Showing posts with label cyclists struck by drivers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cyclists struck by drivers. Show all posts

15 September 2022

Two Drivers Struck Cyclists. One Is Being Held To Account

Last week, I wrote about Charles Criniere, the Kansas City teacher and father of 10 who was killed by a hit-and-run driver.  





On one hand, I faulted the design of the lane he rode:  It ends with a sudden merge into a multilane road. But, as too often happens in such tragedies, the driver's behavior was, shall we say, less than exemplary.

Wisconsin resident Kyrie Fields admits that she’d taken her eyes off the road to text a friend when she struck Criniere.  As if such indifference to anyone else who might’ve been on the road weren’t bad enough, she took off after she struck him.

She left the scene.  But her car left some of its parts. Detectives used them to determine that the vehicle was a white Acura MDX.  They found the rest--or, I should say, the remains--of it the following day. According to detectives, it looks as if had been set ablaze.

Oh, but what I’ve described so far isn’t the only reason to vilify her.  In addition to being distracted, she was high on Percocet when she struck Criniere.  And, upon arresting her, authorities found that she’d been driving with a suspended license and without insurance.

Distraction.  Intoxication.  And, ahem, a less-than-sterling driving record.  Those—and even-less-sterling records of citizenship—are, too often, common denominators of motor vehicle-on-bicycle crashes.  In short, the perpetrators aren’t exactly pillars of society.

Speaking of which…Amy DeGise, the Jersey City Council member who plowed into a cyclist (who, fortunately, suffered only minor injuries) has become more defiant in her determination not to apologize, let alone resign. Like other motorists who’ve struck cyclists (some of whom I’ve mentioned in this blog), her bio includes a litany of other offenses:  She has an unregistered vehicle and numerous unpaid tickets and lives in subsidized housing intended for families earning a third of what she, as a single childless woman, makes.





While some officials and many ordinary citizens have called for her resignation, too many other officials—including New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy—have not joined that chorus.  I can’t help but to think that they are afraid of her father, a longtime Hudson County Executive who is one of the Garden State’s most powerful politicians.

06 May 2021

Must More Riding Mean More Fatalities?

In a coincidence that, perhaps, isn't such a coincidence, I chanced upon an item about an increase in the number of cyclists killed on Texas roads at the same time a local radio news program mentioned that pedestrian fatalities here in New York City have increased during the past year.

I have also seen and heard reports of increases in the number of cyclists killed and injured on New York City streets.  So, hearing about pedestrian fatalities here and cyclists killed in the Lone Star State did not surprise me because cyclist and pedestrian casualties tend to rise or fall in tandem.





The reports point to a dramatic increase in the number of cyclists as a reason for more crashes and fatalities.  The same isn't said for pedestrians, though I have seen more people walking around as pandemic-induced restrictions are eased or lifted.  But I think that there is a related, and more relevant, reason for the increase in deaths and injuries among cyclists and pedestrians.

During the first few months of the pandemic, there was little traffic on the roads.  I can recall riding to Connecticut and back last spring and being able to count, on both hands, the number of motorized vehicles I saw along the way, not counting the ones that crossed the RFK Memorial Bridge.  Until last spring, I never could have imagined such an occurence on a 140 kilometer road ride that takes me through the Bronx and Westchester County before crossing the state line.

As spring turned into summer, traffic was still light, but I noticed faster and more aggressive driving, including some drag racing and other flouting of traffic laws.  Those things were annoying, but I didn't feel I was in danger because the still-light traffic afforded a wide berth between me and the drivers.

During the past few months, though, I've seen more traffic.  Some people, I guess, are returning to their workplaces and old routines, while others started driving and bought cars (for the first time, in some instances) because they didn't want to use mass transit.

But the folks who got used to driving fast and aggressively, or even carelessly, aren't adjusting to the new reality.  They still want to drive as if they have the streets to themselves.  And, in my own unscientific observation, it seems that police aren't enforcing traffic laws as much as they were before the pandemic--if, indeed, they were enforcing them against any but the lowest-hanging fruit (i.e., cyclists and pedestrians).

Having done a fair amount of cycling in other cities, states and countries, I can make this observation:  Building bike lanes and lecturing cyclists about safety--which most of us practice to the best degree we can--does little to prevent tragic encounters between motorists and cyclists and pedestrians.  

What will  make life better for everyone involved are sensible laws and policies (like the Idaho Stop) crafted by people who understand what it's like to ride a city's streets--and a culture rather than a mere lifestyle of cycling.  The culture of which I speak is one in which cycling is seen as a viable mode of transportation rather than just a form of recreation for privileged young people. Such a culture exists in some European countries; that is why there is more respect between drivers and cyclists and pedestrians.

Otherwise, cities and other jurisdictions can continue to build poorly-designed and constructed bike lanes that lead from nowhere to nowhere, and cyclists--or pedestrians or motorists--won't be any safer.

19 March 2021

The Myth Of His "Accident"

Without even trying, I came across more than twenty articles about what happened to Shawn Bradley.  But only one called the incident what it is--or, more precisely, said what it isn't.

On 20 January, he was riding his bike near his St. George, Utah home when a driver struck him from behind.  Such collisions normally don't garner more than a report or two in a local or regional news medium.  The reason why this story captured more attention can be summed up from a sentence in the statement announcing his plight:  "Doctors have advised him that his road to recovery will be both long and arduous,  perhaps an even more difficult physical challenge than playing professional basketball."

The italics in the previous sentence are mine.  While Shawn Bradley's situation is terrible--he is paralyzed, with a traumatic spinal cord injury--it's unlikely that anyone beyond whatever communities he lives in or belongs to would have heard about it. But it just happens that one of his communities is that of former National Basketball Association players.  While he wasn't a star on the level of Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan or LeBron James, his career spanned 12 years--a geologic age in the NBA--more than eight of which he spent with the Dallas Mavericks, where he earned a reputation as a shot-blocker and rebounder. 


Shawn Bradley.  Photo by Jeff Mitchell, for Reuters


But, even with all of the attention paid to Bradley's story, there is one thing that every media account I saw, save for one, got wrong.  They called the collison an "accident."

Henry Grabar, in his Slate article titled (appropriately enough) "It's Never A 'Bicycle Accident,'" corrects this error. "A child falling off his bike in the park is a bicycle accident," he writes.  "A wipeout in the Tour de France is a bicycle accident." But, he admonishes, "Getting rammed from behind by a car is not a bicycle accident." 

Safe-streets advocates have tried, for years, to convince reporters, police officials and engineers not to use the word "accident" to describe car crashes.  As Grabar points out, the use of this word implies "the carnage could not be avoided through better policy and design." The use of the word particularly egregious when, say, a cyclist is run over by a minivan driven by someone who is looking at a screen rather than the road, or who is intoxicated.  It allows the police to spin the incident as a result of a bicycle malfunction--or, worse, to imply that that the cyclist was at fault.  "The press repeats the assertion, and the myth of the bicycle accident is renewed," Grabar observes.

Since retiring from the NBA fifteen years ago, Bradley has become a dedicated and, from all accounts, very skilled cyclist.  So it doesn't seem likely that he did something stupid, careless or illegal.  And I have to wonder:  How could a driver not see a guy who's 7'6"  (232 cm) tall?

So, of everyone who reported on Shawn Bradley being struck from behind while riding his bicycle, only Henry Grabar managed to say what the incident wasn't.  Unfortunately, it will take many more folks like him to dispel the myth of the bicycle accident.