ArizonaBikeLaw

Girl narrowly escapes injury after driver slams into her home

Seriously? Seriously, how often does stuff like this happen? A driver slams through the wall of a home and into the bedroom of a girl who’s sleeping just inches away. The suspect/driver Daniel Sanchez Patino fled, but of course.

Freak “accident”? Lots of freaks out there… how about: Driving into a classroom (killing 1, injuring 11), driving into a Seven-11 and killing a shopper, walking out the front door of CVS (one dead), or taking a break out in front of the Walgreens where you work (one dead), or rammed at a bus stop (2 dead, one injured), or just out for a stroll on the sidewalk (one dead) / or a jog on sidewalk (one dead). I could go on. Oiy Veigh.

Continue reading “Girl narrowly escapes injury after driver slams into her home”

Report: Truck driver was looking at phone in deadly crash

[July 2015 Jorge Espinoza was sentenced to 6 years prison ]

[2/6/2015 A Yuma county jury found the driver guilty of negligent homicide, a class 4 felony, along with several other endangerment charges. yumasun.com I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s unprecedented for a prosecutor to bring, and get conviction, on any homicide charge against a driver not suspected of being impaired. Note that the “defense had also argued that is not against the law to use a cell phone while driving” claim did not win the day; he was convicted anyway. ]

[Update Sept 2014; trial should have been going on but has been delayed due to defense attorney’s medical condition reports the yumasun.com ]

Police and prosecutors have released info regarding why they decided to charge the truck driver who caused a wreck that killed DPS Officer Tim Huffman near Yuma on May 6, 2013 with a string of felonies including 2nd degree Murder. (see Police work is dangerous, scroll down a bit, for earlier reports) Excerpts from Report: Truck driver was looking at phone in deadly crash: Continue reading “Report: Truck driver was looking at phone in deadly crash”

Hit and Run and good-old-fashioned-policework

[Final (?) Update 1/9/2015; defendant pleaded guilty to one count of 28-1201 endangerment, a Class 6 (the most minor) felony. Notably, the charge that was dropped, hit-and-run, is a much more serious class, class 3, and also would have triggered a mandatory 5-year license . The sentence is 3 years probation. One wonders how endangerment can possibly be “non-dangerous” but it’s right there in the deal. Sweet deal for the defendant, though it was a very long and drawn out — the collision he ran from occurred almost a year and a half ago — and presumably very expensive process ] Continue reading “Hit and Run and good-old-fashioned-policework”

Fatal pedestrian crashes reach record level in City of Tucson

speedwayAndAlvernonCarSewer — Speedway and Alvernon — whole lotta lanes! Seven y.o. Simon Foster was killed while crossing here in a crosswalk, with a green light

speedwayAndAlvernonCarSew — Speedway and Alvernon — intersections the size of parking lots.

Fresh on the heels of Another-Speedway-crosswalk-ped-death (10/20/2013); the azstarnet.com is reporting ped fatal in the City of Tucson are at record levels: “Twenty-one people have died when they were walking or hit by a vehicle since the beginning of the year (the year is 2013, as of late-October). The average for the Tucson area is 15 pedestrian deaths per year”. I doubt fancy engineering, like HAWKs, can have much of an overall effect — rather the Tucson area, like the Phoenix metro area, is simply Dangerous by Design. Things like a handful of extra blinkie crosswalks are merely a band-aid over the (apparently worsening) problem. “transportation agencies typically prioritize speeding traffic over the safety of people on foot… Pedestrian fatalities have fallen at only half the rate of motorists, dropping by just over 14 percent during the period (2000-2009). In many places, including 15 of the country’s largest metro areas, pedestrian fatalities have actually increased even as overall traffic deaths fell”. This preference for extra lanes and speeding-up motorists it detrimental to the safety of motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists — all road users!

Another Speedway crosswalk ped death

Crosswalk ped death of Matthew Bono 10/20/2013, initially hit-and-run; driver returned and was arrested on suspicion of 2nd degree murder (dui). The crash was at East Speedway and North Richey.

