TheWashCycle

Montgomery County wants meeting on Georgetown Road following cyclist death

A cyclist died on Georgetown Road in Montgomery County at the end of July. He was riding on a narrow sidewalk next to an unfriendly road, fell while trying to navigate around trash cans and was hit by a car. 

The same day as the crash, state and local elected officials began organizing a meeting with the Maryland State Highway Administration, which oversees Old Georgetown Road, to discuss flaws in the design of the stretch of road where Cassell was killed.

Korman said it is worth examining the section of Old Georgetown Road where the crash occurred.

“The sidewalk is very close to the street, and the sidewalk being very close to the street is not how infrastructure would be built today. And so you need to look at that and see if it could be modified today,” he said.

There have been 57 pedestrian-involved crashes on Old Georgetown Road since Jan. 1, 2015, according to county data. About half involved bicyclists.

[Does that mean that half of the 57 are pedestrians hit by cyclists or that cyclists are half of the 57?] As far as I know that meeting has not occurred, but the road needs some attention if that many collisions are happening. 

17 year old cyclist hit and killed on Old Georgetown Road

A 17 year old cyclist riding on the sidewalk along Old Georgetown Road fell off his bike and into the road yesterday. He was struck and died. This incident, in addition to being a tragedy, also exemplifies why Vision Zero is needed.

Barring some new facts about the driver, this will likely be chalked up as "human error" on the part of the cyclist, but in reality, the errors came in design of the road long before the crash occurred. And the idea of VZ is that the burden of avoid fatalities should rest on the shoulders of those who design and built the system, not those who use it. 

Old Georgetown Road is a 7-lane road with narrow sidewalks, no bike facilities and no shoulders. And the sidewalk is further narrowed by no parking signs, foliage, dirt and, yesterday, trash set outside for pickup. All with the added obstacle of a driveway curb cut. [I believe this is the spot where the crash occurred and you can see the steep sidewalk angle and the no parking sign right there together.]  The victim was likely not helped by the fact that the driver was in an SUV instead of a sedan (this is another choice). 

This was the first bicycle fatality in the area since Dave Salovesh's and the first in Montgomery County since Jaimie Caceres in November. 

This road is not someplace where cyclists should be unexpected. Just a few blocks farther south, the North Bethesda Trolley Trail runs along side Old Georgetown and this crash occurred just outside a school zone. Furthermore, the County's new bike plan recommends a side path on this section. As it is now though, it's wholly inadequate. 

Montgomery County committed to Vision Zero in 2017 and is ending it's first two-year action plan this year. The goal was to cut traffic deaths by 35% this year and to zero by 2030. I'm not sure how well they're doing thus far, maybe someone else does. 

Prince George's county recently became the latest jurisdiction to commit to Vision Zero. They haven't put their plan together yet, but last I saw the goal was to cut fatalities by 50% by 2030 and to zero by 2040. Of course, the state of Maryland just set a goal of zero by 2030, so that seems to be in conflict. For reference, DC's is by 2024 and Alexandria and Arlington are aiming for 2028. I don't think Virginia has a Vision Zero goal. 

Yesterday I was on Kojo to talk about Vision Zero and while it was encouraging to have the county (where I probably do half or more of my biking) make the commitment to Vision Zero, there were other things that were not encouraging.  Prince George’s County’s Director of Public Works and Transportation Terry Bellamy still talked about human error as the cause of crashes instead of design issues.  He made it sound as though Vision Zero is just a rebranding of the efforts they were already doing, the ones that make PG County the highest road fatality county in the state (by numbers, not rate). He also said that "Distractive walking is just as bad as distractive driving" which I'm willing to be generous and assume was just clumsy statement not that he sees them as equivalent. 

It's crashes like yesterday's that shows how bad design is such a large part of the problem, and how far we have to go. Local and state governments are committing to fixing these problems and making our roads safe, and time will tell if they have the backbone for it, but so far there are as many reasons to be discouraged as encouraged. 

DC's busy bicycle legislative agenda, part 1

David Grosso stops in a bike lane.

I've been on the BAC for over a decade now, and on the legislative committee for most of that time, and I've never seen a year like this when it comes to legislation. There are at least 10 bills that have been introduced this year that should matter to cyclists, and others concerned with safe streets. It's a lot so I'm going to try to break it up into a few posts

The Bicycle Advisory Council (BAC) Expansion Amendment Act Of 2019 was already discussed here. Since then the BAC has suggested that the District Council nominate one person representing scooters or other non-traditional Personal Mobility Devices to join the BAC as well. There's a lot of place that our interests overlap or collide and they should have a voice somewhere in this process. And such a person could help the BAC give better advice (which is the main purpose after all). 

The Florida Avenue Multimodal Project Completion Emergency Amendment Act of 2019 has already passed and is headed to the Mayor for signature. That bill sets a September deadline for creating a 6-4 road diet for Florida Avenue between 2nd and H NE and using the newly freed space for something other motor vehicles. It has the same deadline to install High-visibility crosswalk marking. It also requires monthly status reports starting in June. The Mayor needs to respond by the end of the month. A letter couldn't hurt. 

