“THE DEADLY TOLL OF POLICE CHASES” shrieks the above-the-fold front page headline 7/31/2015 of the Arizona Republic. The companion article on the front page of the AZ Rep’s parent USA Today reads “High-speed police chase have killed thousands“. (those were the headlines in the print edition, the online ones are somewhat different). Continue reading “The deadly toll of police chases?”
McClintock Road resurfacing and left buffered bike lanes
[Mid-2018 southbound btw Southern and Baseline was restriped to add a 3rd southbound travel lane #restripe ]
[ONGOING still March 2017: There is a City of Tempe McClintock Project Page which is updated has has a long history section]
McClintock Drive resurfacing project, city of Tempe, AZ completed July 2015 — added left buffered Bike Lanes (LBBL) between Guadalupe and Broadway Roads, (the southbound side actually begins 1/2 mile north of Broadway at Apache) which incidentally crosses a major freeway interchange, US60. This is another in a series of “innovative” bicycle infrastructure projects recently completed in the City of Tempe. Continue reading “McClintock Road resurfacing and left buffered bike lanes”
Driver arrested: 5 hurt when SUV slams into Glendale Restaurant
The driver who caused serious injuries in a May crash has been arrested and charged… “Glendale Police say 58-year-old Frank Kitko Junior was driving under the influence when he drove his sport-utility-vehicle into two people and took out a portion of a wall at the restaurant…” read more.
Bicyclist dies after rear-ending parked trailer
7/24/2015 Far northwest Valley. Maricopa Co Sheriff investigated. I had missed this news item at the time:
Fox10: Bicyclist seriously injured after hitting back of truck Continue reading “Bicyclist dies after rear-ending parked trailer”
UA prof killed while bicycling; driver arrested
5/30/2015, ~ 1830; bicyclist Raphael D. Sagarin was killed when struck from behind after a pickup driven by a suspected impaired driver swerved partially off the road. The driver Gary Colvin has been booked on suspicion of manslaughter. Continue reading “UA prof killed while bicycling; driver arrested”
Tucson bicyclist in left-cross collision succumbs
This showed up on review of the 2015 ASDM data, although I had missed it at the time (odd for a Tucson crash, which are normally very well covered)
Classic Left-cross collision: westbound Alvernon way at Broadway, Tucson motorist made bad left colliding with eastbound bicyclist traveling in a BL. 7/11/2015 mid-morning. Continue reading “Tucson bicyclist in left-cross collision succumbs”
Car Drives Into Man At Tempe Bus Stop; leg amputated
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”