Arizona Bike Law Blog

Are Cars Dangerous?

Superhuman-sized objects moving at superhuman speeds are dangerous. Inherently. But who bears this danger? Motorist liability insurance is one supposed motivator; in theory motorists are supposed to bear the cost of the risks they are inflicting on others, but has many limitations (see e.g. The Disneyland Model). In reality this risk-spreading ends up socializing the costs of driving — paid for by others, subsidized, also called an externality. Thus we get more driving, because it is artificially cheap, and more traffic death and destruction.

It is worth pointing out to nervous cyclists that the large majority of traffic death and destruction is done by drivers of automobiles to other motorists (see, e.g. the chart here). This is to be expected, of course, since the large majority of traffic is motoring.

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Here are a couple of  recent, local incidents… out of control “accidents” all –

Tourist killed at Phoenix intersection The Arizona Republic, Glen Creno – Aug. 19, 2010

An Australian tourist crossing a Phoenix street was killed late Tuesday when a sport-utility vehicle slammed into him, authorities said Wednesday…The SUV was moving so fast the victim was dismembered by the impact. Witnesses told police the vehicle apparently ran a red light…Ramzy Khalil, 29, of New South Wales, Read the rest of this entry »

Founder of Yuma Bike Club killed in head-on collision

A one-year statute of limitations for issuance of civil traffic violations looms. If you believe the police should take action please contact the Somerton Police Department by fax, mail, phone, or email (or all of the above!)

Cyclist Doug Flynn was killed, and at least one more rider injured, in a head-on collision last year (Sept 24, 2009) by a driver trying to pass a large farm tractor on a two lane roadway.
[for a line-item on each fatality since 2009; follow this link]

A tribute to Doug posted on the YBC’s website reads “Yuma Bike Club is Read the rest of this entry »

Cash for Clunker killer sentenced

52 year old cyclist Charles Waldrop was killed by a hit and run driver who witnesses say was driving at a high rate of speed and swerving. Police say an anonymous tip lead to the apprehension and arrest of  23 y.o. Timothy Kissida after he traded (via the “Cash for Clunkers” program) a light blue 1992 BMW 325i w/damage consistent with hit-and-run.

Kissida plead guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced today, drawing 10.5 years in prison (which IIRC is the presumptive sentence). Not sure about the leaving the scene sentence.

The whole story should be in the minute entries for case CR2009-007394, but haven’t been updated yet.

[azfamily][original story on azbikelaw]

Some cyclists just won’t stay in the gutter

Flagstaff cyclist Justin Pryzby is at it again — not riding in the gutter.

Heading home from work, westbound on East Route 66 in the vicinity of Switzer Canyon Drive [google maps], he was pulled over by Flagstaff police officer. His offense? “RIDING HIS BICYCLE IN LANE NUMBER TWO OF THE ROAD WAY WHERE A BICYCLE LANE WAS PROVIDED”, according to the strangely detailed police report of the incident (the quotations from the report are for some reason in all caps, underlining added by me).

Is this a bike lane?

Officer is obviously fixated on the bike lane, and writes of it often “THE SUBJECT THEN WENT BACK INTO THE BICYCLE LANE AND I ACTIVATED MY EMERGENCY LIGHTS AND SIREN”….”THERE WAS A BICYCLE LANE THAT WAS PROVIDED”…”THERE WERE NONE OF THE EXCEPTIONS… THAT WOULD MAKE JUSTIN HAVE TO EXIT OR GET OUT OF THE BIKE LANE”

Here is a picture of a REAL bike lane

Officer charged the cyclist with two violations: §28-701E, and §28-815A.

The only trouble with Officer’s story is, there is no bike lane there. I confirmed this with City of Flagstaff multi-modal coordinator Martin Ince by telephone, and also with the State of Arizona (this happens to be a state highway) Department of Transportation Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator Michael Sanders.  It is self-evident from the photo that this could not possibly be a bicycle lane.  Nor is it marked with bike lane signage (e.g. R3-17), or ground markings. What about the lane, that is Lane number 2? It’s something under 11 feet — clearly narrow, see Take the lane. As far as I know, no one disputes the dimensions.

A real bike lane would have an R3-17 (or similar) sign

I have written before on the problems and confusion these edge-stripes-that-are-not-bike-lane-stripes cause — and this is that in spades, see e.g. Is this a bike lane?

