What's A Cyclist Worth? In Florida, Not Even A Fine

I don't think of myself as a vengeful person.  At the same time, there are people I want to see punished, or at least castigated, for their misdeeds.

Moreover, I have come to realize that you can tell what a person's status is, or was, in his or her community or society by the sort of penalty meted out to someone who commits a crime against, or otherwise causes harm to, that person.

Now, I'm not going to say "Don't get me started about drivers who get off scot-free when they run down cyclists!" because, well, I am going to rant about that, whether or not anybody gets me started.

Specifically, I am going to rant and rave about one particular cyclist who was so victimized.  He has survived the ordeal, albeit with a fractured spine and deep bruises.  He hopes to get back on his bike sooner rather than later, but he still faces a long recovery from the injuries he incurred a month ago today.

A 65-year-old motorist named Dennis Brophy, of Fort Pierce, Florida, was in the process of inhaling a "breathing treatment" when he drove his 2016 Chevy Cruze straight into the back of a cyclist who, like him, was traveling south on Old Dixie Highway.  Brophy admitted he suffers from sleep apnea and said, according to the incident report, that he was "blinded by the light" and "never saw" the cyclist he struck.

That was at 8:03 am.   The cyclist would spend the next two days in the Lawnwood Medical Center's ICU.  Meantime, Brophy went home without even a citation for plowing into the cyclist, whom he could have just as easily killed.

Alan Snel, after a motorist struck him from behind

That cyclist is Alan Snel.  Perhaps you know him from reading his "Bicycle Stories" blog.  You may also know, or know of, him from his extensive cycling advocacy, or from his work as a journalist in Nevada and Florida.  It seems, though, that to Florida law enforcement officials, he was--as he says--"collateral damage", or simply someone who got in the way of a motorist who couldn't be bothered to swerve a couple of feet out of his way.

Alan's bicycle

Although I have had some very pleasant experiences of cycling in Florida, I also realized that it is a very auto-centric place.  From what I have seen, I would guess that the vast majority of cyclists are adults, many of--as we say--"a certain age".  Yet, too often, people entrusted to uphold the law and support public safety seem to see cyclists as people who won't grow up and drive and who therefore "bring it on themselves" when they are endangered or, worse, injured or killed by motorists.

Alan's helmet

I was not surprised to learn that more cyclists are killed by motorists, in proportion to the population, in Florida than in any other state.  Furthermore, in every year since 2010, Florida's rate has been around 50 percent higher than the second-deadliest state in each of those years: Louisiana.  And in most of those cases, like Snel's, the driver faced minor or no charges.

Alan, in better times

As Snel recovers, he still needs money to cover living and other expenses.  So, friends and other supporters have started a YouCaring fundraiser for him.

Coming To My Town?

I am not surprised.

Over the past few weeks, I've written about "Uber for Bicycles"--or, if you like, Citibike (or Velib or Bixi or whatever bike share program you care to name) without the docks or ports.

Such services have become very popular in a few Chinese cities where, apparently, people are getting back to bikes.  The success of such services has caused their operators--Mobike and Ofo, mainly--to eye overseas expansion.  

Turns out, Mobike as well as a few other "rogue" companies are planning to "dump thousands of bicycles on Big Apple streets," as the New York Post exclaimed with the sort of hyperbolic vitriol, or vitriolic hyperbole, on which the Post seems to have a patent.

Mobikes in Shanghai. Photo by Johannes Eisele, from Getty Images.

Those companies are setting their sights on parts of the city not currently served by Citibike--mainly, Manhattan north of 110th Street and Staten Island.  The latter could be particularly fertile territory for a bike-share service, as the city's subway system doesn't run there and there are fewer bus lines and other mass transportation options than exist in the other boroughs.  Bike shares could be particularly useful for commuters and others who ride the Staten Island Ferry to and from Manhattan.

And, I must say, that I like the idea of a port- or dock-free share service.  At the same time, I share the concern expressed by Post editors and others who worry that bikes will be "strewn" all over city sidewalks and streets, as they are in Chinese cities. Those problems, however, could be avoided with sensible regulation.  With such regulation, I think it would be easier to pre-empt such bike-blocked streets and sidewalks because as narrow as some streets in this town are, I would guess they're still wider than those in China, particularly in the old central areas of that country's cities.

(As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I've never been to China.  But I know that New York streets are wider than those in Europe which are, from what I'm told, wider than some of their counterparts in Chinese cities.)

Anyway, I think "Uber for Bikes" is indeed coming to my hometown.  We just need to learn from the experiences of those cities that already have it and develop the right policies for it.

Skyline, Invisible

Have you ever wondered what the Manhattan skyline looks like when you can't see it?

That was not an attempt to be cute, clever, ironic or oxymoronic.  It's also not an introduction to a post about going blind, an experience I hope never to have!

Rather, it is about my ride to work this morning:

That's what I saw ahead of me as I pedaled across the RFK Memorial Bridge.  Even if the weather forecast hadn't warned about fog, I wouldn't have been surprised to see it, given the heavy rains in the wee hours of yesterday morning, the showers that continued on-and-off through the rest of yesterday, and this morning's heavy gray sky. 


The skyline was invisible, but the Hell Gate Bridge was not:

When Hell Gate can be seen clearly, but the skyline is shrouded in fog, what kind of a day will it be?

So far, it's been good.  I think it had something to do with riding to work.