But the big bill on the agenda is CM Allen's Vision Zero Enhancement Omnibus Amendment Act Of 2019. This bill has MANY moving parts. The bill aims to:

• Approve the 2014 Multimodal Long Range Transportaion Plan (aka Move DC)
• Shorten the Notice of Intent period from 30 days to 10 days in cases where the proposed change will increase safety at a high-risk intersection as defined in Move DC and a report about it has been posted on the internet.
• Prevent the issuance of building permits until DDOT has published a report assuring that for-hire and delivery vehicles going to that building will not make conditions unsafe
• Require the construction of sidewalks on both sides of the street, not just one
• Require DDOT
  • to submit a Vision Zero progress report and make it public. The report will include
    • A list of projects in MoveDC by ward describing how it would improve safety, increase equitable access to transit, contribute to the mode share goals in MoveDC, decrease motor vehicle speeds. 
    • The expected delivery dates for all the projects in MoveDC for which funds have been allocated
    • Interim steps for projects that are to be allocated 2 years out
    • An explanation for why unfunded projects in MoveDC are unfunded
  • to publish all the data required by the 2016 Bike and Ped safety Act, data from the DOH's annual trauma report, all speed data they collect    
  • to create a transparent, standard project delivery process focused on MoveDC plans and things that make the roads safer and more equitable (sorry alleypalooza). 
  • to update the MoveDC every two years and to report on the goals to get commuter automobile mode share in all wards to lower that 25% and transit share in all wards to at least 50%. Should also include a list of streets to add bus-only lanes to with at least one in each ward and a list of high-risk intersections.
  • to submit an incident report to the council 30 days afer each crash that results in a fatality or injury including interim design changes that have been put in place, permanent changes they plan to put in place and whether or not it is a high risk intersection. 
  • to install marked crosswalks where an unmarked one currently exists when doing other roadwork (unless DDOT thinks it will make things less safe)
• Prevent the issuance of public space permits for new buildings until they have built and restored all the pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure that they were required to build and all that was there prior to construction
• Require MPD to collect information about the speed of vehicles involved in collisions or that receive moving violations. 
• Require anyone getting a new or renewed driver's license to take a written test
• Lower the speed limit to 20 mph on all local, collector and minor arterial roads and to 25 mph on all principal arterial roads.
• Prohibit right turns on red (everywhere, all the time)
• Require stop signs or traffic lights at all intersections of roads classified as local, collector or minor arterial.
• Authorize towing of a vehicle blocking a bike lane or crosswalk or that have more than 5 outstanding tickets for exceeding the speed limit by more than 30 mph or for overtaking a vehicle stopped for a pedestrian
• Authorize the city to mail citations of more moving and non-moving violations
• Create a Citizen Safety Enforcement Pilot Program allowing a few citizens to cite violators using a phone app. This has been all over the media, and much of it has been bad and/or ill-informed takes. 

It's a good start.

Seriously, these are some great ideas. Some of these things the BAC has recommended in the past and some (faster NOIs) are new to me. But they all seem targeted to my Vision Zero sentence that I've been saying which is that:

Getting to Vision Zero will require us to have fewer and safer cars; driven at slower speeds; by sober, safer drivers, on better roads shared by more cautious cyclists and pedestrians.

And this bill will hit on most of these things, and certainly the more important ones. 

Finally, just a few comments on some of the media coverage of the Citizens Enforcement pilot. It's fascinating to me that this has gotten all the press (it's become national news even) while the plan to ban RTOR everywhere or lower the speed limit to 20 (!!!) or even, finally approve MoveDC has not. Oh well, I don't know journalism.

Petula Dvorak at the Post, whom I normally agree with, has a particularly bad take. 

She starts out by referring to it as tattling. As someone on twitter put it

You can tell a lot about a person by where they define “snitching.” Is reporting animal abuse snitching? Child abuse?

The article mentions safety once, and not in relation to this bill, but instead goes straight to the AAA framing of "revenue grab" using the old Trump trick

A lot of us wonder whether this has anything to do with the city’s declining parking ticket revenue, thanks to mobile parking apps.

Which might be a valid concern if you thought bad parking was no longer a problem, but she doesn't.

It’s infuriating and dangerous to have cars parked in bike lanes, bus lanes and crosswalks — the violations citizen avengers would be targeting in the proposed pilot program. I live on Capitol Hill and have circled my block for an hour more than once after a Costco shop, past scores of Virginia (mostly) plates overstaying their legal right to park on my street, keeping me from accessing my own home.

I honestly don't think she understands what the proposal is because she mentions both vigilantes and Batman and people parked in RPP spots. That's not what this will be. 10 people from each ward will be selected and trained. They will photograph violators and submit them to DPW who will then review them and issue tickets where warranted. The only tickets this will be for are for parking in a bicycle lane, crosswalk, bus lane or streetcar guideway. 

Dvorak is instead worried about the gestapo.

 The scars and resentments of this kind of citizen tattling run three generations deep in my family, when the communist regime in Czechoslovakia corrupted families and communities with Little Brother tactics.

But how do we begin to police citizen avenger motivations?

