A meme I see constantly from comments sections and sadly enough from some politicians is the “If cyclists can’t follow the laws then they don’t deserve infrastructure” canard. Well, let’s turn that one on its head and apply it to drivers, shall we? “If drivers can’t follow the laws then they don’t deserve maintaining the infrastructure we already gave them, much less any new infrastructure.” See how much sense that makes? Actually given the amount of damage that motor vehicles do to people and the infrastructure they use, that would be a perfectly reasonable response to the 33K people killed every year, the pollution created by motor vehicles and the support industries for motor vehicles. After all this takes place on infrastructure that was built with the safety and convenience of drivers in motor vehicles foremost in mind where cyclists have to “make do” with scraps of space that was left over when roads were built for cars if they get any space at all, with rules made to govern people driving around in multi-ton vehicles that can travel orders of magnitude faster than bicycles. Yes if there is any group that needs to be singled out for failure to obey laws and denied infrastructure on that basis it is definitely cyclists ::eyeroll::
Up first is an update on the (lack of) progress in an AZ hit-and-run. SUV responsible for cyclist injury is torched minutes after accident Yep them AZ LEO are dedicated to finding and arresting bad guys, unless they’re white women that ran over a cyclist. This has all the earmarks of a deliberate attack with the motor vehicle, what with the lack of skid marks and the burning of the weapon vehicle immediately after the wreck/assault. But don’t let little things like evidence get in the way of ignoring an injured cyclist. The only way to fix this is with massive changes in the culture and legal infrastructure.
A wreck in CA that the physical evidence does not match the report. UPDATED: Cyclist Injured After Collision With Car On Ramona Blvd. The cyclist was reported to be riding against traffic, but unless that wreck was on a one-way street that looks like a wreck where one or the other vehicle crossed the centerline as the wreck was on the driver’s side of the vehicle. OK if the cyclist was the one that crossed the centerline then avoiding is simple, ride on your own side of the road. If the cyclist was riding salmon on a one way street, then don’t do that. But if the driver crossed the centerline of the street and hit the cyclist shame on her. EDIT: I finally got a Google Satellite View to pull up and found the street in question was 3 lanes in each direction with a median full of landscaping. This makes the whole thing just really fishy. It’s not like the cyclist couldn’t see that there was a median and not a sidewalk. I think there was something that went on the few seconds before the wreck that the cyclist can’t tell us about. If the cyclist was trying to make a legal left onto Ramona from Baldwin Park Blvd he could have been forced onto the wrong side of the road by a car passing on his right. I mean I can state with authority that drivers will pass on the right if you give them 1/16th of a chance to do so… and they won’t hesitate to cut a cyclist off in the situation…
More on the left-cross wreck a few days ago in CA. CHP: Cyclist Had Right of Way in Fatal Upvalley Crash The driver is trying to invoke the Universal Get Out of Jail Free Card for hitting cyclists of all kinds: “I didn’t see him”. I say let him, but them ban him from ever driving a motor vehicle of any kind for the rest of his life. And after, too. Blind Zombie Drivers >shudder< is not a band name.
And things are getting noticeably bad in CA. Lethal Summer For Cyclists – Petaluma, CA Patch Just a re-hash of all the deadly, deadly wrecks and insanity going on in CA, including the old guy that chased a cyclist for 3 blocks and 100 yards up the cart path on a golf course to try to hit him. When the national media takes note how bad things are you’re up the unsanitary tributary without visible means of locomotion.
Another bike wreck in CA, nothing certain about it not even the location or if it was off-road or started on a road and ended off of it. Helicopter, rescue crews en route to bicycle crash below Foresthill Bridge And now you know as much or more than I did when I posted this link.
Still in CA, more on the SWSS wreck in NoCal this weekend. Burlingame bicyclist killed in Peninsula crash Yep, I bet the cyclist swerved into the side of that truck, and not the other way around. Us cyclists we just hate ourselves and life and want to kill ourselves because we don’t have a car, that’s what happened. Excuse me but I think I bit my tongue. Had it stuck too far into my cheek. And I notice that Gigi read this before I did.
Another report on the young cyclist killed because of bad infrastructure in Austin TX. Teen’s brother: ‘He was a good kid’ There was no reason that there should have been a 60 MPH highway going through the middle of a residential area except pure laziness on the part of planners to not lower the speed limit after the housing went in. More Teenage boy killed in Northeast Austin bike crash
A child hit on a bike in KY. Child injured after being hit by car while riding bike Intersection wreck in a residential area, under the Dutch model this would be totally the driver’s fault for driving too fast in a shared space. Here in the US we blame the parents for letting the kid play in the street.
Wreck report from the UK as a LEO hits a cyclist while driving more than twice the posted speed limit and flying through the air. ‘British Transport Police officer drover dangerously at more than twice speed limit when he hit cyclist’ court told and Pc drove police van ‘dangerously at 68mph in a 30 zone’ before hitting and seriously injuring cyclist OK this one is insane, that’s all I have to say about it. There is no freaking way a cyclist can be prepared for a van moving at more than twice the posted limit and dropping from the sky behind you. Infrastructure is not going to fix this as the area was what would be the boundary of shared and segregated space under the Dutch model. The only way to stop things like this from happening is to very publicly and very severely punish this idiot and make sure he never drives again, after he gets out of prison.
And those are all the links that gave me fits today.
