Somervile Police issuing tickets to bicylists

[lentower.livejournal.com]

Somerville police will enforcing the laws for bicycles soon:

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/somerville/2012/04/somerville_police_to_focus_on.html

There is a link to the Somerville guide for bicylists there.

Please share this with other lists.

Be safe and considerate of others!

best -len

Comments

[littlecitynames.livejournal.com]

I hope this will deter bikers from riding the wrong way down streets (one way and two way - I saw someone almost get hit by a bus the other day because she was riding down Mass Ave on the wrong side of the road and he was pulling over at a stop) and running red lights. That said, I see so many cars breaking laws and no police presence to stop them, so I don't know how much the bike initiative will really help.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it would be possible (or even useful) for the police to pick a few of the more dangerous intersections in town and set up enforcement for both bikes and motor vehicle traffic for a day here and there.

Speaking of traffic safety - the signalling for traffic heading east on Somerville Ave at the Somerville Ave/Mossland/Oxford/Adelaide intersection is evidently unclear for a lot of folks -- A notable fraction of the times I happen to be on Mossland, I see traffic jump the first (more westerly) light when it's red because the more central light has turned green. I've learned to wait a moment before turning left onto Somerville Ave if I'm the first car at the light on Mossland to make sure nobody jumps the light. (It's sort of understandable - the further set of lights is what a lot of people watch, instead of the ones closer to them, and people tend to assume they'll change at the same time.)

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

I'm sure this is because of the San Francisco incident where a 71-year-old pedestrian was killed by a cyclist who then went online and eulogised his helmet and "hoped that old guy was okay, too." (http://sfist.com/2012/04/05/cyclist_who_struck_pedestrian_at_ca.php)

His original post, for the linkshy: I wrecked on the way home today from the bi-weekly Headlands Raid today. Short story: I'm fine. The pedestrian I clobbered? Not so much

Around 8 am I was descending Divisidero Street southbound and about to cross Market Street. The light turned yellow as I was approaching the intersection, but I was already way too committed to stop. The light turned red as I was cruising through the middle of the intersection and then, almost instantly, the southern crosswalk on Market and Castro filled up with people coming from both directions. The intersection very long and the width of Castro Street at that point is very short, so, in a nutshell, blammo.

The quote/unquote 'scene of the crime' was that intersection right by the landmark Castro Theatre. it leads from a really busy MUNI station to that little plaza where The Naked Guy always hangs out. It was commuter hour and it was crowded as all getup. I couldn't see a line through the crowd and I couldn't stop, so I laid it down and just plowed through the crowded crosswalk in the least-populated place I could find.

I don't remember the next five minutes but when I came to, I was in a neck brace being loaded into an ambulance. I remember seeing a RIVER of blood on the asphalt, but it wasn't mine. Apparently I hit a 71-year old male pedestrian and he ended up in the ICU with pretty serious head injuries. I really hope he ends up OK.

They asked me a bunch of stupid easy questions that I couldn't answer, so they kept me for a few hours for observation, gave me a tetanus shot and sent me on my way.

Anyway, other than a stiff neck, a sore jaw/TMJ, a few bruises and some raspberries, I'm totally fine. I got discharged from the hospital during the lunch hour. The guy I hit was not as fortunate. I really hope he makes it.

The cops took my bike. Hopefully they'll give it back.

In closing, I want to dedicate this story to my late helmet. She died in heroic fashion today as my head slammed into the tarmac. Like the Secret Service would do for a president, she took some serious pavement today, cracking through-and-through in five places and getting completely mauled by the ragged asphalt. May she die knowing that because she committed the ultimate sacrifice, her rider can live on and ride on. Can I get an amen? Amen.

The moral of this little story is: WYFH

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/05/BA9O1NVHMI.DTL#ixzz1s8Jw6aJe

I think there are going to be a lot of changes for cyclists everywhere because of that incident.

Another link with a video, if you're interested (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2012%2F04%2F10%2FBA8B1O1H44.DTL).

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Gah. It's about freaking time, honestly. As a pedestrian, I've been almost mowed down by bicyclists while in a crosswalk more times than by motorists. The moral of the above story is that the cyclist belongs in jail.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

That dude is one terrible ambassador for the sport. Looks like it didn't even occur to him that he could kill someone with his bicycle when he wrote that (much less when he opted to plow through rather than swerve or at least slow down). Some people just don't deserve to have force multipliers.

