Category: Biking Elsewhere

By BRETT WILKISON, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
…
Critics say protections already are in place to punish those convicted of serious car-versus-bike crimes, and any ordinance targeting lesser incidents risks meddling in a murky area of law.
Supervisor Efren Carrillo said he understood cyclists and pedestrians already can sue for general harassment and intimidation.
While that is true, Deputy County Counsel Linda Schiltgen said, there are no laws specifically involving civil harassment of pedestrians and cyclists. A local ordinance would change that but would not necessarily require criminal enforcement, county officials said.
In the unincorporated area of the county, it would prohibit:
Physically assaulting or attempting to assault a bicyclist or pedestrian.
Intentionally injuring or attempting to injure, either by words, vehicle or other object, a bicyclist or pedestrian.
Intentionally distracting or attempting to distract a bicyclist.
Intentionally forcing or attempting to force a bicyclist or pedestrian off a street for purposes unrelated to public safety.
The ordinance also would prohibit pedestrians and cyclists from physically or verbally abusing other non-motorized users of county roads.
…
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130312/ARTICLES/130319887/1033/news?Title=Supervisors-back-cyclist-harassment-law-&tc=ar

B’ Spokes: Keep in mind in Maryland being partially at fault could prevent you from recovering any damages. So it might be interesting for you to see what kind of stuff they make up.
See: https://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/03/11/video-geico-partially-blames-this-cyclist-for-getting-doored/

by Ben Ross, Greater Greater Washington

Marlyn Eres Ali was killed last week in Wheaton, crossing Connecticut Avenue on foot at an intersection with no traffic light. She was in a crosswalk that has wheelchair ramps and a paved median refuge but no markings on the pavement. Why aren’t crosswalks like this one marked?

Crosswalk where Marlyn Eres Ali died. By permission of nbc4 news.

Legally, a pair of crosswalks exists at every intersection, regardless of whether there are markings on the road. Most of the general public believes that marking those crosswalks makes them safer to use. But the Federal Highway Administration disagrees. Sometimes, at least.

Its Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices or MUTCD, the traffic engineer’s bible, states that on roads with 4 or more lanes, speed limits above 40 mph, and heavy traffic:

New marked crosswalks alone, without other measures designed to reduce traffic speeds, shorten crossing distances, enhance driver awareness of the crossing, and/or provide active warning of pedestrian presence, should not be installed across uncontrolled roadways.

Local agencies, reluctant to make cars go slower and short of funds to install the pedestrian warning lights called hawk beacons, usually take this as an injunction to simply leave the crossing unmarked.

The MUTCD bases this provision on studies of crash data. Pedestrians crossing big highways, these studies report, have a greater chance of being hit by drivers at marked crosswalks than at similar unmarked ones.

There are several possible reasons for this.

• Traffic engineers often locate marked crosswalks at the places where they interfere least with vehicle movement. Pedestrians may put a higher priority on safety when choosing where to cross.
  
• Politicians may demand crosswalk markings at the intersections with repeated crashes, meaning the crashes are not a consequence of the marked crosswalk but the cause.
  
• Researchers have other suggestions, too, as Tom Vanderbilt discusses on page 198 of his book Traffic.

Whatever the causes of this phenomenon, if it is real, there is an easy way to save lives: FHWA and state transportation agencies could instruct pedestrians to ignore crosswalk markings when they cross highways without traffic lights. Cross at whatever intersection feels safest, not the one with a marked crosswalk.

Of course, you will never hear that advice in a safety campaign. They urge pedestrians, as the current DC effort puts it, to “always use a crosswalk.” Pedestrians understand this to mean a marked one, and the campaigns reinforce that belief with images of marked crosswalks.

FHWA safety poster.

The FHWA’s own pedestrian safety campaign does not explicitly recommend using marked crosswalks. But—somewhat like advertising for an escort service—what isn’t said matters more than what’s said. The text assumes that the reader already has an idea of what’s going on and carefully avoids correcting that impression. The real message is in the pictures.

Why would highway agencies promote pedestrian behavior that their research shows to be unsafe? One potential reason is that the traffic engineers don’t really believe the research. The study results are often inconsistent; the researchers offer many cautions. Scientists know that when you get a result contrary to common sense, it’s most often wrong. If it still stands up after checking and double-checking, you may have a great discovery, but more often you’ll find a subtle mistake buried in your work.

The other possibility is that safety isn’t really what this recommendation is about. Rather, it may reflect drivers’ desire, reinforced by the historic biases of the traffic engineering profession, to get pedestrians out of unmarked crosswalks where they slow down cars. Peter Norton has shown that safety campaigns, when they started in the 1920s, aimed to push pedestrians off the streets and make room for cars.

Intentionally or not, the traffic engineering profession gravitates toward conclusions that support its existing practices and priorities. When the research supports a road design that speeds traffic—wonderful! A safety recommendation that would slow down vehicles—unthinkable!

