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
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.
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?
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.
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?”
Hit-Run on pro cycling training ride in Tucson
[UPDATED 1/14/2014: according to tucsonvelo.com the driver was sentenced to 7 days in county on an apparent plea-deal that drops most of the charges. There is a civil suit working in Pima County court]
This one is so weird, i don’t want to lose track of it…. It’s been almost 7 months, what’s the deal? From tucsonvelo.com:
“One cyclist with the Jamis-Hagnes Berman cycling team was sent to the hospital and several others were injured during an assault by a Tucson motorist on Friday ( ~ 2/22/2013 ) morning around 11 a.m., according to a team rider … A Pima County Court record search identifies the (suspect) as Rodney Owen Kinkade Jr., 57. The court record lists it as an assault occurring on Friday and matches the crime map case number”
Continue reading “Hit-Run on pro cycling training ride in Tucson”
SENTENCING: Barrow’s Neurologist killed by hit-and-run Driver
[Update 2018 & 2019: Linsk got pulled over AGAIN for driving on a suspended/revoked license; wtf? Is this guy a bad driver or what? I got a ticket once THIRTY YEARS AGO. Anyway, TR2019-139024 File Date: 8/19/2019; McDowell Mountain Justice Court; guilty.
TR2018-156438 File Date: 11/20/2018; West Mesa Justice Court; speeding and no license; dismissed on motion of prosecutor (why?) ]
[ Update 2014: Linsk got pulled over and arrested AGAIN after serving his trivial sentence, 12/17/2014: Driving on suspended license: TR2014159525000, East Mesa Justice Court , a citation for unsafe lane change (presumably the reason he was pulled over) were dismissed. ] Continue reading “SENTENCING: Barrow’s Neurologist killed by hit-and-run Driver”
Bicyclist Killed after AJ Collision
The victim was a male in his 70’s. 09/05/2013 time ~ 0530.
Superstition Blvd, near Pinyon. From the news video, it doesn’t appear to be at any intersection.
GIS, mapping, crash reports vs. ASDM
Some notes on mapping using the latitude/longitude; and the ASDM (Adot Safety Data Mart) dataset.
Here is a detailed breakdown of a crash chosen more-or-less at random (I wanted to choose crashes that were *not* at intersections) that occurred 2012-10-12 at a driveway just east of 51st Ave on Indian School Rd. (if the link doesn’t work use 33.494971/-112.167771, the lat/long specified in ASDM). It is ADOT incident number 2672854, Phoenix file number 12001836231 (though it was listed as 201836231 in ASDM). Continue reading “GIS, mapping, crash reports vs. ASDM”
No, Phoenix area drivers are not ‘safe’
The news today was almost too much to bear.
You might recall the absurd story from a couple of weeks ago (the news story ran 8/6/2013) azcentral.com where an unlicensed(!) driver was driving a minivan full of kids; “The 16-year-old was driving his six brothers and sisters westbound on Southern Avenue when the minivan collided head-on with a passenger car. The van had attempted to pass a car on the right shoulder and overcorrected, sending the van into oncoming traffic, where it was hit by a sedan, witnesses said”.
Yes, it gets weirder, yesterday (8/29/2013)… I’ll just give you the headline, Phoenix police: Girl, 6, dies after brother, 8, drives car into pole.
And for good measure, today besides that shocker, there were all manner of Arizona automobile-mayhem stories: $50M claim filed in crash that killed Tucson boy; it involved an on-duty Pima County Sheriffs Deputy. 10-year-old Xavier Arturo Sanchez died July 15, 2013 when he was hit by a deputy. I don’t know anything other than to note that “Tucson police investigators decided against submitting the case to the county Attorney’s Office because they felt the circumstances didn’t warrant criminal charges against the deputy” except to say, they probably ought to do more to avoid the appearance of impropriety; though i suppose TPD is supposed to be independent of PSCO. (far higher on the impropriety scale: see this one, involving a speeding PCSO deputy)… … … Road Rage, oh this it always fun: a PCSO deputy was the victim of apparent road rage: “Pima County Sheriff’s officials say 38-year-old Eric Santos ‘deliberately rammed and pushed the officer’s vehicle’ Wednesday night on Interstate 10″… … oh and the usual mayhem, this one seems tame by comparison: “Impairment may be factor in (double)fatal crash” in a 1PM high-speed collision at 43rd Ave and Indian School.
Phoenix high for driver safety?
EVERY YEAR we get treated to this stupidity: Allstate study ranks metro Phoenix high for driver safety. The story appears to be ripped right from a press release. Supposedly metro Phoenix has “safe” drivers because the number of claims is low. I’m sure this is all statistically true — unfortunately it does NOT translate into safe traffic (which normal people measure in terms of deaths and injuries), here is a comparison from last year’s Allstate data. In short, other cities that have far “worse” drivers, according to Allstate, have far better traffic safety records. It would seem to me this indicates something it terribly wrong with Arizona’s transportation infrastructure; we have surface streets built for hi-speed/hi-volume first and safety last.
Are cars dangerous? We all know it’s not the cars per se; but obviously we’re not doing enough to control their use.