There is overview of the people who are allowed to do this, that's how. It's hard to address her fears because they aren't clearly stated. Is she worried the innocent will be falsely accused? That's what the photos are for. Is she worried that there will be confrontations? Since all the CE's will be doing is taking a photograph, and since they will take training for that, I don't see how it would be any worse than cyclists yelling at drivers. Is she worried it will be inequitably enforced (racist or classist enforcement)? Me too, but cars create some anonymity, making it hard to know who's driving that Honda accord (To be fair, if I were an enforcer I might show a bias towards ticketing Hummers or other giant SUVs, And who wouldn't want to ticket someone in a Maserati?), and I suspect that's one of the things the pilot will study. If we see some inequity then we can tweak or abandon the idea. 

She goes on to compare this to public shaming on twitter. That's not what this is either, though that's already happening since people frequently post photos of cars parked in bike lanes. What negative consequence has that had so far?

Luz Lazo also misses the mark though she at least understands the facts.  But her story starts off poorly,

D.C. officials are so desperate for more solutions to the city’s parking and traffic problems that they’re considering recruiting citizens to help enforce the rules of the road.

This is not about fixing parking and will only have a small effect on traffic. This is about safety. Now I'll concede that there isn't any proof that blocking the bike lane makes cyclists less safe (sorry, I'm just not aware of any) but at the very least it makes biking frustrating as hell. And blocking crosswalks too, though there I am more confident about calling it a safety risk. But whether or not it is or is not based on data, safety is the goal. She does get to that later. 

Then she quotes Walter Olson of the Cato Institute. 

"But traffic enforcement does have a lot of judgment calls.”

I'm not sure what judgement call would come into play here, and he doesn't name one. Just some vague idea. I participated in the bike lane project last week. A food truck parked in a hashed off area to wait for the lunch crowd and a parking enforcement car pulled up and told him to leave without issuing a ticket. I guess that's a judgement call - to let that guy go without a ticket - but I don't know if I agreed with it. You get off with a warning if you don't walk away? BTW, the flexposts in the streetview are now gone - wonder how that happened?

Olson also blames this on revenue generation

“The city gets more revenue without having to pay salaries,” he said. “The potential increase in ticket revenue would get their interest right away.”

Ugh. I wish we would just take all the money generated and set it on fire, Dark Knight style, once a year just so we could stop hearing about this. 

“The idea of vigilante enforcement is a bad idea,” D.C. attorney David Tompkins said. “Everyone I don’t like would have a lot of tickets. Well, that’s the joke until a real jerk gets ahold of this idea.”

Again, not vigilantes. He should look up what that word means. Violators would get tickets from DPW, they would not be beaten with iron pipes by a mob in the alley. 

“Law enforcement is a profession,” he said. “Have professionals handle it.”

So is teaching. Is Tompkins against volunteer tutoring programs?

A lot of articles ask "What could possibly go wrong?" and then list very little that could go wrong. 

Imagine what could happen if a resident gets a ticket from his or her neighbor — a neighbor whose address he or she knows.

That is a very special case. One which can happen if you get a ticket from DPW or MPD or DDOT.

There could be some legal issues involved in providing citizens such power

None of those were actually listed.

As with any idea, this could end up being great for neighborhoods or disastrous. 

No potential disasters were identified. 

The inner libertarian in me, of course, doesn’t approve of such over-policing, but the “nearly hit by a cyclist who rode full speed through a red light and nearly plowed into me when I was legally crossing the crosswalk” in me thinks these people need to obey some traffic laws.

Ah yes, we don't need any more policing except for the people who almost hurt ME. Very libertarian. 

Anyway, no hearing has been scheduled for the bill, but when it is, I'm sure it will be widely publicized. 

Leaving Donna Holliday Clark

Just before 11pm on June 26, 2015 Donna Holiday Clark was riding south on her bicycle on Ritchie Road in Capital Heights. At the same time a driver heading south on Ritchie Road was passed by a black Dodge Charger and another dark car travelling at very high speed. In the witness' opinion the two were racing. Camera footage from a nearby business confirmed that they were travelling much faster than the witness. The two cars disappeared over the hill before Edgeworth. Shortly after, the driver found Clark, lying in the roadway with her purple Kent Avalon bicycle - where the driver who killed her had left her.  Her shoes had been knocked into the opposing lane. The witness called 911 and tried to render aid, but Clark died before making it to the hospital. 

Clark was a fitness fanatic but she was riding home that night from work because she couldn't rely on transit since the closest Metro station was 3 miles away. 

A little over a week later a tip led the police to a car in South District Heights, Maryland that met the description of the striking car. They found a grey Honda accord with freshly repaired front end damage.

While inspecting the vehicle, Dion James Hancock came out of the home the car was parked in front of. The police asked if he knew who the car was owned by and Hancock said it belonged to his recently-deceased father.  Police asked him if he knew how it had been damaged and Hancock said an ex-girlfriend damaged it. When asked about his whereabouts on the night Clark died, Hancock said he was at his new girlfriend's home and that he had gotten home at around 2am after calling a Lyft. The police then asked him if he or someone else could have struck a cyclist with the car.

