TheWashCycle: Things are Ugly All Over

It seems there has been an unusual amount of biker-driver-pedestrian animosity this summer. It starts with a confrontation between two cyclists in Portland - one who was at the time driving with his family.

Colin Yates, 47, was driving with his wife and two teenagers ... when he saw a bicyclist pass him on the left and blow through a stoplight. Yates continued driving...until he caught up with the bicyclist.

Yates honked his horn, leaned out his window, and chided the bicyclist for making other cyclists look bad. Yates, a self-described bike advocate for more than 30 years, told the bicyclist that he was a responsible bike rider who gets upset when he sees fellow riders disobeying traffic signals.

The bicyclist rode up to the driver's window. The cyclist was cursing at Yates and yelled at him to get out of the car.

By now, the bicyclist, Steven McAtee, 31, was off his wheels. Yates said McAtee picked up his bike and wielded it like a weapon, smashing it against the Subaru's hood and windshield.

Yates stepped from his car and told McAtee to back off.

McAtee turned on Yates. He lifted his bike and struck Yates with it, Yates said. Yates attempted to leave. But McAtee got in front of the Subaru and repeatedly struck the vehicle with his bike, Yates said.

Yates stepped from his car again and was struck five to seven more times with McAtee's bicycle, police reports say.

A passer-by knocked McAtee to the ground with one punch.

The driver feared being assaulted and backed up, but bumped a biker and enraged the group, police said. In response, some of the bikers smashed the windshield and rear window. The man tried to drive away but hit another bicyclist.

The car stopped a block down, and the bicyclists surrounded the car, police said. One biker punched the driver through an open window and another used a knife to slash the tires.

When the driver got out of the car, a man struck him with an unknown object in the back of the head, police said. The driver was later taken to the hospital. His female companion was not injured.

People misunderstood and the incident escalated

And, as fast as McAtee hit the ground, nearly a dozen people -- many bicyclists who were riding by and noticed the commotion -- swarmed around Yates, shoving cell phone cameras about a foot from his face and accusing him of roughing up the bicyclist.

It turns out, police say bicyclist McAtee was both drunk and in the wrong. And he's a city employee. He works for Portland's transportation department as a building plan examiner.

Then, in the LA area a much more serious road rage incident

Prosecutors allege that on July 4, [Brentwood physician Christopher Thomas] Thompson slammed on the brakes of his red Infiniti sedan in front of two cyclists riding downhill on Mandeville Canyon Road. Authorities said the impact flung one cyclist through the car's rear window and the other to the pavement.

Peterson said he pulled in front of Stoehr after a driver behind them honked. The car passed them, missing their handlebars by less than a foot, Peterson said.

Peterson said that Thompson "yelled out some profanity and, 'Ride single-file!' " Peterson said he then screamed an expletive at Thompson, who he said veered in front of the riders and "slammed on his brakes as hard as he could."

And this may have been the second time this guy has done this

In March, two cyclists riding on Mandeville Canyon Road accused Thompson of running them off the road and then shouting at them. Detectives presented the case to the Los Angeles city attorney's office, which declined to file charges against Thompson.

Mandeville Canyon Road is a popular weekend route for cyclists.

LAist has much much much much much more.

MSNBC jumps in with a story on how more cyclists means more conflict.

But in the months since motorists began pedaling in droves, it has become clear that all those cyclists on the streets pose a significant problem: all those cyclists on the streets.

Which sounds like blaming the cyclists but they follow it by stating that drivers don't know how to share the road. Bu then Pam Fischer, director of the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety does blame cyclists

“Last year in New Jersey 12 bikers, bicyclists, were killed in motor vehicle crashes. So far this year — and we’re at the middle of the summer, July 15 — we have already lost 11 bicyclists....in almost every case, the bicycle was doing something that put them at significant risk.”

But Pam Fischer has an odd-way of defining "put at risk"

On June 29, two workers at the Outback restaurant in Parsippany who were riding the same bicycle after finishing their shift were struck and killed by a vehicle just after midnight. The driver, who allegedly was speeding, has been charged with two counts of vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident, according to authorities.

