My correspondent told me that jury selection did begin on Monday.

According to police, issued to the media, at the time:

• A WB driver crossed over into the EB lane and collided head-on and killed Russell Jenkins
• “The rider…  had a working headlight on his bike”
• “The surviving cyclists … reported that Foshee had a strong odor of alcohol”
• “The driver fled the scene, but the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Traffic Unit later arrested Gary Foshe [Foshee], 53″
• “two deputies reported that Foshee had a strong odor of alcohol and several signs of intoxication”

The defendant’s prior DUI conviction, as well as his blood test results are likely to be key factors. On the other hand, the issue of the victim’s posthumous blood test results is, from what i can tell, irrelevant because it did not affect the crash in any way.

Much more background here and here.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the NTSB has called for a total ban on use of portable electronic communications by drivers — thats text, talk, handsfree or not — the whole shootin’ match.

This bill is a total ban; but targets only permitees and new drivers under 18 (but only for six months); which seems like a pretty logical place to start. The youngest drivers don’t have the experience and also tend not to understand the consequences of their actions that only comes with maturity and experience. When questioned about difficulty of enforcement, McComish pointed out that it is a secondary offense, like seat-belt laws, and that it will give parents a useful tool.

In case you’re wondering how this affects bicycle riders; it doesn’t. The licensing statutes are in Chapter 8, and bicyclists are only bound to follow Chapter 3, 4, and 5, see 28-812.

The hearing in front of the senate Public Safety and Human Services committee 1/18/2012 (direct link, does that work?) was very good; it’s near the end, and is about 10 minutes. This bill is something of a follow-on to some graduated driver’s license restrictions (the Teen Driver Safety Act, enacted in 2007.  Bill number?). Stuart Goodman spoke in favor on behalf of AAA; i would like to quote him, and i might be in the minutes(?) but in sortof paraphrase he said that according to CDC the number one cause of death for teens is traffic collisions; that the graduated license restrictions were good/helpful and there is evidence that as from 198?-2007 as alcohol-involved teen deaths have decreased,  the overall rate of teen fatalities has remained largely unchanged… and that is largely attributed to an increase in distracted driving as becoming the primary culprit. He then rattled off a bunch of age-related stats that seemd to indicate teen deaths are way down (due presumably to graduated license restrictions, like nighttime driving, and limiting the number of passengers for novice drivers). It passed unanimously out of committee.

Here are the new sections, as introduced:

28-3154

C. A PERMITTEE SHALL NOT DRIVE A MOTOR VEHICLE WHILE USING A WIRELESS COMMUNICATION DEVICE FOR ANY REASON EXCEPT DURING AN EMERGENCY IN WHICH STOPPING THE MOTOR VEHICLE IS IMPOSSIBLE OR WILL CREATE AN ADDITIONAL EMERGENCY OR SAFETY HAZARD. A PEACE OFFICER SHALL NOT STOP OR ISSUE A CITATION TO A PERSON OPERATING A MOTOR VEHICLE ON A HIGHWAY IN THIS STATE FOR A VIOLATION OF THIS SUBSECTION UNLESS THE PEACE OFFICER HAS REASONABLE CAUSE TO BELIEVE THERE IS ANOTHER ALLEGED VIOLATION OF A MOTOR VEHICLE LAW OF THIS STATE.

28-3174

F. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN SUBSECTION K OF THIS SECTION, FOR THE FIRST SIX MONTHS THAT A CLASS G LICENSEE HOLDS THE LICENSE, THE LICENSEE SHALL NOT DRIVE A MOTOR VEHICLE WHILE USING A WIRELESS COMMUNICATION DEVICE FOR ANY REASON EXCEPT DURING AN EMERGENCY IN WHICH STOPPING THE MOTOR VEHICLE IS IMPOSSIBLE OR WILL CREATE AN ADDITIONAL EMERGENCY OR SAFETY HAZARD.