Hancock didn't answer, but instead asked what the penalties were for having an accident and not reporting it. The police explained the penalties and then read him his Miranda rights, which he invoked. 

Following the acquisition of a subpoena, the police determined that Hancock didn't have an account with Lyft, or take his first ride with them, until June 28th. The name and phone number of the new girlfriend he gave them were checked against several data bases and no one with her name could be located. The phone number revealed no one by that name that had ever owned or used it. 

Without enough evidence to determine the identity of the driver, this case remains open.  There are also no records of a civil case. 

Initial thoughts following the Dave Salovesh murder

On Friday Dave Salovesh was killed by a driver in a stolen van who was speeding away from a police stop, ran a red light, hit a car and ricocheted into Dave. This was at Florida and 12th, NE. The driver was charged with 2nd Degree Murder. 

Dave

Dave and I only met a couple of times, but we disagreed on Twitter often. Dave saw incrementalism as accepting defeat and I saw it as being reasonable, and this was the source of our conflict. The last time I saw him he approached me to bury the hatchet as it were. I was still smarting from our last exchange but I came around and we shook hands and agree not to argue anymore and that we were on the same side. He was the better of us because I would have just left things in a bad place and I'm glad we didn't. 

I still believe that we should take the wins we can and move the ball forward, but Dave wasn't wrong. I remember reading in college about an white abolitionist who, in 1850, had a compromise plan to phase out slavery over the next 100 years. I'm sure he thought he was being reasonable, but the idea that we'd have still had slaves in America in 1949 is just insane. In 1850, the right time to end slavery was 1850. Dave is right that anything less than facilities that meet our goals of safe, green streets - especially in the name of congestion relief an on-street parking is morally wrong. The right time to build safe streets is 2019.  

Florida Avenue

It is not lost on anyone that the street on which Dave died has been part of a study process since 2009, and one that has missed numerous deadlines. One that made choices based on congestion, parking and automobile throughput to the detriment of safety. Dave was hit by a large vehicle, going at high speed and one could argue that even with a protected bike lane the outcome would have been the same. But even if you think that a protected bike lane would not have saved him, that's no less reason to be angry about the way the Florida Avenue redesign - and Vision Zero - have been carried out. 

The 2009 NoMa Neighborhood Access Study & Transportation Management Plan didn't include bike lanes on Florida, but it did recommend implementing a road diet and sidewalk widening over the next two years. That would have been early 2012. That work has not been done. 

In June 2013, following the death of a pedestrian in a crosswalk on Florida, they started the Florida Avenue Multimodal Transportation Study. That study came up with three alternatives, of which Alternative 3 included regular bike lanes on Florida Avenue east of West Virginia - the section where Dave was killed. But that option was dropped due to concerns about automobile throughput. For the same reasons, the sidewalks in this section are not to be widened either. This is actually in keeping with the purpose.

The purpose of the Florida Avenue Multimodal Transportation Study is to improve safety for all roadway users, particularly the most vulnerable (pedestrians and bicyclists), while ensuring safe access and improved mobility
for all modes within and through the study area.

Notice that language - improved mobility for all modes must be ensured, but improving safety is not. It also prevents certain trade-offs. Anything that would improve safety while hampering the mobility of drivers is out-of-scope. There's a whole section entitled "importance of motor vehicle access and mobility".

Look at this chart on the alternatives analysis. 

There's a whole section on auto safety; which is not to imply that isn't important too, just that it's called out and no one else's is. Nor is there simply one "safety" metric. Alt 3 is objectively better for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users but has "local street impacts" when compared to the selected alternatives (a combination of 1 and 2 that doesn't even take full advantage of the improved auto safety alternatives). But the 5 level ranking doesn't give us enough of an idea of how much better or worse things are. A metric I'd like to see is "number of expected deaths". Let's just lay the choices out there. 

Part of the importance of auto efficiency is due to federal requirements. Florida Avenue is part of the highway system and must meet federal requirements and comply with applicable Federal regulations on performance (as defined by the FHWA). And part is likely explained by the fact that this predates Vision Zero. And the other part - because the purpose of the project wasn't defined with safety as a premium. 

Similarly, the study recommended bike lanes on West Virginia - if it didn't impact parking too much. Those have been on the books since at least 2005, but they still aren't there. 

If congestion in that section is really the problem as the study states it seems like that could be solved by removing the parking/peak traffic lanes and replacing them with bus/bike lanes (enforced with traffic cameras and barriers. Moving the 12 bus routes through the corridor faster would encourage fewer people to drive. You know what else would help? A downtown congestion charge. Because the benefits of congestion charging extend beyond zone where the charges occur. That would be the vision zero design. 

But even if we live with the recommended alternative from 2014, we're still left being angry at the pace. The multimodal study was to finish in May of 2014 but didn't until February of 2015. In 2017, they were to be done with the 100% design in Spring of 2018. They were still at the 30% design this past January with the 65% and 100% designs still to go.

They aren't working towards streets that maximize safety and then they aren't hitting their own deadlines to build the safety-compromised alternatives they've selected. No wonder the roads aren't getting safer.  