That sounds like the driver's fault. In one other case, the driver claimed the cyclists was riding in the grass beside the road and swerved into the road in front of him. There were no other witnesses.

In Chicago, the 5 deaths so far were blamed on inattentive driving. In Florida drivers blame cyclists for "clogging the roads" with illegal cycling.

The cameras revealed large groups of bike riders illegally disrupting traffic.

No explanation was given for what behavior that was.

In the same video survey that found dangerous biking, Seminole County deputies also recorded a shocking level of rude and aggressive behavior by drivers.

“It’s not their right to assault a cyclist or to run a cyclist off the road because they get impatient,” sheriff’s Lt. Pete Kelting said.

The bad feelings continued, this time in Seattle.

A mob of bicyclists riding in Seattle with the monthly Critical Mass demonstration injured a motorist after an altercation

between 100 and 300 bicyclists were riding down a street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, blocking traffic in both lanes, when a man and a woman in a Subaru station wagon tried to pull out of a parking spot.

But some of the bicyclists blocked them, sat on the car and began banging on the vehicle, police said. Words were exchanged between the male driver and the bicyclists.

Which takes us to New York, where another Critical Mass ride was interupted by a police officer allegedly assaulting a cyclists. This one was caught on tape

The officer has been stripped of his badge and gun and placed on desk duty pending the outcome of a police department investigation.

The biker, Christopher Long, of Hoboken, N.J., was arrested because he was obstructing traffic in the heart of Times Square, a criminal complaint said. He was charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

The complaint said Long, 29, deliberately steered his bicycle into the officer, causing both of them to fall to the ground.

he didn't seem to aim for the cop in my opinion. The smoking gun has the officer's account. And the Times has a follow up article.

But the Police Department continues to be flummoxed by bicyclists riding together once a month.

“It’s just a bike ride, but the cops are treating it like a war,” said Bill DiPaola, the director of Time’s Up, an environmental group that says it promotes the rides but is not involved in organizing them.

Mr. Kelly said the Police Department wants to work with the riders. “We’ve been trying to work with them for years,” he said. “But apparently there is an element there that doesn’t necessarily want to work with us.”

Ms. Ross and other longtime Critical Mass riders say that until the summer of 2004, the police were friendly. The mood changed, cyclists say, in August of that year, when the city was preparing for the Republican National Convention.

Hear that Minneapolis?

Since then, the relationship between the bicyclists and the police has been “antagonistic,” said a former commander of a Manhattan precinct often traversed by Critical Mass riders. “We look at them as just a bunch of radical bikers,” said the former commander.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said the Critical Mass riders “used to tell us their routes.” The relationship was “informal, but it worked,” he said.

“Shortly before the convention, this anarchist group hijacked it,” he said of the ride, echoing an op-ed article that Mr. Kelly wrote for The Daily News in 2004. It said, “Where once the cyclists were courteous observers of the rules of the road, the newcomers transformed rides into disruptive, often dangerous events.”

“Look, I’m not excusing what that cop did because it was wrong,” said the officer,

“The problem with these guys is that they provoke you,” the officer from the 13th Precinct said. “They’re no angels.”

Back to LA (I know it's a lot) on which the Wall Street Journal ran a "biking is dangerous" article (entitled - Risking Life and Limb, Riding a Bike to Work in L.A) more so if doctors and cops assault you.

Veteran riders say that obnoxious motorists are the biggest problem. Michael Marckx, a 44-year-old vice president of Globe International Ltd., a skateboard company in El Segundo, recently started commuting three or four days a week by bike, encountering what he calls "caffeine-infused psychotics" in their cars who yell at him to get off the road. "There's something about being in the car that is kind of anonymous. It's a veil to hide behind, and people seem to like to get their aggression out on cyclists," says the former professional bike racer

As The Economist puts it

It looks as though there is a need, on both sides, for a revolution in manners.

As an aside - and a response to the WSJ article let me display this chart (p.34) that Lee Watkins left in the comments last week. It shows the "risk of accident per million km". They remove highways from consideration (since they are significantly safer than other roads and not comparable to cycling) and group users by age - thereby removing the impact of underage cyclists. The results show that for cyclist between 18 and 50, cycling is safer.