So as things turn out, drivers lose control and drive up on sidewalks on a regular basis. Seriously, just look around. People sometimes get hurt; it’s a random function of being there. What happens to all these reckless drivers? Hard to know, many times nothing, like the young man who killed a jogger on an Ahwatukee sidewalk a few years ago. In other cases, these are hit-and-run; nobody pays, so you pay for the damage through increased taxes and insurance rates. Continue reading “Car Drives Into Man At Tempe Bus Stop; leg amputated”
Revenue from Traffic Fines
So there’s this meme (or maybe: myth, urban legend, commonly held belief, or whatever) that governments generate lavish amounts from traffic ticket fines, and that’s the “real” reason why the need to ticket their citizens — nothing to do with safety of course; and probably particularly the case when mentioning photo-enforcement. Continue reading “Revenue from Traffic Fines”
Godaddy go slow again?
This picks up where godaddy-troubles-slow-wordpress-grid-hosting-solution left off. Azbikelaw has been on so-called grid hosting from godaddy ever since the migration of Nov 2010. And it’s been pretty good ever since; it’s not blazing fast, e.g. webpagetest.org on one particular afternoon saw a full wordpress homepage load in under 3 seconds; 1st byte at under a second. So, acceptable. As we learned in Dec of 2014 when problems arose trying to use wordpress on cazbike.org, grid hosting is no longer available for new accounts (i.e. azbikelaw is “grandfathered”). So, at that time cazbike.org to transitioned (albeit manually, I had to reload everything from scratch) to “cPanel” hosting. The pricing is the same. Continue reading “Godaddy go slow again?”
Knowingly
The case of Trevor Clarke, an Ottawa Canada driver who was involved in a serious 2012 collision with a bicyclist while drunk, and then fled the scene raised quite a stir. According to news reports, the driver was convicted (by a judge, meaning this was for unstated reasons not a jury trial) in 2015 of “impaired driving causing bodily harm”, but was found not guilty of leaving the scene because the judge said. “I am left in a reasonable doubt about whether Mr. Clarke knew or was wilfully blind to having collided with a person, precisely because he was so drunk. He cannot, therefore, be convicted of this offence”. Continue reading “Knowingly”
Noted pediatric cancer doctor killed in Scottsdale motorcycle crash
The 6/8/2015 morning crash as described is a classic left-hook; where the victim was riding straight ahead and crashed with a trailer being pulled behind a pickup whose driver apparently mis-judged the situation either the closing speed or perhaps forgot he was pulling a trailer. Continue reading “Noted pediatric cancer doctor killed in Scottsdale motorcycle crash”
Arizona Crash Facts 2014
Adot has released Crash Facts 2014 in early June (of 2015), as usual/expected; and I received the database from them very promptly. I have updated the graphical crash map so it now has data from 2009-2014 for ped-MV and bike-MV crashes. Continue reading “Arizona Crash Facts 2014”
City Cycling
My notations from the book: City Cycling edited by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler.
John Pucher is arguably the foremost American proponent of separate bicycling infrastructure; often called “Dutch-style”. He is an academic (planner-type; he’s not a traffic engineer) who has many published articles on the subject. And while he is a vociferous advocate for infra, if you read his work fully, he does at least mention there are other factors at play; and furthermore he considers these other factors as necessary to achieve high levels of safety and mode share a la Netherlands or Copenhagen. Among those other factors are, for example, the extremely high costs associated with motoring in those places with high bicycling mode share (duh). In the book, he covers these in the chapter Promoting Cycling for Daily Travel (see below). Here’s a brief excerpt where Pucher explains:
In short, such pro-bike ‘carrot’ policies [e.g. cycle tracks, bike parking] are indeed possible even in a car oriented country like the USA. By comparison, there is almost no political support in the USA for adopting and implementing the sorts of car-restrictive ‘stick’ policies listed in Table 3 [e.g. expensive fuel, high taxes, expensive vehicle parking, restrictive land-use policies] that indirectly encourage cycling in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.
