Officer resigns – misunderstands jaywalking and ID law

[2/17/2015 update: Officer Ferrin has resigned. ASU released a chief’s letter and an independent investigation commissioned by ASU performed by  Investigative Research Inc.  (apparently through public records?) I would describe as scathing, and that corroborates most of what I thought/said below, see the lengthy news story on azcentral — There is no law requiring peds to provide an ID card (in other words his saying “Let me see your ID or you will be arrested for failing to provide ID” is wrong, see  Arizona v Akins, below); there was no ‘jaywalking’, see link below to the actual jaywalking laws; there was probably no probable cause for the arrest; he didn’t “almost run her over”; 5 days earlier the officer had a similar (but non-physical) power-trip incident over a crosswalk. and on and on. The transcript, see below, confirms Officer Ferrin doesn’t understand the (ID) law]

see are-cyclists-required-to-carry-id-are-pedestrians-updated-2014/

Wrong-way driver pleads not guilty in death of Phx fire dispatcher

[ Wrong-way driver Stephen B Martin has pleaded not guilty in early February to all charges including felony counts for 2nd Degree Murder, several endangerment, along with some minor marijuana-related charges. CR-2015104415 (minutes). “Martin’s blood-alcohol content was 0.313 percent when a sample was taken at the hospital, records show” ]

see phoenix-fire-dispatcher-dies-after-i-17-wrong-way-crash

Tucson bike-train plus MV-ped in unrelated fatal collisions

There were two transportation-related fatalities in Tucson this past weekend…

Man riding mountain bike struck and killed by train
A 20-year-old man was struck and killed by a train on Saturday (2/14/2015) afternoon. According to a Tucson Police Department press release Jorge A. Villalobos was riding a mountain bike north along the train tracks near the Rillito River and Interstate 10.
TPD said Villalobos began riding on the bridge crossing the Rillito River. A train was also heading north on the tracks…. — bicycletucson.com

This would be a non-traffic fatality; both because it wasn’t on the road (it was on a train bridge), and because train fatalities don’t count toward as traffic. Continue reading “Tucson bike-train plus MV-ped in unrelated fatal collisions”

More driving on the sidewalk

This incident apparently happened Saturday afternoon around 5p 2/7/2015. This is about a mile away from the spot where a driver drove up on the sidewalk and killed a jogger a few years ago.

IMG_20150208_112824552_0148th St northbound, near Ahwatukee Drive.
A passerby told me he heard a driver was planning on turning left from NB 48th onto Ahwatukee was rear-ended and pushed here. It’s only happenstance that no one was walking on this sidewalk at the time.

Ripped from the Headlines

Just one day’s worth, all in Phoenix-metro — remember this is only a small sample of the hundreds of car wrecks that occur daily around Arizona.  Are Cars Dangerous? Continue reading “More driving on the sidewalk”

Truck driver guilty in distracted driving death of DPS officer

[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. ]

Original story:  report-truck-driver-was-looking-at-phone-in-deadly-crash

Use of alcohol as a risk factor for bicycling injury

Skip below if you’ve visited this page specifically to see the Johns Hopkins’ study.

FARS Alcohol Results

The FARS data has a number of alcohol (and drug) fields — the fields ATST_TYP, ALC_RES relate actual test type, and results. To simplify things, I’ve added a derived field sALC_RES to breaks down test results into: negative, .01 through .07, and .08+, or no results. Most fatally injured drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians do get tested. (for those that are not, there are imputed results available from a separate data file, see below).

Note that the ALC_RES field, the numerical result, has changed over the years, before 2015, it was listed as the number of hundredths of a percent BAC, e.g. 0.12 was coded as 12. In 2015 and later, it is coded as thousandths of a percent BAC, so the same result would be listed at 120.  The logic for this is encapsulated in the file 20xx_person.sql in the synthetic value sALC_RES: intox / not intox.

FARS and Drug Testing

The coding for drug results in FARS is similar to the alcohol scheme, except there are no quantitative results, only positive/negative. Also there is no equivalent to the imputation of results for drugs.

FARS coding: positive results for drugs shows up in the field DSTATUS=2 (i.e. “test given”) and DRUGRES1, 2, or 3 have a number up to 999; all in the person table. 0 meand test not given; 1 means No Drugs Reported/Negative. Potentially illicits are in groups generally in hundreds, e.g. 100-295 are narcotics, 300’s are depressants, 600’s cannaboids.  Anything 996 or above are various meanings for unknown.

Examples: Zolpidem (Ambien) is 375. See pages 579-594 of the FARS Coding and Validation Manual.

FARS and Imputation of Alcohol Results

Driving while intoxicated has been recognized as a significant serious safety factor for decades; at the same time, it’s long been recognized that many involved in fatal traffic collisions (mostly drivers but sometimes peds and bicyclists) do not have recorded alcohol test results. This nhtsa report published in 2002 explains most of the deep background and terminology on the scheme to “fill in” missing results: Continue reading “Use of alcohol as a risk factor for bicycling injury”

Bicyclist hit, killed by pickup truck in Glendale

A bicyclist described as a male in his 30’s was killed Wednesday, February 4, 2015; near 95th Ave and Camelback Road, Glendale, AZ after colliding with a pickup truck. The news report only says the cyclist and vehicle were going in “separate” directions. Continue reading “Bicyclist hit, killed by pickup truck in Glendale”

