[SDCBC] Fwd: [CABO] SF Weekly column: Can't We All Just Roll Along?

[Jim Baross]

Reinforces my views...

>To: caboforum at topica.com, cbc at topica.com, svbc <bikes at svbcbikes.org>
>From: Bob Shanteau <RMShant at gmail.com>
>Subject: [CABO] SF Weekly column: Can't We All Just Roll Along?
>Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 13:09:48 -0700

>Driver intimidation and getting away from the 
>public perception that cycling is dangerous:
><http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-05-07/news/can-t-we-all-just-roll-along>
>
>Bob Shanteau
>
>*********
>Can't We All Just Roll Along?
>There is a way bike riders and car drivers can 
>more safely coexist, and help the environment.
>By Matt Smith
>Published: May 7, 2008
>
>To envision the future he'd like to see, 
>architect Robin Levitt shows a small downtown 
>crowd of transportation geeks a selection of 
>postwar photographs of Berlin and Copenhagen. 
>During the 1950s, these cities rebuilt their 
>streets, sidewalks, and buildings to accommodate 
>automobiles, just as American cities such as San 
>Francisco did. Predictably, automobiles soon 
>replaced other modes of transportation.
>
>"After the war, both these cities took on the 
>American model of building roads and automobile 
>infrastructure," Levitt said during a 
>presentation last week at the nonprofit think 
>tank San Francisco Planning and Urban Research 
>(SPUR). "As a result, bicycling declined in both 
>of these cities, and they ignored the bicycling and pedestrian environment."
>
>However, following the 1970s OPEC embargo, many 
>European leaders redesigned their cities, 
>inviting back the old ways of getting around by 
>creating space for bicycling, public transit, 
>and walking. As a result, Levitt said, about 15 
>percent of commuter trips in Berlin are made by 
>bicycle; in Copenhagen, more than 33 percent are.
>
>American cities never exited their 1950s 
>automobile course; even in the West Coast bike 
>capitals of San Francisco and Portland, barely 
>more than 3 percent of commute trips are made by 
>bicycle, while the percentage is far lower 
>elsewhere. Americans rarely use public transit, 
>so we consume three times the oil Europeans do. 
>And during the next two decades, statistics from 
>the U.S. Energy Information Administration 
>suggest that gap will widen further, with U.S. 
>petroleum use increasing by 28 percent, while 
>European use grows only 11 percent. 
>Environmentally conscious San Francisco is 
>surprisingly moving with the U.S. mainstream; 
>notwithstanding myriad eco-initiatives, city 
>commuters are taking fewer of their trips by 
>public transport, according to Snyder.
>
>This is the continental energy gap economists 
>refer to when they say Hillary Clinton and John 
>McCain's proposed gas-tax holiday is pandering 
>foolishness. The last thing America needs is 
>politicians' encouragement to get in their cars.
>
>Is it possible for Americans to get their heads 
>around anything else? Unlike Europeans, most 
>Americans — even in San Francisco — seem to see 
>bicycling as dangerous and even irresponsible. 
>This perception is enhanced whenever news 
>reports quote police officers blaming bicyclists 
>for collisions with vehicles in which they are injured or killed.
>
>Last week, a San Francisco statistician examined 
>the data behind this phenomenon and discovered a 
>possible solution. Eight years ago, law 
>enforcement in Marin County — where San 
>Francisco cyclists take their afternoon and 
>weekend rides — approached bike safety as a 
>major public policy issue, and undertook a 
>coordinated effort to inform police agencies of 
>motorists' responsibility to share the road. 
>Today, Marin is the only Bay Area county where 
>police are more likely to identify drivers as 
>the culprits in collisions involving bikes and 
>cars. This suggests the possibility of a 
>virtuous cycle where safety for bicyclists 
>becomes a public priority, more people take to 
>riding rather than driving, and accommodating 
>cyclists becomes even more pressing. Americans 
>might even take the same detour away from 
>petroleum dependency that Europe took following the last oil crisis.
>
>San Franciscans have stayed in their automobiles 
>for a variety of reasons. Our public transit 
>system is falling apart, and a long-proposed 
>bike-lane network is stalled in an environmental review process.
>
>But rarely talked about is the popular public 
>perception that once someone straddles a bicycle, he becomes a rogue.
>
>The urban youth fad for brakeless, fixed-gear 
>bicycles, in which a single cog is attached to 
>the rear wheel so the rider cannot coast, has 
>enhanced the idea that bike riding is the 
>pastime of irresponsible people. Bicycle 
>messengers riding against traffic and commuters 
>rolling through stop signs only contribute 
>further to this idea. I believe police should 
>cite lawbreaking cyclists and motorists with 
>equal fervor; just such a policy was a central 
>tenet of Marin's "Share the Road" campaign, and 
>S.F. cyclists know not to blow stop signs once they're across the bridge.
>
>But there's a significant difference in the ways 
>cyclists inconvenience motorists by disobeying 
>traffic laws, and the ways motorists routinely 
>threaten cyclists' lives by doing the same. I've 
