http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/article_43400fd2-45ef-11e1-931b-0019bb2963f4.html

A 32-year-old man was killed after he was struck by a Nissan Pathfinder while riding his bicycle on Alma School Road near Guadalupe Road late Saturday.
The bicyclist, identified as Daniel Everlove, was pronounced dead at the scene after the Pathfinder driven by Levi Chappel struck his chopper bicycle at the intersection about 11 p.m.
The Pathfinder crashed into Everlove as Everlove was eastbound on the north sidewalk adjacent to Guadalupe and attempting to cross Alma School. Everlove was thrown from his bicycle.
Impairment or speed were not identified as factors in the crash, but Chappel was cited for failure to yield at an intersection, police said.

Asside from wearing a helmet and sticking bike lanes can someone direct me to the bicyclist traffic laws.

Curious about sidewalk laws such as what to do if there’s no bike lane or sidewalk present on the flow of traffic side and the shoulder area is so small its unsafe. Do I go against the traffic, ride in te steet etc…

Also I may sound a little dumb for asking this one but as a kid I rode all over the rode with diregard to the law but when making a left turn on a bike am I suppose to enter the turning lane with the cars or cross as if I was a walking pedestrian?

Thanks

Hi Derrick:
by far the best thing you could do would be to take a bike safety class, such as Traffic Skills 101, see cazbike.org/BikeEd Right now there are no classes scheduled yet (in the phoenix metro area?) but you can do the online portion for free anytime, follow the link.

And an excellent resource is ADOT’s Arizona Bicycling Street Smarts, the entire booklet is online, and additionally you can find it at bike shops, and sometimes at the library…

John Allen’s list.

Wachtel and Lewiston ITE Journal, published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers, September 1994, pages 30-35. html and pdf version here.
Used data from several years of crash data from the city of Palo alto, CA. It also correlated to risk exposure data by using bike counts. Overall, the relative risk of being involved in a collision riding on the sidewalk was 1.8 times higher than riding in the road.
It did not attempt to quantify the risk by severity.

Table 5 demonstrates that sidewalks or paths adjacent to a roadway are usually not, as non-cyclists expect, safer than the road, but much less safe. This conclusion is already well estab­lished in existing standards for bikeway design, although in our experience it is not widely known or observed.

Im reading through the comments, an excellent help but ill be visiting phoenix next week and I want to hire a bicycle for transport.

I am not a driver here in scotland and this is a first visit to the US so im obviously wanting to do my homework first. Im likely to be drawn to the sidewalk so im not directly in the traffic so does anyone have any clarification and tips/advice for me?

Much appreciated!

Rosie

“For the jury instruction to have been proper, there would have had to have been evidence produced at trial showing that Decedent was ‘in the crosswalk’ at a time when the bus could have “yield[ed] the right-of-way,” or in other words, at a time before the bus itself occupied the right-of-way. See, e.g., Luellman v. Ambroz, 516 N.W.2d 627, 634 (Neb. Ct. App. 1994) (‘If [the bicyclist] was riding in the crosswalk prior to the time [the motorist] made her right turn, [the bicyclist] had the right-of-way.’)”

“On October 3, 2001, Matthew Preston, a graduate student at the University of
Arizona, was riding his bicycle northbound on the west sidewalk of Tucson Boulevard”

tips: you can seach Arizona Court of appeals (arizona has two divisions) by doing this google search:
bicycle site:www.cofad1.state.az.us
bicycle site:www.apltwo.ct.state.az.us