Vision Zero

And of course this is all emblematic of the larger problems of Vision Zero, which Dave often pointed out.

At least the Florida Ave study didn't pretend to be anything other than it was - an attempt to improve safety without making driving any worse. Vision Zero, on the other hand, is an attempt to create a city where people don't die or get seriously injured due to simple mistakes. But we are not taking the bold steps needed to reach such an audacious goal on the timeline we set. Or any other timeline either. It's as though the purpose of the Florida Ave study is the real idea - make roads safer, but let's not make driving any worse. And it's not limited to DDOT. Not only are we not tearing out miles of curbside parking and auto lanes to put in transit lanes, bike lanes and wider sidewalks, we aren't doing things we know will work - like a congestion charge. We still don't enforce traffic laws that are regularly broken in a way that make the roads safer. We could use cameras to enforce crosswalk violations and bike lane incursions for example. 

I've talked to many legislators who know that driving while talking on the phone is dangerous, hands-free or not, but like guests in the Exterminating Angel they seem to feel unable to make that illegal. "People would never put up with it" one told me. But they'll put up with deaths of their loved ones, I suppose?

It doesn't have to be this way. New York City is moving with real purpose - and that's with their own admission that they don't have full control of their own laws. They have to get the state to change laws for them. 

Maybe the problem is with the Mayor and DDOT. If so Council can follow the example of Cambridge, MA and force them to build safer streets. 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, passed a law on Monday directing the city to build new protected bike lanes whenever it does road work on certain streets. Known as the Cycling Safety Ordinance, it applies to all streets mapped out in the Cambridge Bicycle Plan, which recommends 20 miles of protected bike lanes throughout the 7-square-mile city, and effectively puts the weight of the law behind cycling infrastructure.

DDOT sometimes seems reluctant to follow through with their own ideas because of community opposition. This could give them the cover they need by saying "look, it's not up to us. We're just following the law." That might require council members to take the heat and risk losing their seats. But that seems like a better option than allowing people like Dave to lose their lives. 

Also, I updated this. 

 

Cyclist hit in yesterday's hit-and-run has passed away

A cyclist was struck yesterday in a hit-and-run crash in the 1200 block of Constitution Ave NW yesterday. Today the police announced that he has died. 

He has been identified as 64 year old Thomas Hendricks Hollowell of Arlington, VA. The driver, whom the police are looking for, drove a dark colored sedan through the intersection on a red traffic signal, striking the cyclist at high speed.

Hollowell was on his way to work Monday morning at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. A coworker of the victim, said Hollowell rode his bike to work every day.

Cyclist killed in 3rd bike fatality in DC area this summer

The Post reports that

Mario Yattum, 33, of Lanham, was on his bike in the median at the intersection before he entered the roadway and was hit by a car travelling west on Annapolis Road, police said. Both the car and the bicycle were traveling on Annapolis Road near Morley Road about 10 p.m. when the collision occurred, according to the police.

This was on Sunday night. And here's the press release all the reporting is based on.

 

Ghost bikes - Stories behind the Statistics

A few years ago, I created a map of all the fatal multi-vehicle bicycle crashes I could find at the time. In researching it, I stumble on some interesting stories - some for fatal crashes and some not - so I pulled them out and have made a longer post of them. Here are some of those stories, though not all of them are traffic crashes. 

17 year old Denis Wolf of Silver Spring and his friend Glen Edwards were riding on route 28 just west of Germantown when driver Washington Giddings struck Wolf from behind at high speed. Wolf was sent 54 feet from the point of impact and died that day, on Aug 25, 1974. Giddings admitted that he'd been drinking and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. In 1977, a new 1.5 mile hike-and-bike trail along the Northeast Branch from Old Riverdale Road to Calvert Road in Riverdale was named the Denis Wolf Trail by M-NCPPC after Wolf's family raised $3,000 for the trail. [The trail was extended and now we just call it part of the Northeast Branch Trail, I'm not sure the Wolf name was dropped intentionally or with permission].  The money the family raised was used for a rest stop, along the trail just south of Campus Drive, built in the late 1980's and still called the Denis Wolf Rest Stop. 

On July 4, 1987, Robin Royle was bicycling on Wisconsin Avenue near the Capital Beltway in Bethesda when she was hit by a driver who moved into the right lane to pass another vehicle. The driver, David Henry, carried her on the car's hood for nearly a half-mile, then dumped her body and fled. He was charged with manslaughter by automobile, homicide by automobile while intoxicated, driving while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident, possession of marijuana and possession of cocaine. He plead guilty to manslaughter by automobile and DWI and was sentenced to 5 years in county jail for manslaughter, with all but 1 year suspended, and a concurrent 1 year for DWI. He served only 3 months. 