The disconnect Kaminski, and others of his ideological ilk, is this; that somehow streets can be made safer by ever-expanding the number and speed of privately operated motor vehicles. But this is simply not possible. Faster and more always equals more dead; mostly more motorists, but also more dead peds, and more dead bicyclists. The numbers are stark; comparing e.g. Phoenix with Seattle (metro areas), the Dangerous by Design survey estimates Phoenix to be FOUR TIMES more deadly to pedestrians than Seattle. The number spills over not just in pedestrian deaths, but also cyclists deaths, and also to MOTORISTS deaths; see e.g. Beyond Safety in Numbers: why bike friendly cities are safer (for everybody).

Thus Kaminski rejects car-user-fees as hair-brained; yet motorists are the source of enormous externalities — economic impacts that aren’t paid for by their users — from air pollution (never mind ‘global warming’), to mayhem, to free parking.

By the way, McGinn has only been mayor for the past two years; I’m not suggesting that McGinn has made it safer. It was already safe, relatively speaking — due in no small part to its general overall “anti-car” culture.

*SC and MO: requires “safe operating” — not specific distance. I also need to look up NC; i seem to remember they have a 2-foot specification for passing.

For background, history and commentary on Three-foot “safe passing laws” see original page on azbikelaw.org

Since completing the roundup last year, I mainly hear of these through word-of-mouth, so please contact me if you have any more info.

• IL, Illinois passed SB0080 Aug 16, 2007, which became Public Act 095-0231.
• AR, Arkansas Act 681, passed Mar 29, 2007.
• ME, Maine LD 1808, becomes Public Law Chapter 400, passed Jun 22, 2007
• TN, Tennesee passes HB0235 — the “Jeff Roth Bicycle and Pedalcyclists Protection Act of 2007″, May 3, 2007. It is filed as Chapter 81 of 105th Legislture
• WA, Washington. The CBCEF has a campaign at give3feet.org, which is sponsored by it includes some nifty graphics of three feet.
• OR, Oregon had a bill that died, SB0299 (search for 299 in current/2007 measures), and passed as SB0108. Addresses passing , but not specific distance. I.e. no 3 feet.
• CA, California AB 60 (search for 60 in assembly bills 2007/2008), withdrawn Apr 16, 2007.
• CT, Public Act 08-01 enacted a new law in Connecticut, effective October 1, 2008, which requires motorists to allow at least three feet of separation
• NH, HB-1203. Requires not only 3 feet, but also “one additional foot of clearance required for every 10 miles per hour above 30 miles per hour”. It has a few other provisions. An extra reflective strip must now be worn in the dark — good idea but seems to me to be an unnecessary legal burden on an otherwise well-lit cyclist.
• FL, Florida State Statute 316.083, 316.085
• SC, HB3006 passed in 2008, 5 foot distance was dropped from the bill but requires a “safe operating distance”, Section 56-5-3435. The law includes criminal penalties if the infraction results in serious injury or death, Section 56-5-3500. It even makes harassment a crime. There are other good new provisions, in addition to deleting the mandatory sidepath rule, new language in their ride-right rule makes clear “A bicyclist may, but is not required to, ride on the shoulder of the road”, Section 56-5-3430.
• CO, Senate Bill 148 governor signed May 12, 2009. also includes something about 2 abreast, and other things. Details at Bicycle Colorado.
• LA (Louisiana), general info: louisiana3feet.com (2009)
• MS (Mississippi),  “The John Paul Frerer Bicycle Safety Act”, SB3014, becomes law July 1, 2010. Some other stuff in there, not all good “Mississippi also joins the 41 states with discriminatory ‘Far to the Right’ laws on the books”, according to Richard Masoner. General info page: mississippi3feet.org …
• MD (Maryland), SB51 in 2010. Modifies transportation section 21-1209 (MD code currently here). Some intricate/odd features, such as if the road is not wide enough to allow 3 feet, drivers don’t have to… strange.
• GA. HB101.  From 3footrule.com:  “May 11th – HB 101 Signed into Law – 3 Foot Safe Passing Rule was approved! Gov Deal signed HB 101 into law. April 14th, 2011 – HB 101 was approved by the House 150-9 with a 3 Foot Safe Passing amendment from the Senate. (Effective July 1, 2011)” Though if you read the bill/law it sounds weak motorist must allow at least three feet “when feasible”, so if it’s not feasible, anything goes. hmmm …
• CA SB910 gets vetoed Oct 2011 (with a really stupid explanation by governor) — but in any event, I found 3 other states that i HAD MISSED entirely, so added them to the list: KS, NV, NY (all either in 2011 or 2010). this makes 20 by my count.
• PA Pending Proposal since spring 2011: HB170 — 4-foot passing distance. Also contains this abusable new section 3364(2): “A pedalcycle may be operated at a safe and reasonable speed appropriate for the pedalcycle. A pedalcycle operator shall use reasonable efforts so as not to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic.”

