A Newspaper Calls Out Its City's Drivers

"In a city plagued with reckless driving..."

Would you expect an article about your city (or town), published in a local newspaper, to begin with that phrase?

Well, a piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel began that way.  In many other American locales, even those that are supposedly "bike-friendly," drivers would howl in protest, and cancel subscriptions and, if they're business owners, advertisements.  I've never been to Milwaukee, so I won't speculate on whether motorists have more or less sway than they have in other places.  Even if they have less influence, it's still surprising to see an article (not an editorial) begin with such a phrase.

The focus of the article is how reckless and simply entitled drivers are undermining the city's efforts to build a network of bike lanes.  In particular, it described the ways in which drivers have made pedaling  along North Avenue, in the words of longtime cyclist Lydia Ravenwood,  "worse with the bike lane."

I would echo a similar complaint about some streets in my hometown, New York City, that have bike lanes.  Sam Mattson, another longtime cyclist, gives a reason that any New York cyclist could give about too many of our lanes:  Drivers treat them like parking lanes. (He doesn't mention something I would add:  Taxi and ride share drivers pick up and discharge passengers in the bike lanes.)  But he also adds a detail that relates to the article's headline:  Drivers deliberately smash into the concrete planters that separate the bike from the traffic lane. 

A cyclist on East North Avenue, Milwaukee.  Photo by Mike De Sisti for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

If you ask me, even if those motorists are skilled enough to effect a "controlled" crash, they are as reckless--with the lives of cyclists and pedestrians as well as themselves--as drug- or alcohol-addled hooligans who plow along the street at twice the speed limit and just "happen" to knock over the barriers.

It Doesn’t Cause Us To Misbehave

 Allowing cyclists to proceed through a “stop” sign if “the coast is clear”—essentially, treating a “stop” as a “yield” sign—is called a “rolling stop” in traffic planning and legal parlance. It’s been nicknamed the “Idaho Stop” because the Gem State legalized it all the way back in 1982. 

For more than three decades, that law was all but unknown in the rest of the United States. Since 2017, seven other states—my native New York not being one of them!—have enacted similar legislation.

One reason more states and locales* haven’t allowed the “Idaho Stop” is that many drivers believe that it would cause cyclists to act un safely, and some cyclists have expressed the same fear about motorists. So, perhaps, it’s not surprising that too many lawmakers share such misperceptions, which are the basis for their opposition.

A new study from the Oregon State University’s College of Engineering contradicts such fears and misperceptions, which are a basis of much hostility between motorists and cyclists, and aggressive behavior by the former towards the latter. Thus, according to David Hurwitz, an OSU Transportation Engineering professor and the study’s lead, any move to enact “rolling stop” laws must include efforts to educate both motorists and cyclists.

He and his team came to this conclusion after a remarkably simple experiment that included bicycle and motor vehicle simulators. Pairs of subjects simultaneously operated each simulator and each member of the pair interacted with an avatar of the other in a shared virtual world.

The results underscored a tenet from previous research: Drivers are more hostile, and behave more aggressively toward, cyclists when they think, with or without justification, that we’re breaking the law. That means people need to be educated about the benefits of the “Idaho Stop” not only in places that don’t allow it, but in places that already have it.

The OSU team’s study also underscores what every dedicated cyclist, especially in places like my hometown of New York, knows:  The faster we get through an intersection, the less likely we are to be in a catastrophic crash. And, as the OSU study reveals, when drivers understand as much, they’re more likely to approach an intersection at a slower speed and let cyclists proceed ahead of them.

I think education has to include law enforcement officials, especially traffic cops—including one who stopped me for going through a “Stop” sign on Long Island. As I recall, it was near the end of the month and he had an itchy ticket-writing hand. I explained to the honorable constable that my proceeding ahead of a school bus—which made a right turn— was safer for everyone, including the pedestrians who crossed after the bus driver and I cleared the intersection. He didn’t write the ticket, but he admonished me to “remember the law” because “the next officer might not be sympathetic.”

*—A few cities and counties allow the “Idaho Stop” even though they’re located in states that don’t.

Ghost Bikes: More Dangerous Than Guns?

When kids are shot to death in school, “thoughts and prayers” are offered. But when anyone suggests making it more difficult to obtain firearms—especially assault weapons—some of the same folks who grace those kids with their “thoughts and prayers”  grow apoplectic: They rage about “losing” their “Second Amendment Rights” and argue that a school shooting now and then is a “price” we have to pay for “freedom.”

I would bet that among such stalwart defenders of our “rights” are the ones ordering that a “ghost” bike be removed from its place by a school because students would be traumatized by seeing it.

This scenario is unfolding at Sugar Mill Elementary School in Port Orange, Florida. Tara Okhovatian placed the memorial to ShaoLan Kamaly, a 10-year old who was struck and killed as she rode her bike to school last spring. Okhovatian is a friend of Kamaly’s family and said her son loved playing with ShaoLan, who said she didn’t like princesses because they “don’t do anything but wait for guys to save them.”

Okhovatian tried to save her memory. But she has been ordered to remove the makeshift shrine or law enforcement would “retrieve” it.

Ah, where else but in Florida, where it’s easier to get a gun than almost anyplace that’s not an active war zone, but helping kids remember their classmate is deemed too dangerous?