>driven hundreds of thousands of miles, and never 
>once felt personally endangered by the behavior 
>of a cyclist. While I'm sure there are people 
>out there who experience the roads differently, 
>I think this is significant. Meanwhile, I've 
>ridden my bike tens of thousands of miles, and 
>find my life threatened by a law-breaking 
>motorist nearly every day. When I ride in the 
>center of a traffic lane to avoid smashing into 
>a parked car's open door — as California law and 
>San Francisco traffic policy prescribes — 
>several times a week I'll be confronted by 
>motorists attempting to run me off the road, 
>play chicken, or otherwise take unseemly risks 
>in hopes of being first to the next stop sign 
>or, worse, "teaching" me not to get in their 
>way. Many motorists seem to believe bike lanes 
>equal car parking spaces; as a result, the bike 
>lanes in this city are obstructed at a rate far 
>greater than the rest of the street.
>
>As a result, on nearly every block cyclists must 
>merge left, provoking the rage of vigilante 
>drivers. While this kind of behavior is as 
>deadly as it is illegal, and while there are 
>road signs all over San Francisco stating that 
>cyclists may take a full traffic lane, many 
>drivers don't seem to realize they're doing 
>anything wrong when they try to force cyclists 
>off the road. And most cyclists have stories 
>about police officers who erroneously believe 
>state law says cyclists should get out of motorists' way at all costs.
>
>Bay Area statistics bear this out. Randall 
>Smith, a recreational cyclist and owner of Peak 
>Data Solutions, a Bay Area statistical analysis 
>consulting firm, studied California Highway 
>Patrol accident data from 1996 to 2007. After 
>two Peninsula cyclists were killed earlier this 
>year by a police officer who'd reportedly fallen 
>asleep at the wheel, Smith read a Chronicle 
>story that used the incident as a hook for a 
>story suggesting that cyclists are usually at 
>fault in road accidents: The story was headlined 
>"Bicyclists blamed twice as often as drivers."
>
>Smith dug a little further into the data and 
>found that the Chronicle story included 
>incidents where no driver was involved. He also 
>found that cops were still about one and a half 
>times as likely to blame cyclists as motorists for serious collisions.
>
>Bob Mionske, a personal injury lawyer 
>specializing in bike accidents nationwide, says 
>this is consistent with his experience. "When 
>someone mows down a cyclist, you don't get a 
>story saying [drivers] need to obey the law," he 
>says. "They say, 'There go those damned cyclists.'"
>
>During the late 1990s, four such fatal crashes 
>happened in Marin County in rapid succession. 
>District Attorney Paula Kamena decided to take 
>this on as a public safety problem. In 2000 she 
>got area police departments, the sheriff's 
>department, the Highway Patrol, bike coalitions, 
>politicians, and community leaders to put 
>together a bike safety program. "We just sat 
>down and met every couple weeks," the 
>now-retired Kamena says. "That's how it sort of just grew."
>
>Cops and cyclists hung out at coffee shops to 
>discuss safety. The CHP spent money to patrol 
>especially dangerous highways. They all got 
>together to make "Share the Road" posters and 
>signs, which are now everywhere in Marin. And 
>law enforcement got serious about citing 
>motorists, and cyclists who broke traffic laws. 
>Eight years after Kamena's epiphany, the results seem to show up in CHP data.
>
>Smith's analysis of the CHP crash data seems to 
>bear out Kamena's approach. Of the serious 
>collisions in Marin County in which either a 
>motorist or cyclist was blamed by an officer, 
>cyclists were considered at fault 42 percent of 
>the time. In the other eight Bay Area counties, 
>bicyclists were considered to be at fault in 61 
>percent of serious collisions. In San Francisco, 
>53 percent of collisions were deemed to be cyclists' fault.
>
>Nine months ago, the San Francisco Police 
>Department made a training video to teach 
>academy cadets and veterans about the rules of 
>the road as they pertain to bikes. (A call to 
>the academy was not returned by press time.) 
>Observations of the city's bike-patrol cops, who 
>often ride on sidewalks and against traffic 
>without observing traffic regulations, suggest 
>that not everyone got the memo. A viral video 
>showing city cops ticketing cyclists while 
>motorists in the background freely violated 
>traffic laws added to the impression that police 
>efforts to improve safety on the streets have been awkward at best.
>
>But I'm encouraged by the effort. Educating 
>police, motorists, and cyclists about traffic 
>safety might be an important part of the route 
>toward U.S. economic security, environmental 
>sustainability, and a possible end to oil wars.
>
>"What I think is interesting is the threshold 
>after which it becomes common knowledge that 
>bicycling is safe, responsible, and comfortable 
>transportation," says SPUR's transportation 
>policy director, Dave Snyder. "There will be a 
>point when enough people ride bikes that the 
>idea that we're a bunch of freaks, and that 
>we're better off without bicycles because it's dangerous, will be forgotten."
>*************
>