…

A perennial problem with any such law is lack of enforcement (or perhaps enforceability, depending on who you ask), e.g.  In the city of Tucson over an 18-month period there were a total of 3 citations according to tucsonbikelawyer.com; zero-citations-so-far-for-three-foot-passing-rule-in-tucson-this-year.

Here’s another roundup, current as of later part of 2008

Another one that is less recent according to the date, but is notable because it includes passing laws for all fifty states.

618 cyclists (person type 6 bicyclist, and 7 other pedalcyclist) were killed in 2010 in traffic collisions — and as noted at the link above, only collisions with motor vehicles in-transport are tracked by FARS. So for example, a bicyclist who lost control and died as a result of crashing into a tree would not be tracked here, nor would a bicyclist who strikes a parked motor vehicle.

The added information becomes a new “table” (in the parlance of databases), if you download the raw data files, it will be all found in the file PBtype.dbf

The information follows more-or-less exactly the PBcat, probably no coincidence. PBcat is the Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crash Analysis Tool, and contains among other things the bicyclists direction, and a detailed crash type (or for the complete reference, see PBcat’s manual, appendix C)

So, say you were interested in bicyclists running stop signs; you would do a query and then a univariate split and take a look at Types 142, 144, and 147; all subtypes of “Bicyclist Failed to yield — Sign-Controlled Intersection”. There were 17+41+1 = 59 such fatalities recorded.

Since this is the first and only year where these national stats are available, they are of limited usefulness — that will change over time as the dataset grows and wil become a very useful comprehensive source of understanding bicyclist (and pedestrian) traffic fatalities.

PBcat in the wild

It’s not clear to me why, but the state of North Carolina had PBcatted all their ped and bike crashes statewide for many years; leading to a very rich database of statistical information. E.g. 12,000 bike crashes covering the period 1997-2008!

In Arizona, ADOT as part of the BSAP has PBcatted 746 bike crashes in the “concentration” areas but it only covers the state-highway system. See e.g. Table 1 in working paper 3 for the full breakout of crash types.

Ahwatukee is called — sometimes derisively, sometimes happily — the world’s largest cul-de-sac. Setting aside 48th street for a moment; Ahwatukee’s ONLY ingress/egress is Pecos Rd (which is loop 202, a limited-access highway), Chandler Blvd (10 lanes?), Ray Road (10 lanes), Warner Road (only 6 lanes?), Elliot Road (10 lanes?). So these are all either a limited-access freeway, or humongous monstrosities that have interchanges with I-10.

In short, these are all car-choked, car-sewers. They are not particularly bad for cyclists; two (Ray, and Chandler) have wide-curb lanes; Warner has nice narrow lanes;  I find Elliot road to be most annoying as it is (or was?) “critical width“; that is to say not wide yet not narrow enough to be perceived as too narrow to share by many motorists. Yet many cyclists, understandably, don’t want to do it. It is a thoroughly obnoxious experience for pedestrians, too.