Continue reading “On crosswalks, research and safety campaigns conflict”

[B’ Spokes: We’ve had cases in Maryland where speeding is just speeding, even at twice the speed limit and even if it results in a death.]
***********************************************************************
By J. DAVID GOODMAN, New York Times
The crash left a young couple and their baby dead. The driver of the speeding BMW who struck them was charged with criminally negligent homicide. But making those charges stick will be a nettlesome challenge for prosecutors.
It has always been: persuading a jury that a driver’s negligence rises to the level of a crime is notoriously tough. But recent court rulings, which said that drivers’ actions failed to show moral blame, promise to muddy this already gray legal area further, and may work in the favor of the BMW’s driver, Julio Acevedo.
Mr. Acevedo was going twice the legal speed limit down a Brooklyn street when he crashed into a livery cab as it entered an intersection. Two passengers in the cab were killed; their son, delivered after the crash, died a day later. Mr. Acevedo was arrested several days later and charged by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office with criminally negligent homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal accident.
Vehicular-crime cases in New York are usually based on a driver’s committing at least two traffic infractions, which prosecutors informally call “the rule of two.” Speeding alone is frequently insufficient to establish criminality.
…
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/nyregion/serious-charges-in-fatal-crashes-pose-challenge-for-prosecutors.html

by Jay Walljasper, People for Bikes
It’s always a pleasure when scientific studies confirm your own long-held opinions, especially when what you think flies in the face of all conventional wisdom.
For instance, who knew that chocolate éclairs and triple fudge caramel brownies actually contain fewer calories than a 12-ounce glass of skim milk? Or that every $1000 you spend on lavish vacations before the age of 65 will, over the long run, provide you with more retirement income than if you’d stashed that same $1000 in a savings account?
Well, to be honest, I made up the fact about the éclairs. And the one about vacations too.
But here’s bona fide scholarly research that excites me in the same way: Biking for transportation appears more helpful in losing weight and promoting health than working out at the gym.
This means I can spend less time wearing a grimace as I endure mind-numbing exercise routines at the Y—and more time wearing a smile as I bike to work, shopping and social events. Just what I always thought.
But hey, don’t take my word for it. According to Australian epidemiologist Takemi Sugiyama, lead author of a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, “Commuting is a relevant health behavior even for those who are sufficiently active in their leisure time.”
…
https://www.peopleforbikes.org/blog/entry/good_news_health_studies_show_bike_commuting_is_one_of_the_best_ways_to_sta

Via Leisure Trends Group

-> "The goal for pavement widths on walkable streets is to reduce the pavement in order to encourage slower movements. Conventional street standards are typically designed for a higher ‘design speed’ than the intended ‘posted speed’. Watch for this. Excessive width encourages vehicles to drive in excess of the design speed (much less the posted speed) to the detriment of walkability, bikeability, and ultimately the safety of vehicles themselves. For urban thoroughfares, the design speed should be matched to the posted speed…"
— Geoff Dyer, Better! Cities & Towns
https://bit.ly/Ynz6xU
-> "Who ranks? Cars rank. The sidewalks never get plowed by our elected, tax-supported city government. Clearly it’s not our priority to make it easy to walk. Even though walking is better for our bodies and our planet, and in cities when coupled with public transit it’s the easiest, cheapest, healthiest and overall best way to get around…"
— John Kassel, Conservation Law Foundation
https://bit.ly/15I0Sey
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

-> According to a Mar. 4th NPR story, "About 69 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, and more than four in five people say they are worried about obesity as a public health problem. But a recent poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health revealed a curious schism in our national attitudes toward obesity: Only one in five kids had a parent who feared the boy or girl would grow up to be overweight as an adult."
"Put another way, assuming current trends persist, parents of 80 percent of American children think all these kids will somehow end up being among the lucky 31 percent of adults who are not overweight…"
Source: https://n.pr/Xs8KRB
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

-> According to a Mar. 1st The Atlantic article, "Using a hands-free phone that leaves both hands free to steer may make the physical act of turning left at an intersection easier to pull off, but it doesn’t make it any safer. That’s because attempting to make a left turn at a busy intersection taxes the brain more than turning right or driving straight through. And having a conversation at the same time further impairs the brain’s ability to focus on the road."
"These findings, (Brain Activity During Driving with Distraction: An Immersive fMRI Study) published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, provide neural evidence for why hands-free phone technology isn’t a good alternative to cell phone use. Instead, it distracts the brain when it most needs to be paying attention to the road… ‘Hands free’ not does mean ‘brains free,’ is how Canadian researchers put it…"
Source: https://bit.ly/16r9YNX
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

By Michael Harley, Auto Blog
The good news is that the average fuel fuel economy of the entire US light-duty fleet improved by 40 percent over the past four decades (increasing from 13 miles per gallon to 21.6 mpg). The bad news is that Americans drive more, and with fewer passengers in each vehicle, undercutting the impact of the fuel economy gains.
…
https://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/09/fuel-economy-gains-of-more-efficient-cars-undone-by-increased-tr/