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Witch on a Bicycle 
We should hold drivers to a higher standard for infrastructure, and the Feed
A meme I see constantly from comments sections and sadly enough from some politicians is the “If cyclists can’t follow the laws then they don’t deserve infrastructure” canard. Well, let’s turn that one on its head and apply it to drivers, shall we? “If drivers can’t follow the laws then they don’t deserve maintaining the infrastructure we already gave them, much less any new infrastructure.” See how much sense that makes? Actually given the amount of damage that motor vehicles do to people and the infrastructure they use, that would be a perfectly reasonable response to the 33K people killed every year, the pollution created by motor vehicles and the support industries for motor vehicles. After all this takes place on infrastructure that was built with the safety and convenience of drivers in motor vehicles foremost in mind where cyclists have to “make do” with scraps of space that was left over when roads were built for cars if they get any space at all, with rules made to govern people driving around in multi-ton vehicles that can travel orders of magnitude faster than bicycles. Yes if there is any group that needs to be singled out for failure to obey laws and denied infrastructure on that basis it is definitely cyclists ::eyeroll::
Up first is an update on the (lack of) progress in an AZ hit-and-run. SUV responsible for cyclist injury is torched minutes after accident Yep them AZ LEO are dedicated to finding and arresting bad guys, unless they’re white women that ran over a cyclist. This has all the earmarks of a deliberate attack with the motor vehicle, what with the lack of skid marks and the burning of the weapon vehicle immediately after the wreck/assault. But don’t let little things like evidence get in the way of ignoring an injured cyclist. The only way to fix this is with massive changes in the culture and legal infrastructure.
A wreck in CA that the physical evidence does not match the report. UPDATED: Cyclist Injured After Collision With Car On Ramona Blvd. The cyclist was reported to be riding against traffic, but unless that wreck was on a one-way street that looks like a wreck where one or the other vehicle crossed the centerline as the wreck was on the driver’s side of the vehicle. OK if the cyclist was the one that crossed the centerline then avoiding is simple, ride on your own side of the road. If the cyclist was riding salmon on a one way street, then don’t do that. But if the driver crossed the centerline of the street and hit the cyclist shame on her. EDIT: I finally got a Google Satellite View to pull up and found the street in question was 3 lanes in each direction with a median full of landscaping. This makes the whole thing just really fishy. It’s not like the cyclist couldn’t see that there was a median and not a sidewalk. I think there was something that went on the few seconds before the wreck that the cyclist can’t tell us about. If the cyclist was trying to make a legal left onto Ramona from Baldwin Park Blvd he could have been forced onto the wrong side of the road by a car passing on his right. I mean I can state with authority that drivers will pass on the right if you give them 1/16th of a chance to do so… and they won’t hesitate to cut a cyclist off in the situation…
More on the left-cross wreck a few days ago in CA. CHP: Cyclist Had Right of Way in Fatal Upvalley Crash The driver is trying to invoke the Universal Get Out of Jail Free Card for hitting cyclists of all kinds: “I didn’t see him”. I say let him, but them ban him from ever driving a motor vehicle of any kind for the rest of his life. And after, too. Blind Zombie Drivers >shudder< is not a band name.
And things are getting noticeably bad in CA. Lethal Summer For Cyclists – Petaluma, CA Patch Just a re-hash of all the deadly, deadly wrecks and insanity going on in CA, including the old guy that chased a cyclist for 3 blocks and 100 yards up the cart path on a golf course to try to hit him. When the national media takes note how bad things are you’re up the unsanitary tributary without visible means of locomotion.
Another bike wreck in CA, nothing certain about it not even the location or if it was off-road or started on a road and ended off of it. Helicopter, rescue crews en route to bicycle crash below Foresthill Bridge And now you know as much or more than I did when I posted this link.
Still in CA, more on the SWSS wreck in NoCal this weekend. Burlingame bicyclist killed in Peninsula crash Yep, I bet the cyclist swerved into the side of that truck, and not the other way around. Us cyclists we just hate ourselves and life and want to kill ourselves because we don’t have a car, that’s what happened. Excuse me but I think I bit my tongue. Had it stuck too far into my cheek. And I notice that Gigi read this before I did.
Another report on the young cyclist killed because of bad infrastructure in Austin TX. Teen’s brother: ‘He was a good kid’ There was no reason that there should have been a 60 MPH highway going through the middle of a residential area except pure laziness on the part of planners to not lower the speed limit after the housing went in. More Teenage boy killed in Northeast Austin bike crash
A child hit on a bike in KY. Child injured after being hit by car while riding bike Intersection wreck in a residential area, under the Dutch model this would be totally the driver’s fault for driving too fast in a shared space. Here in the US we blame the parents for letting the kid play in the street.
Wreck report from the UK as a LEO hits a cyclist while driving more than twice the posted speed limit and flying through the air. ‘British Transport Police officer drover dangerously at more than twice speed limit when he hit cyclist’ court told and Pc drove police van ‘dangerously at 68mph in a 30 zone’ before hitting and seriously injuring cyclist OK this one is insane, that’s all I have to say about it. There is no freaking way a cyclist can be prepared for a van moving at more than twice the posted limit and dropping from the sky behind you. Infrastructure is not going to fix this as the area was what would be the boundary of shared and segregated space under the Dutch model. The only way to stop things like this from happening is to very publicly and very severely punish this idiot and make sure he never drives again, after he gets out of prison.
And those are all the links that gave me fits today.
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Tagged anti-bike blatherings, cycling life, cyclists killed, Dead cyclists, Don't read the comments, hit from behind, hit-and-run, infrastructure, Left cross/right hook, salmon cyclists, Single Witness Suicidal Swerve/Single Witness Crossing Cyclist, Something smells, stupid cyclist, stupid drivers, stupid LEO, stupid politicians, UK media wreck articles suck, updates, waste of human skin