48th Street/Guadalupe is the ONLY bridge over I-10 that is a reasonable human scale, it is 2-lanes (only 1 in each direction!), and has no interchange with the freeway, it’s just a bridge. Thus this makes a vital connection for anyone wishing to bike between Ahwatukee and, say, Tempe/ASU. And it also forms the ONLY connection for Ahawatukee bicyclists wishing to get to the rest of Phoenix  (through The Pointe at South Mountain, now called ???. Using what are actually private streets but there’s some sort of public easement).

Why are there no other non-interchange bridges over I-10? E.g. in Tempe, Hardy Dr crosses US60; and there is a ped-bridge just a mile or two away at College. Ahwatukee is like 5 miles. Why don’t ANY collector roads, e.g. Knox Road, cross I-10?

Back to the present case

Here are a bunch of captioned pictures: azbikelaw.org/images/48thGuad

So this stretch of 48th street has been a continuous bone-of-contention for years. North of Piedmont, the road consists of two no-questions-about-it narrow lanes (perhaps 11 feet)  in each direction. The posted speed limit is 35mph. There is no shoulder (only an odd edge line just to the left of the gutter-pan joint). There is a raised median; the median appears to be approx 18 feet (curbface-to-curbface) wide.

Let’s be very clear: cyclists may (legally) and should (for safety) be riding IN THE MIDDLE OF THE (right) LANE when going straight ahead.

It appears the best thing the city could do would be to install Shared Lane Markings (SLM, a.k.a. “Sharrows”). The standard calls for “the centers of the Shared Lane Markings should be at least 4 feet from the face of the curb”… in my opinion placing them at the minimum 4′ is confusing far to the right in an 11′ lane (who came up with that spec?). The gutter pan is about 1 foot, perhaps a little more — I would want to see the center of the marking to be something like 6′ from curbface.

For extra credit, I would also like to see some BMUFL signs (see same link above as Shared Lane Markings).

Sharrows Appear

[update 1/17/2012. There is an email from city engineer Kerry Wilcoxon explaining more about the situation and plan for fix/finishing here. In paraphrase, the city is having some delay/difficulty procuring thermoplastic slm's -- once they do, they with fix the bad ones and apply correctly in thermo all along the whole stretch; but there is not timeframe given]

Some sharrows appeared on a the northern section, the part that still shows the edgelines, sometime in very late December 2011. (in other words, the part that wasn’t resurfaced, traffic engineers apparently refer to this as an ‘overlay’, somewhat recently, perhaps mid-2011, which obliterated the lines which were thankfully not restored)

They appear to have been placed at the bare minimum of 4′ from curbface. This leads to problems; though the lane is clearly narrow, this position is going to encourage riders to ride too far to the right, as well as drivers to expect (demand?) that cyclists ride at the right edge. This is contrary to both law ( ride-to-the right, §28-815A, doesn’t apply in narrow lanes, because of exception #4) and safety (e.g. see ADOT Street Smarts: “On a multilane road with narrow lane, ride in the middle of the right lane”).

The sharrows should be place something like 6′ from curbface. Cyclists who wish to can still ride as far to the right as they please. And it puts motorists on notice that they should expect to see cyclists in the middle of the lane, as cyclists are taught to do.

I can only hope this is some sort of temporary test sort of thing, and these existing sharrows can get moved, and they can be properly positioned in the other section of 48th Street that presently has no sharrows (the un-edgelined part, down to Piedmont). BMUFL signs would be welcome, too… In their present incarnation as placed, these markings are hurting, not helping. (as mentioned in the above update, it appears they will be moved to the left so stay tuned)

Bikes May Use Full Lane Signs

As of 1/5/2011 the BMUFL (R4-11) signs are in place; it looks like there are six of them. I think these signs are great — that is, unlike a “share the road” sign, they have very little chance of being mis-interpreted. I was a little surprised at how many cyclists I saw just in 15 minutes while taking pictures. I noted 5 cyclists total not counting myself: 3 southbound ( #1 shows a motorist waiting to turn right ,  #2: showing some good motorist passing examples, and  #3: a gutter bunny where motorists don’t change lanes to pass), one northbound, and one northbound conterflow on the sidewalk. Given the time of day, 4pm,the predominant traffic flow was southbound as expected.