Hardy Drive Streetscape project

new ped refuge island; Hardy Drive, Tempe

The Hardy Drive Streetscape project re-did this 30mph posted, low-speed collector street between University Dr. and Broadway Rd, more specifically, the project only affected bicycle infrastructure between 9th and 19th Street,  a distance of about 9/10ths of a mile. [google maps] The project was completed in early 2015 about the same time as the the University Drive Streetscape Project. Continue reading “Hardy Drive Streetscape project”

Phoenix fire dispatcher dies after I-17 wrong-way crash

[ Wrong-way driver Stephen B Martin has pleaded not guilty in early February to all charges including felony counts for 2nd Degree Murder, several endangerment, along with some minor marijuana-related charges. CR-2015104415 (minutes). “Martin’s blood-alcohol content was 0.313 percent when a sample was taken at the hospital, records show” ]

Victim: Megan Lange, 26/F  southbound on I-17 in central Phoenix ~ 1AM (Tuesday 1/27/2015) was killed by wrong-way driver, who police suspect was impaired. Then today (thursday) it was in news: “A hospital lab analysis of Martin’s blood sample had a blood-alcohol content level of 0.313 percent, nearly four times the state’s legal limit of 0.08 percent, a DPS officer said” Continue reading “Phoenix fire dispatcher dies after I-17 wrong-way crash”

52R1 Legislature up and running

The new legislative session, 52nd / 1st Regular, is going full bore. State Senator Kavanagh is making panhandling his signature issue. Sen Kavanagh sits on the Public Safety committee.

  • SB1063: obstructing a highway; public thoroughfare
  • SB1094: aggressive solicitation; offense

Continue reading “52R1 Legislature up and running”

University Drive textured Bike Lane


[update Jan 2018: the project area has been resurfaced (already? why?) see below]
The project area is University Drive between east of Priest Dr and Farmer Ave [correction: it’s actually Ash, a few hundred feet further east; i did not update the crash history, below; i don’t think it would change much]. There are other aspects of the project I like very much, e.g. the new raised medians. These should make the road safer for all users. The speed limit is still posted at 40mph, I encourage the city to lower the limit to 35mph, which would make the road even safer for everyone.

In a nutshell, the problem is the City placed 2′ of texturing in a 6′ bike lane, leaving only 2.5′ of usable surface (the gutter pan is the remaining 1.5′). I have a photo gallery (or most of same pics on a public facebook album) of some of the issues revolving around the texture in the bike lane. Continue reading “University Drive textured Bike Lane”

Vehicular Assault

Arizona has no such crime, nor do we have a vehicular homicide statue. You’ve either assaulted someone or not; if you use a vehicle in an assault, you will be charged with aggravated assault, a serious felony. These cases far more commonly involve impaired drivers — an impaired driver who causes a crash w/injury are routinely charged with aggravated assault; e.g. the driver in the pedicab incident (sentenced to 4 years in prison). However from time to time, there are drivers who are just plain angry over something or other.

There’s a mis-conception that assault, §13-1203 requires causing actual physical  injury; but that is not the case, merely “Intentionally placing another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent physical injury” creates the crime of assault. And aggravated assault  §13-1204 is just an assault committed with some listed factor; in cases involving a motor vehicle: “If the person uses a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument”, or if the victim is seriously injured regardless of how.

[ Also see  §13-1201, and  §13-1202 which are the crimes of “Endangerment”, and “Threatening or intimidating”, respectively. These all sort of play together, note the statute numbering: 1201,2,3,4 ]. They are in rough-order of escalating seriousness:

Also, in case you were wondering:

28-3304. Mandatory revocation of license; definition
A. In addition to the grounds for mandatory revocation provided.. the department shall immediately revoke the license of a driver…
1. A homicide or aggravated assault resulting from the operation of a motor vehicle. [effectively this causes a 3 year revocation per 28-3315E1]

Indicia of Criminality

Any incident must be considered in total; however, one or more of these actions by a driver may indicate criminal intentions, and not merely infractions. The more indications the more likely there was criminal intent. Note these indicators have little in particular to do with bicyclists, and are more-or-less the same as any road rage situation

  • Repeated or prolonged horn activation
  • Activating horn while stopped
  • Changing lanes repeatedly
  • Changing lanes to become impeded
  • Failure to drive within one lane (“Straddling” lanes)
  • Failure to change lanes when another lane is available
  • Passing too closely
  • Driving too slowly / Slowing or braking after passing
  • Surging (speeding up then slowing down)
  • Any Reckless or Aggressive Driving
  • Shouting
  • Causing extra noise (revving engine)
  • Backing / returning to the scene of an incident
  • Leaving the scene of a crash (“hit-and-run“)

This content was moved from comment on related article in-the-presence-requirement

Harassment

Arizona has a criminal harassment law, it doesn’t appear to be particularly applicable to motorists who harass others on the road:

 §13-2921 Harassment; classification; definition

E.g. would or could unwanted and otherwise illegal repeated horn-blowing or screaming qualify as “with intent to harass (by) … causes(ing) a communication…”?

In the context of bicyclists, see CA Attorney Seth Davidson’s article Report Card, where he stresses the need, neigh duty, to report such behaviors, which are nothing more or less than using a dangerous instrument to commit a crime.

Some Arizona Cases of Drivers Charged Criminally in Arizona

Here are the curious cases of Theresa Depiero and Holly Solomon Continue reading “Vehicular Assault”