The other charge, 28-701E, is inapplicable to bicyclists because it applies specifically to motor vehicles. See in Bicycles are not motor vehicles, and why it matters

The Trial

The first sign that something was out of the ordinary was the city exercising its option to be represented by counsel, somewhat (how much?) unusual for a civil traffic matter.

In any event the trial was held in Flagstaff Municipal Court, docket #M-9341-TR-2919994702  before Charlotte Beyal, Magistrate Pro Tempore. The city was represented by Assistant City Prosecutor Consuelo “Celo” Brennan. The cyclist represented himself.

The trial apparently went well. That is to say the judge understood and accepted the defendant’s position both that the lane was narrow and was therefore not responsible for 28-815A because of exemption 4, and that the other charge could not apply to a bicycle. Not responsible on both counts.

The Trouble with Flagstaff PD

Is it poor training? Or is this officer just out to get bicyclists who dare to exercise their right to the road? Or is it something more — is it an institutional bias?

Flagstaff recently was rewarded by LAB with a Silver Bicycle Friendly Communities designation. Enforcement is supposed to figure into that, and they got a “star” in that category. Not from what I’ve been seeing over the past 8 months or so.

I started a new tag: flagstaff-anomolies as there seems to a pattern of law enforcement and justice system problems in Flagstaff. In the wake of the NAIPTA-bus-bike fiasco,  “…the police department issued a department-wide training bulletin requiring all officers to review all bicycle laws, (deputy chief) Treadway said”. Sounds impressive? But who knows what sort of training they actually did?

11-year-old killed in crosswalk collision

An 82-year old motorist turning left onto Union Hills from 15th Avenue struck and killed an 11-year old girl riding in the crosswalk on August 5, 2010. The direction of the girl was not specified.

Names have not been released, Phoenix Police officer “Martos said the woman was not impaired and likely will not be charged. Police are still investigating.”

It wasn’t mentioned in any of the news reports but it is possible that it isn’t a bicycle, by definition bicycles are devices with wheels “more than sixteen inches in diameter”.

I’m not familiar with this area or intersection [google maps], though Union Hills Dr appears to be a typical Phoenix “car sewer”; 5 lanes of rush rush.

The mechanics of the collision are very similar to Maxwell v. Gossett, where the Arizona Supreme court found for the cyclist, and against the motorist who was turning through the crosswalk.

The so-called “left cross” is a common mode of collision; Bradley Jason Scott [tbagblog] was killed on Tempe a few weeks ago in a left cross (but not involving a crosswalk).

[azfamily][arizonarepublic][kpho]

Is it legal to ride in a crosswalk?

Setting aside the issue on the relative merits of sidewalk cycling…

By way of some more background on the legality of cycling in crosswalks; an analysis prepared by the Tuscon City Attorney’s office in 1998 found that (my emphasis) “…it is apparent that under the present state of law in Arizona a bicyclist is not prohibited from riding on or across a crosswalk…”.

It’s worth pointing out that this conclusion was reached in Tucson where it is patently illegal to cycle on the sidewalk. I am not aware of any Phoenix ordinance that affects crosswalks, thus we would fall back to the same cases and Arizona statutes analyzed in the above memo.

That being said, saying something is not prohibited is not the same as saying that the car driver must be automatically at fault, e.g. “the court held that bicyclists must still exercise due care and concern for their safety while about to enter or in the crosswalk”.

Bicycles aren’t vehicles

As we all know, bicyclists must follow the same rules as other vehicles; from time to time one hears of a story such as this one Read the rest of this entry »

Some cops REALLY don’t like critical mass

This is one of those sorts of stories you hear but just can’t quite believe until you see the youtube video.

The cop gets indicted. And later on fired/resigned. Pogan fired (or resigned or whatever. the good news is he is no longer in law enforcement).

The final outcome July 2010

http://azdailysun.com/news/national/article_c99bc0e9-e345-5361-aec8-9b3d67ab1332.html

…Jurors in April acquitted Pogan of assault and harassment in his encounter with pro-cycling activist Christopher Long. But Pogan was convicted of filing false documents after a witness’s video
contradicted his account in a court document.
…
Long, a sometime farmer and farmer’s market worker, wasn’t seriously hurt. He got a $65,000 settlement after suing the city. His lawyer didn’t immediately return a call Wednesday.