This death comes just a couple of weeks and less than 1/2 mile away from after another Speedway crosswalk ped death “…Simon Foster, 7, whose father, Don, took him and his sister, Charlie, 5, to dinner at McDonald’s at East Speedway and North Alvernon Way the evening of Sept. 29. Afterward, as they were crossing Speedway, on a green light and in the crosswalk, a driver simply turned right (on red) and plowed into them, police reports say. That driver, 31-year-old Saylee Solo,…”. Sol was later charged with causing a death w/moving violation, a misdemeanor. Continue reading “Another Speedway crosswalk ped death”

Police: Mesa couple arrested after biking in street, assaulting officer

odd news story:

A man and woman were arrested Monday on suspicion of assaulting a (Mesa, i assume) police officer after the officer tried to stop them from riding their bikes in the street, according to a court document. Kerry Castleman, 49, is accused of standing in a fighting stance and pushed an officer after police stopped him while he was biking in the right lane of East Broadway Road near South Country Club Road, according to the document. When the officer tried to put handcuffs on Castleman, 43-year-old Cary McCoy…

Tucson bicyclist killed on Golf Links Road

Crossing doesn’t sound correct… how can an eastbound unit that crashed into a westbound unit be “crossing”? Also the area has raised medians; making crossing difficult other than at intersections; but the police/fire describe it as happening on a particular road near another, i.e. not at an intersection. (updated from adot crash data: this was just a staight-up intersection crash; cyclist failed to yield at a, i guess, stop sign)….

10/5/2013 “evening” (dark, one guesses?) E Golf Links Rd and Calle Yucatan.

Tucson bicyclist dead after riding in front of SUV

A 71-year-old man (Thomas Ferrer) riding a bicycle in Tucson has been killed after riding directly into the path of an oncoming SUV Tucson police say the man was struck Saturday evening while crossing a major thoroughfare on the city’s south side. He was taken to a hospital but did not survive. Police spokeswoman Sgt. Maria Hawke says investigators found the bicyclist was riding across east golf Links road and rode right into the path of the westbound sport utility vehicle. The SUV driver wasn’t hurt.

Is it really 20 times more dangerous?

I’ve been seeing, more often lately it seems, fairly bold numerical statements about relative bike traffic safety; so to take this one from peopleforbikes for example (my emphasis added): “The problem is particularly glaring here in the United States, where bike injury and fatality rates are roughly 20 times those of the cycling-friendly countries of western Europe“. Continue reading “Is it really 20 times more dangerous?”

Valley Attorney Pleads guilty in fatal hit-and-run

[Update: The result of Butel’s disciplinary action Presiding Disciplinary Judge PDJ-2014-9037. some suspension of her law license; a year, but retroactive; myazbar.org has a summary]

[Sentencing came down early December: Butel “was sentenced Friday to 10 days in jail and three years of probation”, though it didn’t really turn out that way, see Case minutes of the 12/6/2013 sentencing minute: “credit for 9 (deferred) day(s) served”. Plea deal minute is dated 9/30/2013. However, the “deferred” days were never served, see minute 3/24/2014 “deleting the 9 day jail term”, what’s up with that? Leaving 1 day for the dui, would be my guess. See also for example the driver who killed Dr. Marwan Maalouf had his sentence halved after sentencing. I also note that the 9/30 agreement had already whittled down the charges from leaving the scene of a fatal to leaving the scene of a non-serious injury crash; dropping the felony from a class 3 to 5.]

Valley attorney Aimee Butel plead guilty. This will be a felony 3 — leaving the scene of a collision she did not cause; plus a simple DUI… “preliminary test showed Butel had a blood alcohol content of 0.129”. Why do drivers hit and then run? Usually because they are doing something wrong (like, e.g. dui) Continue reading “Valley Attorney Pleads guilty in fatal hit-and-run”

Arizona Bicyclist and Ped Crash Map

Volunteer Needed

crashmap

URGENT: Google has announced the tool used to present the crash maps, below, 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.

Please see this article for more info. Below is the historical data and procedures.

Continue reading “Arizona Bicyclist and Ped Crash Map”

A Tale of Five Phoenix Bike-MV collisions.