On May 12, 1991, 10-year old Dewayne Hawkins was riding a bicycle on the shoulder of Route 301 when the driver of a vehicle swung across two lanes of traffic with the intention of running down. Moments earlier the driver had earlier hit, and lightly injured, another cyclist. The driver hit Hawkins and left the scene. Five days later Hawkins died from the injuries he sustained.  When apprehended later, the driver, Kathlynn Ann Najera, told the police she ran down the bicyclists "to teach the world a lesson."  She was charged with first-degree murder and a count of assault with intent to commit murder. After a psychological review, she offered an Alford plea, meaning that she admitted no guilt, but she agreed that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her of first-degree murder in a trial. In exchange, the state agreed that she was suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the crash. She was deemed criminally insane and was committed to a mental hospital. She was eventually released, but in September of 2009 was arrested again for assaulting an individual. She was committed again and released in 2010. 

In August of 1991, during a charity ride from the West Coast to Washington called Bike-Aid, Andrew Appleton, 24, of Acton, MA and Holly Ehret, 21, of Sonoma, CA and two others were hit from behind by a tractor-trailer truck in Fauquier County, Virginia. Andrew and Holly didn't survive the crash. They were one day away from finishing the ride. The driver, Alvin Lee Harris, had approached the group from behind intending to move over and pass them, but then another car moved into the space to his left and he was going too fast and was too close to stop. Harris was ticketed on charges of reckless driving and driving with defective brakes. It's unclear what his final penalties were, but there is no criminal record for him in Virginia. 

On October 9, 1994, Patrick Andrew Flanagan was on a Sunday morning ride when he was stuck by a vehicle on Clopper Road near Gunners Branch Creek near Germantown. The driver, Mehraban Khodayar Demhri, stopped after the collision and spoke briefly with a witness, who was in another car and had stopped at the accident. The driver then returned to his vehicle and drove off.  He was arrested four days later based on an anonymous tip. He was charged with five counts including felony manslaughter and failing to remain at the scene of a personal-injury accident. He pleaded guilty to only the hit-and-run charge and was sentenced to six months in the Montgomery County jail and to 200 hours of community service. He served his time in a pre-release center that allowed residents to leave during the day.

On April 2, 1997, Judith Marie Flannery a six-time American and four-time world champion triathlete was struck head-on by a car that crossed the double yellow line. She died instantly. The car was driven by a 16-year old, unlicensed driver named Timothy Rinehart under the supervision of his father Ronald. Ronald was drunk and admitted he'd been drinking since early in the morning. Timothy was charged in juvenile court of seven charges including reckless driving and driving without a license, and was found guilty on all but the most serious charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to perform 300 hours of community service, write an essay and not seek a driver's license without a judge's permission. His father was charged with nine offences including homicide, manslaughter by automobile, homicide by motor vehicle, driving while intoxicated, contributing to rendering a child in need of assistance, and several traffic violations. The homicide charge was dropped before trial began, and then the prosecution was unable to prove that Ronald grabbed the steering wheel at any time. As a result he was found guilty of only the three minor offenses of permitting an unauthorized person to a operate motor vehicle; permitting a vehicle to be driven by an unauthorized person and permitting a vehicle to be driven in violation of title. He was fined $500 and told not to drink in front of his son.

On October 8th, 1997 Alejandro Jose Grant was bumped by a left turning vehicle near Riggs Road and University Boulevard in Langley Park. The driver, 19 year-old Estrella Mariano Enriquez, stopped to check on him and he accosted her, shouting and cursing at her before pulling out a gun, shooting her in the head and riding away. He quickly ditched his bike and led police on a foot-chase that lasted several blocks. He was arrested and then charged, indicted and eventually found guilt of first-degree murder. When asked about it, Grant  - who had been arrested for assault on three prior occasions - claimed that it was the second time he'd been knocked off his bike that day; that he found the experience frightening and that he wanted Enriquez to feel the same fear. At his sentencing he said he "didn't really feel like living" and asked the judge to impose the death penalty. She gave him a sentence of life in prison plus 20 years instead. Not to be denied, Grant took his own life less than two days later. 

On September 5, 1998, Kap Joo Kim hit 14-year old high school freshman Kevin Mackey with her Dodge station wagon while he rode his bike on the shoulder of Dufief Mill Road and then drove away. He died three days later. After several months of searching, Kim surrendered to the police after her son saw a report of the accident on television news. She claimed that she had fallen asleep behind the wheel and didn't realize she'd hit anyone when she swerved onto the shoulder. Because she wasn't speeding or drunk, only tired after a 12 hour shift, she was only charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving bodily injury or death, negligent driving, failure to remain at the scene and provide information, and unsafe lane change which got her 6 months in in the county's pre-release center (a dorm-like facility where inmates work or seek treatment during the day and return at night) fined $1500 and ordered to perform 250 hours of community service. She originally appealed her case, and then withdrew the appeal. 

On April 15, 1999 Roseller "Larry" Enguillado ran a red light on the George Washington Parkway at Slater's Lane in Alexandria and struck Walter "Skip" Walsh an EPA employee on his way home from work. Enguillado, a civilian employee of the Department of Defense, was charged with reckless driving and failure to obey a traffic signal. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail and two years' probation and was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Enguillado's lawyer had tried to argue that Walsh was partly to blame because he was not in the crosswalk. Later, reporters at the Washington Times investigated the 3-second yellow light at the intersection and found that 20 vehicles were running that light every 30 minutes. The reports led Rep. Dick Armey to call for an investigation into accusations that local governments were shortening the yellow light cycle to increase fines. AAA's Lon Andersen supported the investigation. The light at Slater's did not have a camera. Hearings were held later that year, but nothing came of them.