I do have a gripe with the signs, at least two of them are heavily obscured by other signs, and thus are less likely to be seen by motorists. I have no idea how easy it is to address this problem, in one case some of the obstruction is from tree branches which seems simple enough to fix. In other cases, it may be that there are just too many (other) signs.. dunno.

This one is obscured by some tree branches and the “welcome to Phoenix” sign. I took this from the median, the view from where a driver would be is far more obstructed. Could the BMUFL sign be hung on the same post as the welcome sign? — that would make it a lot more visible

Another is obscured by a really big directional sign. Not sure what the solution is, the road curvature is a problem.

…

Here is a link to sharrow (“Shared Lane Markings”) and BMUFL sign info in the MUTCD.

HEARING SCHEDULED 1/26/2012 at 9AM by the House Transportation committee. All video is archived, in case you miss it live, you can also view the 3/4/2009 hearing at the archive — it’s kind of interesting.

BILL PASSES out of the Transportation Committee 1/26/2012, on an 8-2 vote. It was passed “DP” (do pass. i.e. passed without any amendment). If you didn’t see it live, you can catch it on archived, but it looks like there is a day or two delay…

Prima Facia

I haven’t paid any attention to this up until now (and it was in the bill since it was first introduced in 2009), and perhaps I should have because it looks to be a serious flaw. The bill as written automatically places bicyclists in a weaker legal position if they become involved in a collision with a motorist who also has a stop. This should be addressed an corrected so that bicyclists aren’t assumed to be liable in such a situation (liability should be assigned according to what actions the bicyclist and driver took, not just that a bicycle is a bicycle). I’m not sure if the Idaho approach, see 49-720, fixes this or not. I would think it does. They made a separate statute in the bicycling chapter; it doesn’t piggy-back on the yield-sign law.

There’s also some confusion at 4-way (all-way) stops.

The site friendsofcalholman.com is doing, and has done an excellent job of making things that we rarely see available; such as the actual plea agreements.

On a larger scope, they have exposed these two men’s driving history; again something we rarely get to see. According to friendsofcalholman the two,

Van Brakel was driving an AMG Mercedes, after hitting Cal Holman his car continued 75 feet past the intersection. Van Brakel hit first on the passenger side. He did not sustain any injuries in the crash…  Since 2004 there have been 7 tickets for various moving violations. Driving 55 in a 35 zone, 67 in a 40 zone, and failing to yield in a cross walk are a sample of his driving record… Van Brakel has several pervious driving violations. One ticket in 2004, was for doing 120 miles per hour in a 75 miles per hour zone. [link]

and the other:

Aronica’s Mustang flipped on impact and landed in the ditch on the side of Scottsdale … Aronica was injured with a broken arm and his passenger had minor cuts…. Since 2002 Aronica has had 13 citations. On December 3rd, less than four weeks prior to the accident where he hit and killed Cal Holman, he was cited for doing 88 miles per hour in a 60 miles per hour zone. This was in Texas while he was traveling to Arizona… Other citations include speeding. In Virginia speeding 84 in a 65 zone, in Florida traveling 20-29 miles per hour over the posted speed, again in Virginia speeding 79 in a 65 zone, in Maryland he had four speeding violations, and in Michigan he has 3 violations for speeding including a careless driving and a 78 in a 55 zone. [link]

This really makes me wonder how such repeated dangerous driving behavior can be tolerated — why weren’t their licenses suspended or revoked before they killed somebody? Traffic collisions, even after a marked decline, continue to be a leading cause of death for Americans. Who’s minding the store?

