Cycling, traffic safety, traffic justice, and legal topics; energy, transit and transportion economics
Early morning head-on freeway crash SR51 near Indian School. The driver known only as a 27 y.o. man from Ohio was driving a (new?) Corvette the wrong way. Police think the driver may have been impaired. Really? You don’t say. The name hasn’t been released but expect aggravated assault charges when he’s released from hospital.
Two Tempe officers hurt in wrong-way crash on SR-51 in Phoenix
10/7/2019 6:42PM (sunset was 6:04, so mostly darkness). Sierra Vista police report that a 53 y.o. female bicyclist was killed crossing SR92 against the light, according to witnesses, at Kachina Trail.
Continue reading “Sierra Vista woman killed at intersection”
Background: in August 2019, City of Tempe made substantial changes to their local codes dealing with traffic[1]. Although the focus shifted over time (the process began soon after a Nov 2017 crosswalk death of a bicyclist), the ostensible reason to get something passed at that particular time was the feeling that escooters needed further regulation; and it would be mayhem if the fall school session began with “no laws” in place. Continue reading “Tempe’s Local Ordinance — Part II”
A woman has been arrested after she killed two pedestrians including a boy and a grown man, stopped briefly, then fled the scene, telling police, because “she thought she hit a dog.” Must have been one big dog.
See something, say something — In this case there was a fairly good vehicle description between witnesses and evidence left at the scene. The news reports that police found the driver via a neighbor’s tip. Continue reading “She thought she hit a dog”
The Arizona Republic has been running a series of throwback stories from the files of report Don Bolles who was murdered in 1976, presumably related to mob investigations he was conducting.
This one, unrelated to mob, popped up this week Don Bolles files: The drunken crash that led to tougher Arizona DUI law
The quick synopsis was in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday 1971 a very drunk driver at .251 BAC killed 3 people and left a 4th person in a permanent vegetative state. He was portrayed as being not particularly remorseful. He ultimately served 6 months of a 1 year sentence for a guilty plea to misdemeanor manslaughter. Continue reading “The drunken crash that led to tougher Arizona DUI law”
9/24/2019 ~ 6PM Gilbert Police said a 15 y.o. girl was seriously injured while crossing Greenfield Road after being struck by a southbound(not sure?) driver. She died the next morning.
This is at the trail crossing of Greenfield Road and the Western Power Line / Sun Circle Trail. The crossing there, unlike many of the others further west, has no signal or markings. Continue reading “Teen hit, killed on bike while crossing Gilbert street”
Goodyear police are investigating a 9/12/2019 crash that occurred around 6:30 involving 3 cyclists transported with injuries, and a fourth who was not transported. The news-chopper footage shows a black sedan, as well as a large number of additional cyclists who were presumably riding together in a group but were not directly involved in the crash. 12news.com azcentral Continue reading “Multi-bicycle crash in Goodyear”
URGENT: Google has announced the tool used to present the crash maps on Azbikelaw, called “Fusion Tables” is being discontinued Dec 3, 2019.
Azbikelaw is looking for a volunteer familiar with GIS and web-presentation to help effect transition to something else.
That something else would likely need to be free-to-use, either open source or free-commercial. Commercial tools run the cost gamut from prohibitively expensive to free for non-commercial use, which this application would be.
Ideally the replacement would offer all the features of fusion tables; which includes in addition to mapping, rudimentary filtering; for example find all crashes occurring at night in some particular city where a motorist was turning left in years 2010-2015.
Contact azbikelaw by leaving a comment or email 
In last week’s (8/30/2019 afternoon) serious crash a pedestrian crossing Broadway was hospitalized after being struck by a driver. Victim-blamers will joyfully point out that the crash occurred “near Hardy Drive outside of the crosswalk”. Jaywalker! Worse yet, the driver — the “other victim” here — is being persecuted for being suspected of DUI. — Driver arrested for DUI after hitting pedestrian in Tempe Continue reading “Two girls hurt in Tempe crosswalk crash”
Aug 20, 2019 ~ 8PM. The crash occurred near the intersection of East Frontage Road and North Starlight Drive, Prescott Valley. There were no details on the manner of collision.
Hit and run, bicyclist suffered serious injuries and died several days later on Aug 26. The suspect driver was book on suspicion of aggravated assault, etc.; hinting the police believe the driver was impaired and caused the crash. Now that the victim has died, charges would presumably be upgraded to a homicide.
Continue reading “Bicyclist dies after injuries in hit-run Prescott Valley crash”
ADOT has released Crash Facts 2018 in the later part of June (of 2019), as usual; this year and I did not order CDs but rather accessed the raw data online sometime in July (it will in relatively rare cases be updated after this).
The graphical crash map has been NOT updated and so continues to have years 2009-2017 ; the tool used to present the map, Google fusion tables, is being discontinued end of 2019, and I need to find a replacement.
The Fatality Grid has been reconciled and contains some specifics on every bicyclist fatality in Arizona from 2009-2018, and ongoing as discovered.
Message to my loyal azbikelaw readers: Most of the time, I don’t create a new article, but rather add information to a related existing article; for example a new bike lane was added right near my house, and I placed info about it in the article about shoehorning.
SO FROM EARLY 2019 ONWARD PLEASE SEE @azbikelaw ‘s TWITTER FEED FOR UPDATE NOTIFICATIONS. (and note that a twitter account is not necessary, though if you do have an account please “follow” @azbikelaw and you’ll receive notifications via twitter)
E-mail subscribers still receive notifications as usual but only when a new article is posted, not when I add infomation to an existing article.
This comes about a year after Arizona Cardinals General Manager Steve Keim was arrested and plead guilty to extreme DUI, emphasis added:
“The Chandler Police Department released a report on Wednesday afternoon detailing the traffic stop and arrest of Ron Minegar, the Arizona Cardinals executive vice president and chief operating officer, Saturday night on suspicion of driving under the influence… A 911 caller alerted police about a white Chevrolet Tahoe swerving and possibly speeding up to 60 mph, according to the report.
An officer stopped Minegar around 11:30 p.m. near Pecos Road and Arizona Avenue for speeding, failure to drive within one lane of traffic and driving within the bicycle lane “— azcentral 8/14/2019 Continue reading “Another Cardinals exec arrested susp of DUI”
There is nothing remarkable about this intersection; it is a prototypical arterial-arterial signalized intersection like many others in the Phoenix Metro area — this one is in the City of Tempe. Both streets are high-speed (45mph posted maximum limit); with two through lanes, a bike lane in each direction; in addition each approach the bike lane discontinues ~ 250′ from the intersection where the space flares to become a dedicated right turn only lane, additionally all approaches have a dedicated right turn only lane. The signal is timed, and there is a demand, leading, left turn arrow on all approaches. Continue reading “McClintock And Warner Wreck”
Hit and run. Police are treating this as a suspected aggravated assault; according to the silent witness flyer
Continue reading “Police: Pickup truck driver deliberately hit stalled motorcycle”