersection after failing to notice the surface condition of the pavement directly in front of her (otherwise known as “the basics”), and also didn’t notice the above mentioned hard-to-miss Orca rider. Hey, if you want to be a scofflaw so be it – just don’t whine at me when you get caught; but if your excuse is that you truly are that oblivious to your surroundings while riding, then I’m embarrassed for you. The cop did you a favor IMO by bringing to your awareness your complete lack of awareness – take the appropriate lesson from it and keep track of your surroundings, because in this town it’s that or die.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Thank you Scott. I am sure you are an expert on all of these situtations. Have you seen me bike before? No, so maybe you shouldn’t judge someone you’ve never met or a situation you haven’t been in. I took the liberty of snapping a photo of 3rd and Treat on my cell phone on the way in this morning after reading your extraordinarly condenscending post. The photo is not the best, it’s actually a little worse in reality, but it does show there is sand there.
http://picasaweb.google.com/kloost/3rdTreat#
Why did I miss it? Because I was looking at the intersection for cars and other cyclists and because there was a cyclist in front of me obscuring my view. Clearly you’ve missed it, too, so I don’t feel that badly about myself. Oh and out of consideration for other drivers, I always bike as close to the side of the road as I can to permit cars to pass me in a safe manner, so yes, I was right in it.
Scott, don’t get me wrong I am glad you bike safely and considerately, but don’t think you are the only one. I think Eric is right, one day you are going to get one of these tickets and it is going to royally piss you off. I think that we should be on the same side as the police, but it’s really hard when a stolen car shows up in your parking lot (yes true story that happened last week) and then you get a $200 ticket for rolling through a stop sign on the bike path on your bike.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Jenna — tell it to the judge (seriously). On the other hand, I’m thinking you can go to bike diversion, can’t you?
For those who don’t follow this, there was legislation introduced this Spring by Tucson dem Patterson that would have allowed cyclists to treat stop signs as yield. It died at least partially because of lack of support from the “community”, only one cyclist showed up to support it.
http://azbikelaw.org/blog/tag/stop/
August 28th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Me and my wife both got caught this morning right at that place. While the officer was giving us and another poor kid citations more than 5 guys rode bicycles through and none of them stopped a bit. The two officers only yelled at two of them. And when I questioned about this they told me you can not catch every fish when fishing… Seriously, if 3rd street is claiming itself a bicycle-welcome community, they should make the 3rd street main road and get rid of all those stop signs along it.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I figured that was about to start up again with the start of the new semester.
The good news is… and this is probably due to the parking rate increase, but bike usage seems to be way up on campus – the racks look to be at least 50% fuller than last semester (even after most of the abandoned bikes had been removed over the summer) and the early morning commute on 3rd is like a two-wheeled rush hour, the street is full of what seems like at least *double* the number of bicyclists as before!
The bad news is… with all the new riders I encounter, I can still count on one hand the number I see that actually ride within the law. At that very stop sign this morning, two riders about 50 yards in front of me blew it off and I was watching with some amusement to see if that would draw a motorcop out of hiding as I came to my stop, while the half-dozen cyclists that had been following me streamed around either side to blow it off at full speed as well.
Easy money! You all feel free to just keep shoveling those $200 donations at the city – heaven knows they can use it right now.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
And Jenna, have you had a chance to try out your excuse with the judge yet? We’d love to hear how he reacted to that shocking photo evidence of the giant sand pit that you couldn’t avoid or control your vehicle through.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:44 am
Unbelievable! This morning at that same intersection there were several motor cops in clear view – big black-n-white motorcycles parked in the street maybe 20 ft from the intersection tops – there is no possible way one could miss seeing them if one was checking for cross traffic *at all*, yet the kid in front of me (and several riding a couple of blocks in front of him) just blew off the stop sign anyway. They’re not ticketing for “failing to stop” at this point – they’re ticketing for “stupid.”