On January 10th, 2002 Walter Penney, a man known for volunteering as a coach in youth sports leagues, was biking on the Sligo Creek Parkway when a driver coming the other way crossed the median and hit him head on.  Penney died that day. The driver, 23 year old Scott Andrew Davis, was charged and convicted of Vehicular Manslaughter. He was sentenced to 7 years, with all but 3 years suspended, a $1500 fine and 240 hours community service. Davis had been familiar with the court and criminal system before (drug, alcohol charges, failure to pay child support, burglary) and continued to be in trouble with the law afterward. While in jail, he was twice charged with disorderly conduct and destruction of property and then possession of marijuana as well as assault and theft. He was found guilty on drug charges in 2007 and 2009. He was arrested in 2008 for assaulting a corrections officer and then that same year plead guilty to assaulting one man and killing another in a bar fight.  He was sentenced to 36 months in jail. Since being released he has been charged numerous times with excessive speeding and driving on a suspended license or no license. In 2017 he was pulled over for driving on the wrong side of the road. In January of this year he was pulled over for DWI and in March, again, for driving on a suspended license.

On September 22, 2002, Eberhard "Ed" Irmler was fatally struck by a 76-year old Bethesda woman driving a minivan who ran a stop sign on Peach Tree at Barnesville Road in Montgomery County, MD. Irmler, 50, was a highly regarded federal government economist who lived in the District. There is no record of the driver being charged. 

On March 26, 2004, David Van Keuren, a 63 year old historian at the Naval Research Laboratory, was struck and killed by a dump truck as he biked in the 1300 block of South Capitol Street on his way to work. The driver left the scene, but according to one report, was located by the police. The driver was reportedly never charged. 

Mark Creasy was riding his bicycle along Marina Drive on Daingerfield Island on May 25, 2005 when he was attacked by Andre Suggs and strangled to death during a robbery. A witness on the riverbank heard several screams and went to investigate. The witness saw Suggs sprawled over Creasy's body, confronted Suggs and then rode off on his own bicycle to seek help. Suggs followed the witness on Creasy's bike before fleeing into the woods. Less than an hour after the slaying, Alexandria police arrested a naked Suggs about a half-mile away when he crossed the parkway at Bashford Lane. A U.S. Park Police affidavit said Suggs bit one of the arresting officers and screamed, "AIDS! AIDS! I got AIDS! Just before his arrest, Suggs had assaulted a second male bicyclist on the Mount Vernon trail and taken his bike. He was also accused of assaulting a third bicyclist, a woman who was hit in the head while riding on the Capital Crescent Trail near Georgetown, a week earlier. Her bike was stolen as well. He was charged and plead guilty to second-degree murder. He is serving a 30 year sentence with a release date of 7/16/2031. In 2016 he moved to vacate his sentence. 

Cyclists, death and blame

Kojo Nnamdi recently did a show on Vision Zero (a subject previously covered in 2015), the two recent fatal crashes and the ride organized for one of them. Predictably, and sadly, people called in to complain about scofflaw cyclists, with one such caller claiming that the way to make streets safer for cyclists is to crack down on bad cycling.

I have a suggestion about what the city can do to make things safer for cyclists and that is to enforce the existing traffic laws with regards to cyclists obeying them.  I have asked and I have been told that cyclists are supposed to obey the same laws as motorists, however, as a person who earns his living driving in the city, I do not see that.  Cyclists routinely go from the streets to the sidewalk, bypassing lights by using the pedestrian crossing walks, and weaving in and out of traffic, so when I hear of a cyclist getting hit by a vehicle I'm often not surprised what I see and I never ever ever see MPD enforcing traffic laws when cyclists do those unsafe maneuvers or bypass the uh, the rules of the road, which they feel, seemingly, that they are above.

If I made an exhaustive list of things DC could do to make the roads safer, that might make the list - but only if I could choose what was targeted. No doubt, cyclist error and failure to obey the law contributes to fatalities on the road. But even if we could get cyclists to comply with 100% of the laws 100% of the time, we'd only see deaths reduced by 1 to 1.5 people per year, because that's about how often cyclist failures result in fatalities. That's not nothing, but it's not really getting at the heart of the problem. Of course, I would argue that overly-aggressive enforcement of the wrong things would dissuade people from biking and might end up making the streets less safe. 

An underlying message in statements like the one above is that it was the cyclist who was to blame, and that's not surprising since there has long been a perception that (and reporting to go with it) vulnerable users are more often to blame in their own deaths. 

For example, this report from the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (led by, I kid you not, Michael Scott) claims that

Unsafe pedestrian behavior is a major factor in pedestrian injuries and fatalities. In a recent study of 7,000 pedestrian-vehicle crashes in Florida, researchers discovered that pedestrians were at fault in 80 percent of these incidents.