Pogan resigned last year from the New York Police Department and has been working construction jobs. His felony conviction will bar him from police work, in which he’d hoped to follow his father’s and
grandfather’s examples

.

Prescott road-rager found guilty

In an incident where a car driver was driving waaaay too close to cyclist Paul Katan. Katan is a certified cycling instructor and works for Prescott Alternative Transportation.

[dailyCourier]

“…a jury convicted the Jaguar driver, Jack Ingebritson, 64, of misdemeanor (criminal) charges of endangerment and reckless driving. On Tuesday, Prescott City Magistrate Arthur Markham fined Ingebritson $1,500, ordered him to perform 32 hours of community service and go to traffic survival school.”

Inquiring minds wonder: how is it that the trial was in some unspecified June date, and the story just made it to the newspaper on July 14,2010? I tried to look up the court records for the rager, but didn’t find anything (Prescott muni, and justice are not online there).

There was a follow up editoral a few days after the news story.

Did the punishment fit the crime? Were the charges appropriate?

The convicted rager “… admitted that he was five to six inches from the bike, according to the police report.” While Ingebritson was clearly guilty of endangerment, and reckless driving, it seems to me that his actions were an assault; he intentionally placed his weapon a few inches from the victim.

Here is a roundup of Arizona’s assault and endangerment statutes.

The news article refers to “endangerment”; if they are referring to 28-1201 a violation of which is a class 1 misdemeanor, I have to wonder about the magistrate’s judgment — a small fine and a few hours of community service for such a (potentially) dangerous crime?

I’m thinking/wondering if a more appropriate charge would have been assault, and potentially aggravated assault.  “Generally, the essential elements of assault consist of an act intended to cause an apprehension of harmful or offensive contact that causes apprehension of such contact in the victim” [legal-dictionary]. Note that the act does NOT need to result in any actual contact, or any actual physical harm, just creating the apprehension is enough. The guilty man intended to drive very close to the cyclist, it was not accidental.

On the other hand, violation of 28-1203(A)1 is also a class 1 misdemeanor (the same as endangerment, seems a little odd?). To be guilty of aggravated assault, 28-1204, a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument would have had to been used in committing the assault. Personally, I find that multi-ton, multi hundreds of horsepower automobiles can be dangerous instruments. Anyway, aggravated would bump up the crime to some level of felony.

The other charge which the defendant was found guilty of was reckless driving. That would be 28-693, and is a class  2 misdemeanor. Nothing was mentioned regarding the driver’s license of the culprit. Which leads me to believe the magistrate was letting him off too easy.  “In addition, the judge may require the surrender … of any driver license of the convicted person…  and may order the driving privileges of the person to be suspended for a period of not more than ninety days”. Why no revocation, or suspension?

Moto-cyclist killed in Tempe hit-and-run

UPDATE: Police arrest suspect 7/17/2010 [abc15] “Tempe police say Cody Ryan Davis has been charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident in the death of Bradley Jason Scott, 32, who was struck and killed at Southern Avenue and Rural Road around midnight last Saturday. Police say video shows Scott was legally riding a bicycle with the flow of traffic at the time he was struck and killed… police say he made admissions related to the incident”

Over on the TBAG blog, the question was raised about lights.  I am *guessing* that since police went out of their way to say things like “Police say video shows Scott was LEGALLY riding a bicycle… “, that the cyclist had a light.
There was also some discussion of motorized bikes in general; for a lot of minutia about motorized bicycles; see this entry.  The short answer is that the motorized bicycle law wasn’t really thought through, and has a bunch of holes and gray areas. Read the rest of this entry »

Phoenix city parks to charge $5 fee for parking

More on driver’s attitudes towards parking:

“I’m kind of flabbergasted,” … “It seems like we’re getting taxed right and left. They shouldn’t be charging for this. It’s going to be a financial burden for some people.”

And what is “this”? Why, (formerly) free parking of course. Parking must be “free” and plentiful. And I’m sure it could be a burden for some, but let’s keep things in perspective; Phoenix recently instituted a 2% grocery tax.

The plan would charge $5 a day, yearly passes would be available for $75. [arizona republic]