Chapter: International Overview
Pucher has the same or similar table comparing fatalities/injuries for NL, DK, GER, UK, USA (fig 2.6); i’m sort of confused by the injury rate calculations as I explained here in reference to another Pucher paper Making Cycling Irresistible: Lessons from The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany that was citing the same or similar data.
He also shows trends for a bunch of countries in fig 2.7 — it would be worth it to put that into Evan’s perspective of looking at the broader traffic safety picture internationally: Traffic fatality reductions: United States compared with 25 other countries in which Evans shows how badly the US is lagging in overall traffic safety compared to virtually the entire rest of the developed world. Continue reading “City Cycling”
5 hurt when SUV slams into Glendale Restaurant
5/25/2015, evening. This will be most likely a so-called “non-traffic” crash because it appears to have begun in the private parking lot — so these injuries don’t “count”. Several serious, including one in critical condition with a head injury, and another with a partially severed leg. All pedestrians who were waiting outside for a table when an SUV driver somehow jumped the sidewalk and rammed into them while parking. Glendale police say they are investigating impairment and a driver’s surgical boot for possible causes. Continue reading “5 hurt when SUV slams into Glendale Restaurant”
San Tan Valley passenger killed in fatal hit and run
Collision occurred near the east entrance of Walmart on Hunt Highway, San Tan Valley (San Tan Valley is in the far south-east Phoenix metro area) Friday evening May 22, 2015. The fatality victim was a passenger in a van that was rear-ended while stopped.
police say: the suspect(s) were impaired, hit-and-ran, hid evidence, lied to police…
Continue reading “San Tan Valley passenger killed in fatal hit and run”
Woman guilty of running over husband after ’12 election
Holly Nicole Solomon was finally sentenced for aggravated assault yesterday for running her (at the time) husband over with her car soon after learning he didn’t vote in the 2012 presidential election. … see the rest here …
2 dead, many hospitalized after Bethany Home Road crash
You can’t spell carnage with c-a-r…
5/17/2015 Sunday afternoon Glendale, AZ 8100 block of Bethany Home Road: 3 vehicles, two dead, many hospitalized. Police say speed didn’t “contribute” but there you have a head-on on a high-speed arterial with multiple motorist injuries and fatalities. Continue reading “2 dead, many hospitalized after Bethany Home Road crash”
Car slams into bus stop, teen bystander killed
Another ped whacked on a Phoenix sidewalk — seriously, how often does this stuff happen? — this time at Glendale and Central Ave, Phoenix. Austin Lipko-Benito was killed mid-day May 13, 2015 on the sidewalk along Glendale Ave. The crash occured because one of the drivers failed to yield to the other driver. Continue reading “Car slams into bus stop, teen bystander killed”
Traffic Safety Facts: Bicyclists and Other Cyclists
[Update: this article was written way back in 2011; since then i continued to update links to the yearly Publication; the 2020 data is currently most recent as of June 2023]
Each year, the USDOT, NHTSA (United States Dept of Transportation / National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) issues a report called Traffic Safety Facts: Bicyclists and Other Cyclists xxxx. The report comes out about 18 months after the close of the calendar year under review. Continue reading “Traffic Safety Facts: Bicyclists and Other Cyclists”
Tucson cyclist dies two days after right-hook crash
4/20/2015 Lawrence Lacroix, 76 died of injuries (complications?) sustained in a collision with a right turning motorist. Both the cyclist and motorist were EB on Silverlake Rd when the motorist turned right at Cottonwood Lane, Tucson, colliding with the cyclist. Continue reading “Tucson cyclist dies two days after right-hook crash”
Parade of wrong-way drivers continues
The parade of wrong-way drivers suspected of being impaired continues in full force. So far, none of the drivers involved in the spate of fatalities in early 2014 have come to trial yet (one is dead, one remains hospitalized, and one has been charged and pleaded not guilty); though the wrong-way impaired driver that caused an Oct 2013 fatality has plead no contest to 2nd degree murder charges. Continue reading “Parade of wrong-way drivers continues”