Popcenter provides research and reports to policing organizations, so it's important that they get things correct. In this case, they have not. Popcenter is misreading the Comprehensive Study to Reduce Pedestrian Crashes in Florida (which they also mis-cited). First of all it's only a study of Florida State Roads, not all roads - meaning it skews towards highways.

More importantly, what the report actually says is that

Overall, pedestrians were found to be at fault in over 53.0% of the crashes.

In 80% of the crashes, the pedestrian was not in a marked crosswalk, which is where I suspect that number is coming from. So popcenter is getting “not in a marked crosswalk” confused with fault.

Furthermore, the study states that

crashes where pedestrian was at fault were found to be more severe compared to the crashes where the driver was at fault, and this difference was found to be statistically significant.

Or read another way in more severe crashes, pedestrians were more likely to be found at fault. In fact, in fatal crashes, pedestrians were found to be at fault 65% of the time (table 4-5) but in injury crashes only 52% of the time. So it appears that when vulnerable users die, they get blamed.

The study does state that pedestrians are more often to blame in the crashes they reviewed (53% vs 28.2%). There are probably several reasons for this that might close the gap.

For one, the pedestrians include very young people who are likely to make more mistakes (12.4% were below 19 years old), but drivers are all at least 15 years old. 

The other was stated above, when only the driver is around to tell their story, their story is more often told in their favor. A NYC study reported that 

In a crash scene investigation, investigators determine the apparent contributing factors for crashes.

For fatal crashes, they assign bicyclist-only factors 42% of the time and driver-only factors 20%. But for non-fatal crashes, bicyclist-only factors were assigned 13% of the time and driver-only factors 35%. That's a big difference. The report notes that:

In interpreting these data, it is important to remember that in some fatal crashes the motor vehicle driver’s recollection of the crash is the only one available, which may bias these findings to show more bicyclist errors compared to motor vehicle driver errors.

You don't say.

The paper "The Only Good Cyclist" showed a similar result. It showed that cyclists were found at-fault for running a red light in 19% of fatal cases, but that that number dropped to 8% when uncorroborated driver testimony is ignored. It also showed that drivers were primarily at fault.

A British study also found similar results.

The 64-page analysis found that police attributed responsibility for collisions more or less evenly between drivers and cyclists overall, but this was skewed by the fact that when child riders were involved their behaviour was named as a primary factor more than three-quarters of the time.

With adult cyclists, police found the driver solely responsible in about 60%-75% of all cases, and riders solely at fault 17%-25% of the time.

The figures were slightly higher when the cyclist was killed, but in such cases only the driver's account is available.

But even though drivers often get to tell a one-sided story, other studies have shown that cyclists and pedestrians are still not the ones primarily at fault. An Australian study of police reports states that 

The police identified the bicycle as the at-fault party in 35.9% of reported crashes for the years 2000-2005, while vehicles were at fault in 63.6%. In bicycle-vehicle collisions, the cyclist was the at-fault party in 369 instances (30.6%). In the remaining crashes (single
vehicle, or crashes involving pedestrians, wheeled recreational vehicles or railway stock, multiple bicycle incidents) cyclists were at-fault in 93% of crashes. 

When considering the age of the cyclist, younger cyclists were more likely than older cyclists to be at-fault, with those aged 5-11 responsible in 82% of crashes while those aged 30-39 were at-fault in 19% of crashes.

And studies in New York show similar results

A tally of NYPD’s monthly crash reports shows there were 14,845 pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths from January through November of last year (citywide crash numbers for December have not yet been released). For those 11 months, pedestrian and cyclist “error/confusion” was coded as a contributing factor in fatal and injury crashes involving 1,092 vehicles. That means only about 7 or 8 percent of pedestrian and cyclist injuries were coded as being the fault of the victim.

NYC DOT’s landmark 2010 pedestrian safety study, based on records of 7,000 crashes involving pedestrians, found that motorist behavior was the main factor in 78.5 percent of serious pedestrian injuries and fatalities. A 2012 report from Transportation Alternatives found that 60 percent of fatal New York City pedestrian and cyclist crashes with known causes between 1995 and 2009 were the result of motorists breaking traffic laws, according to data from the state Department of Transportation. And NYC DOT data from 2011 revealed that half of pedestrians killed in city crosswalks were crossing with the signal.

So, while it's true that better cyclist behavior, especially among the very young, is likely to save lives, it's not the low hanging fruit that some people think it is. The main problem, again, is driving. 

Cyclist killed crossing New Hampshire in M Street Bike lane

Two weeks after the last fatal bicycle crash, DC just had another one. 

Police said the incident occurred about 2:15 p.m. at New Hampshire Avenue and M Street in Northwest, midway between DuPont and Washington circles. Jeffrey Hammond Long, 36, of Northwest, died at a hospital on Sunday, police said.

Long and the truck driver were both traveling west on M Street. The truck driver tried to turn right onto New Hampshire Avenue and struck the bicyclist, police said.

Police said Long was trapped under the truck and rescued by firefighters.

Not a lot of details here, but that intersection is bizarre. Not only does it have a diagonal, but M also turns in the block before then making a right turn more like a 160 degree turn.