Or rather, it completely depends on traffic — if there is conflicting traffic they do (usually) stop; otherwise RARELY. Here is a brief clip where 1 driver stopped (well, almost, but I’ll give it to him) to yield to cross-traffic, and then the next SIX rolled through without stopping:

If that’s too short for you, here is a longer clip that I didn’t even bother to count — the story is exactly the same; DRIVERS RARELY STOP AT STOP SIGNS.

For the technically curious: there is no (marked) crosswalk in this direction, nor is there a painted stop line, here is the statute regarding stop signs: §28-855.

Why do they do it?

See Stop Sign Compliance for discussion and links to some social research studies that offer some explanations. In social research, it is referred to as an example of a “folk crime” (dubbed so apparently by H. L. Ross in 1961, see Traffic Law Violation: A Folk Crime, 8 Social Problems 232).

The more direct explanation is people (drivers and cyclists are people, after all!) act in ways that they perceive as rational and reasonable, and pay scant attention to the letter of the law.

Do drivers stop before making a Right Turn on Red?

It is the same story. Here’s a clip in case you are interested (sorry, but you’ll have to skip in about 40 seconds in order to be able to see the traffic signal).

Do bicyclists run Red Lights?

Here is an interesting published article that goes along along with the compliance theme  from AAP: Riding through red lights: The rate, characteristics and risk factors of non-compliant urban commuter cyclists, via a posting at www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/motorists-front-of-judea-what-have-the-cyclists-ever-done-for-us/

• Detailed UPDATED drawing.
• Detailed original drawings.
• Presentation discussing the Diet.

The Diet

The diet part of the plan seems like a slam dunk… Normally any road diet is opposed becasue of fears that the lane removal will increase automobile congestion. In this particular case, that isn’t possible because of the unusual circumatance that this 1-mile stretch of 3 through lanes in each direction, is bounded on both ends by 2 through lanes. I.e. both north of Bethany Home Road, and south of Camelback Road is already only two lanes.

The Buffered Bike Lane

The “problem” then became what to do with “extra” space? A generously wide bike lane, including gutter is only 6′ wide, and the diet meant that 12′ of space had to be filled (in both directions). The answer came in the form of placing a 6′ buffer between the bike lane and the rightmost traffic lane. A.k.a a Buffered Bike Lane, see e.g. nacto.org.

I am somewhat skeptical of placing space between cyclists and overtaking vehicles. While this is presented as an un-alloyed good thing by many facilities advocates, it clearly has safety drawbacks which usually go unmentioned. here is a more balanced view, as presented in the Feb 2010 (the latest) Draft AASHTO Guide, p.78 (my emphasis):

Striped buffers may be used to provide increased separation between a bike lane and another adjacent lane that may present conflicts, such as a parking lane with high‐turnover or a higher speed travel lane. The benefits of additional lateral separation should be weighed against the disadvantages; a buffer between the bike lane and the adjacent motor vehicle travel lanes places cyclists further from the normal sight lines of motorists, who are primarily looking for vehicles in the normal travel lanes, and buffers between the travel lane and bike lane reduce the natural “sweeping” effect of passing motor vehicles, potentially requiring more frequent maintenance.

 That all being said, I objected to the original design which called for the outer buffer stripe to gradually arc into the intersection. This seemed to me to be a recipe for extra right-hooks. City staff readily agreed to my and Gene’s suggestion to end the buffer ahead of each intersection, and then a bit of dashed line; which is incidentally, as shown in the NACTO guide as recommended. (so thanks to Kerry Wilcoxon, and Joe Perez).

This should make the buffer “not bad” at intersections, yet doesn’t do anything for the many driveways. In other words, it should be no worse than a standard bike lane at intersections, but I fear it will raise risks at driveways relative to bike lane. So anyway, I’m reserving my judgement on the whole buffered bike lane thing. The hope is that it will encourage/entice cyclists off the sidewalks, where most collisions occur. However that doesn’t help the legally

The re-striping

The striping project apparently happened on schedule 4AM Saturday morning 1/7/2012, there are some pics on P4′s Facebook page (f.b. login required to view). TBAG has listed a ride to visit the new work on 1/8/2010.