Fault was assigned to the bicyclist in four of the five reports. In two of those, the bicyclist was doing something obviously illegal/wrong (riding the wrong way in the roadway, and running into a stopped vehicle). However, the other two do not support that finding — in one a motorist violated a bicyclist’s ROW by turning into it, and in the other a bicyclist was struck by a motorist who was attempting to turn right-on-red.

Perhaps the reason Phoenix has a persistently high bicyclist MaF (Most at Fault) rate is the officers are often not investigating bike-MV crashes correctly?

Continue reading “A Tale of Five Phoenix Bike-MV collisions.”

Driver slams into day spa; 1 dead, 4 go hospital

[Updated; as expected/suspected this death and injuries DO NOT appear in official crash records from ADOT, nor will they appear in the FARS when that is released. See this comment for how I checked asdm]

9/27/2013. A story like this, besides being a tragedy, tends to make headlines (even going national, usatoday.com story) but, Seriously, how often does stuff like this happen? Apparently regularly; like the shopper killed inside a Tucson convenience store in July…. or… 11-year old boy dead in a Phoenix parking lot in May… or … 2 Dead in Phoenix after pickup slams into bus stop in March… or… 1 Dead at a Peoria Walgreens sitting on the bench in front of store in 2010… This is just what i noticed reading the paper; These were all in the recent past, just in Arizona. This is not a complete list! ha. Continue reading “Driver slams into day spa; 1 dead, 4 go hospital”

LED bike lights

Advances in LED lighting, and Li-Ion batteries have made BRIGHT lighting for cyclists reasonable and cost-effective.

The picture doesn’t do it justice; these lights are very very bright; I have been running them in daylight on their lower-power setting and they are quite visible.

The lights I stumbled on are sold on eBay “direct from China”; from seller “lifebike2011” for ~ $30 (the price has been going down) for a kit that includes a light head; handlebar mount; head strap (that i’ve never used or tried) and a 4-cell Li-Ion battery pack (which is wired in parallel, by the way; i.e. nominal voltage is 4VDC). Continue reading “LED bike lights”

Ug another godaddy problem

[ok, so it’s not exactly correct to blame Godaddy. this is something they (godaddy) is doing for security purposes to try and prevent various types of attacks on their servers; which we godaddy customers should appreciate, even if troublesome.
Update: I called in the morning early of 9/26/2013. They are totally aware of the problem. I had turned on my error logs last night but strangely they were and still were empty; supposedly the tech said they will look into that. Other than that they pretty much said it *should* be fixed within 48 hours. As of 1130am it does look good; so i’m not sure if something was actually generally fixed , or if they just whitelised my ip — the tech did want my ip address so that’s a possibility]

Manifests itself in chrome browser as “No data received” (or as “This page can’t be displayed” in IE) when trying to publish or update a post in wordpress, and is (annoyingly) intermittent. Continue reading “Ug another godaddy problem”

Should Warner Road bike lane have a “Combined” Turn Lane?

A standard sign with placard, “legalizes” thru-bike usage.

it is a common occurrence — familiar to every bicyclist — where you can be riding along a perfectly nice bike lane only to have it disappear for various reasons.

Bike lanes are highly prized for making cycling “more comfortable”; so I think it’s safe to say disappearing bike lanes would be considered quite stressful, and an impediment to cycling for many cyclists.

Disappearing Bike Lane; Warner Rd at Hardy Dr, Tempe, AZ

I have, over the past year, had occasion to regularly ride along Warner Road in Tempe (this area is sometimes referred to as “south” Tempe. Here’s a map of the general vicinity) between I-10 (the city limit) and McClintock Drive; it’s about 3.5 miles. The road is very much an arterial road with two fast through lanes (45mph, if i recall correctly) plus a bike lane each way plus some sort of middle lane throughout (it’s usually a TWLTL; two way left turn lane; it becomes a left turn lane at major intersections). The difficulty is at every intersection where there is a right turn only lane, the bike lane is dropped ~ 250′ from the intersection. This dropping occurs asymmetrically at some, but not all, of the major intersections. It is most prominent westbound: the lane drops at McClintock, Rural, Kyrene, Hardy, and Priest Drive. That is FIVE TIMES in three miles! Continue reading “Should Warner Road bike lane have a “Combined” Turn Lane?”