Friday Afternoon Commute - Not Cool

Good evening

• The cyclist who was hit by a truck this week was issued 3 tickets, DCist reports. One for running a red light, one for failure to yield and one for not wearing a helmet. It sounds like the truck was making a right on red and the cyclist moved forward too, but intended to go straight. If so, then the first two tickets are legit. But, cyclists over 16 are not required to wear a helmet. So....more work needed on acquainting MPD officers with actual traffic laws. Also, the cyclist was reportedly never interviewed, which is against new MPD policy and is not cool. [Aside: It's a little surprising to me. I mean, I can, at almost any time, figure out who was governor of Alabama in 1876 by pulling out my phone. I can't believe that in this day and age, we can't have an electronic ticket system that guides police officers through a series of questions to lead them to the correct law.] My skeptical meter is simultaneously at 3 and 10. 
• MTA is evaluating the idea of not grade-separating the Purple Line (and thus the CCT) and Connecticut Avenue. This would be not cool. A grade separated crossing is one of the major advantages of the new trail. "After the meeting, Madden said an at-grade crossing could save the state roughly $40 million to $50 million in construction costs. He said planners are looking for ways to reduce expenses in case the cost estimate of $1.93 billion begins to rise, as often happens when major projects progress from conceptual design into more detailed engineering."
• Also the Transportation Committee will vote next week on whether or not to keep the CCT in the Air Rights Tunnel. 
• The Green Commute in Takoma sells about one electric bike per week. 
• Bike sharing in Tysons Corner was discussed today at noon.
• The Senate Transportation Bill may get better.
• More on the National Bike Advocacy Organization Unification
• Photo above is of a bike that was locked to a tree for so long that the tree swallowed it up. 

Comments

[xfgjkfgkfsk]

more work needed on MPD?

thats funny. really funny...

WABA and LAB need to reach out to the university community to connect with researchers who can tell them how to effectively motivate concern for their concerns, at large, in the media, and in various "stakeholder" institutions. that the MPD -- and WMATA and the NPS by the way -- are clueless, is NOT NEWS!! the Police are not going to help cyclists!!!! how sociologically stupid and blind does one have to be to not see this?

[Jack]

The tree jumped out of nowhere and crashed into me!

[charlie]

why a failure to yield? Not judging, just curious.

The helmet ticket is silly.

[Purple Eagle]

The tree photo has to be photoshopped. Trees don't grow from the base - they grow at the tips of the branches. So a bike could get swallowed up by lateral/outward growth but would not move upward!

[Purple Eagle]

On a more serious note, I agree that the Connecticut crossing is a big deal. If there's a place to cut costs, I would rather see the tunnel detour than lose that crossing.

[Nancy]

Purple Eagle, have you not heard of tree rings? Every year, a tree grows wider from its base up. Ever carved your initials into a tree? They will expand and move upwards as the years pass. (No, I haven't carved my initials into a tree, but I've seen 'em. I've also seen other objects "swallowed" by trees.)

[washcycle]

Charlie,

At a red light, I suppose, a person going straight can't possibly have the right of way, but someone going right can. So the truck had the ROW and the cyclist failed to yield.

Purple Eagle, it's not photoshopped but you are correct about how trees grow. In this case, the bike was placed in the fork of a young tree, so as it added rings it squeezed the bike up until eventually it couldn't anymore. Then it just grew around it. You can kind of see the two parts if you look at it. Looking on the internet, apparently a lot of people have seen this tree in person.

There is another similar tree in Scotland.

http://www.synthstuff.com/mt/archives/individual/2007/05/a_fascinating_tree_in_scotland_the_ironeating_tree.html

[JJJJJ]

washcycle, thats 100% wrong. Straight moving vehicles ALWAYS have the right of way over turning vehicles. ALWAYS. You cant just turn into someone and say "they should have moved" its your job to make sure the path is clear. Imagine in this case we were talking about someone turning right on red and someone in the crosswalk that had a leading interval.

Thats also why turning vehicles MUST be as close to the curb as possible. The truck wasnt, the truck was not following the law.

Finally, turning right on red is an option that should only be exercised when there is no other conflict. An option that IMO should be illegal in all urban areas.

[charlie]

bizarrely, I agree with JJJJ here. I am trying to construct a scenario where you are running a red and also failing to yield.

Look like a classic red light hook.

I wish bike safety education would focus more on lights and red hooks than helmet. I do get it when kids get their first real bikes they have a tendancy to overdo the front brake -- we've all seen that. Helemets are useful then.

But for other types of urban crashes...

The citation for "helmet" seems almost like that -- education for everyone else. I'd rather see citations for failure to display lights. One other thing I've learned from Cabi is how useful it is to have lights during the day.

[Jim Titus]

@JJ washcycle, thats 100% wrong. Straight moving vehicles ALWAYS have the right of way over turning vehicles. ALWAYS.

That is not correct. The general rules of who has the right of way based on relative direction or turning status only come into play when both vehicles are proceeding through the intersection legally. A driver with a green light has the right of way over a driver with a red light, at all times. The right on red after stop rule requires one to yield to vehicles with the green light, but not to (for example) a vehicle coming from the other direction who makes a left turn after running a red light. Mind you: Most people will yield to a driver who makes a left turn on a light that has been red for 1 second, but that driver does not actually have the right of way.

In this case, the tricky question is whether the driver was as far to the right as practicable when making the turn and doing the right hook, or if the driver failed to pull far enough to the right because there was a cyclist in the bike lane. If the latter, then the driver was making an illegal right turn, which would have required him to yield to the bike (had the light been green).

[sje]

I am not sure what is the truth in U-St accident. OTOH, if the MPD can decline to charge a driver who is caught on video running a cyclist off the road, cyclists have a reason to be skeptical of the official story.

[washcycle]

I may not be 100% right, but I doubt I'm 100% wrong. [Let's just assume that the facts of the case, as presented are correct, even though they may not be]

Imagine in this case we were talking about someone turning right on red and someone in the crosswalk that had a leading interval.

That's an entirely different scenario. The person the the PLI has a green light. The cyclist doesn't. I'm not sure how someone running a red light can have the ROW.

The driver did have the ROW and the cyclist failed to yield.

The truck has to be as close as practicable to the curb - and I don't see a reason to believe they weren't. There is probably no practicable place to be where a) you can make the turn and b) a cyclist can't get to the right of you.

If charlie's point is that it is double-dipping, I'd agree with that, but it happens all the time. If his point is that you can'r run a red light and fail to yield, I'd say that running a red means that you are yielding to no one, which may be fine if there is no one. But in this case there was someone.

If the driver was badly positioned or failed to put on a turn signal, all that does is mean they're both in violation of the law.

[Purple Eagle]

Nancy, I teach high school biology, so yes I have heard of tree rings. And the rings were exactly the basis of my point - a bike that has been attached to a tree for many years would be enveloped by lateral (secondary, technically) growth, but would not move up. I assumed that the bike was initially at ground level; WC's explanation that the bike was placed I in the fork of the tree explains the bike's position. Though I still find the situation a bit odd; the bike appears to be quite a distance off the ground.

[Greenbelt]

Is failing to wear a helmet a ticketable offense in DC? Doesn't a ticket for a non-offense automatically imply that MPD was wrong?