[ron_newman]

He should have his bike confiscated permanently, at the very least. And notices sent to all area bike shops strongly suggesting they not sell him another one.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

speaking of ambassadors for the sport... "having to lay it down" is ... funny :) you used to hear that a lot from biker's that didn't understand braking.

throwing the bike down like that, was almost a sure way to take out as many people as possible... instead of selectively hitting one (wide of [tumbinglin/sliding] bike on side > width of upright bike)

or making trying to bail out in another way? pole grab, self-impaction into a solid safe object... :)

plus, brakes? guess not? fixie (needs to be fixed up :D)

#

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

We need dedicated bike lines and paths that are not shared or accessible by cars. Having a white stripe on the road is not a safe option. It's obviously not safe to be riding on the sidewalks either. There is no safe place for bikes to travel.

[ringrose.livejournal.com]

That'd be great, if there were enough space for that. There isn't.

[ringrose.livejournal.com]

If he was going so fast he had to push the yellow and run the red, perhaps he was going too fast.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

I think there is. Take out a row of parking on one side of the street every 5 blocks or so so there is enough of a network where you can get within a few blocks of where you need to go on these new dedicated paths. Last time we had this discussion on LJ people were angrily against that idea though so we probably shouldn't have a tangent discussion. Society is not ready to make that choice.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

According to his (possibly unreliable) iPhone GPS app, he was clocked at about 35mph.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

I used to live in SF; not that part of town, but I do know that intersection. He was coming down off a pretty substantial hill, so he had that kind of momentum behind him...still no reason he couldn't STOP, though. And if he didn't have brakes (there is some speculation whether he did or not), he absolutely could have turned to go parallel to the pedestrians.

There's also some evidence that he was trying to beat his "personal best" time and couldn't stop because he might not break his own record. Apparently he posted a lot of stuff about himself online, on biking websites, on LinkedIn and Twitter, and on cycling forums, including the whole "RIP my beloved helmet, and oh, by the way, I hope that old guy I clobbered is okay" thing, but since the man died and the City's going to prosecute him, he's been deleting his online presence.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too. I was a pedestrian in SF, too, before I moved here (haven't driven since 1997) and I know that intersection - I didn't live near there, but SF is small, and that's a pretty well-known intersection.

I haven't been as "afraid" of cyclists in Boston as I was in SF, but I have had my moments in Cambridge and Somerville.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the fact he went online and posted a eulogy to his helmet and kind of just mentioned in passing the "old guy he clobbered" and hoped he was "okay."

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Which is why I concluded it never occurred to him that riding could cause death, or even serious damage, to anyone other than himself. If it had, I bet you money he wouldn't've posted that, but he couldn't get beyond the notion that he's the one in danger while riding (defensive riding is great and all, but understanding that there are others even more vulnerable than you is important too).

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Not that it's seeing much traffic these days, but bostoncycling is still out there…

[duffless2323.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it just some months ago you were called out for a habit of riding down a one way street off davis? The only diff I see is you got lucky.

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

I am having a really hard time picturing this solution. Do you mean create a block of bike lane every five blocks, so that bikes have to swerve in and out of regular traffic?

More importantly, where do you put those cars? There is already not enough parking in the area, and while it'd be lovely to see fewer people with cars, I don't think that making that the basis of any solution is viable.

~Sor

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

Can we also enforce traffic laws for non-bike, non-pedestrian traffic? I nearly ran into a skateboarder going the wrong direction in the bike lane (on a two-way road with bike lanes on either side, so there was no reason for him to be on my side)?

(Full story: I was on Hampshire crossing Inman Square, which has just enough of a bend in the road that I couldn't clearly see down the bike lane. When I was in my lane, so was a skateboarder, about ten feet away. We both tried to swerve in the same direction, twice, and he wound up jumping off the board. Neither of us (or our vehicles) were damaged, but I was pretty damn shaken...and then fairly angry.)

~Sor

[ron_newman]

I've never hit a pedestrian, and if I ever did, I certainly wouldn't write something like this guy in San Francisco did.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

One of the things being explored by some European cities in their downtown areas is no physical separation between cars and sidewalks--e.g. no curbs at all if that's easy to imagine. It seems to really make cars a little more conscious because there's no assumed separation. I don't know how that would work well in a comparatively large area like Somerville.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

The side of the road the cars were parked in, that is now a bike lane, with a small concrete divider to separate it from the cars so they *don't* have to swerve in and out of regular traffic. Would have to have openings for cars to get out of driveways. Another option is to make streets one ways and take the recovered lane's real estate to somehow create the dedicated, physically separated lane.

Overall my feeling is that ideas that there is not enough parking, not enough lanes on the highway etc are all self fulfilling prophesies that lead to costly car centric building, which people immediately consume. It is so ingrained in our way of doing things that we can't imagine any change to that.

[squirrelitude]

I really don't like the image of my bike tire over a skateboard. Too many degrees of freedom...

[squirrelitude]

You want to encourage him to get a car instead?