RPD vs. The Cyclist
Remember the RPD car vs. cyclist incident at our favorite, death-defying intersection? Kristin Stokes took a heck of a hit, resulting in some now-healed brain injuries. As a story in this week’s Style tells us,
the city sent her a bill for repairs to the police car, adding insult to her potentially life-threatening injury. In addition to bills from three days in intensive care, Stokes faces $2,757.23 in repairs to the patrol cruiser, including $10 for hazardous waste disposal (“Me,” Stokes says).
And for those of you still keeping score at home, the police car “entered the well-timed light at about 40 miles an hour.”
Somebody get her the number of Allen & Allen….
I’m surprised. I t-boned a cruiser that ran a red light (with its sirens and lights on) on Meadow & Main. They never even questioned weather or not it was my fault.
Everyone in Richmond who reads this story should be writing to their council member, the police chief, and the mayor on this one. If the facts in the story are correct, the police officer should be cited, and the city should be paying her medical bills.
She owes the city???? That is insane. I don’t even think you are supposed to go 40 on that road anyway. Even if he was responding to an emergancy he should have made sure the intersection was clear before “timing the light.”
I’d be over optimistic to expect concern over her injuries, but even the Richmond pessimist in me wouldnt expect she’d have to pay.
Crap.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/12/rfid_lights_up.php
RFID Lights Up The Blind Spot
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden on 12.17.07
CARS & TRANSPORTATION (bikes)
Now that the Green RFID guy has stopped posting, it’s up to us to give good examples of RFID technology in the sustainability realm. The Danish city of Grenå will pay to install battery-driven RFIDs (battery life is supposed to be about 6 years) in the steering columns of 300 residents’ bikes, and put receivers at seven intersections considered to be the most dangerous. When a cyclist approaches, the RFID sends a signal to the traffic light which turns on a flashing ‘cyclist’ sign at eye height to warn drivers, especially drivers of big rigs, that they should check for bikes before making a right-hand turn.
The move is part of the Danish government making good on its promise to have cyclists both feel and actually be safer. The system, called “See Mi” was designed by Danish company Idzone. At the same time, by early next year the Copenhagen city government is installing light diodes and sensors at dangerous intersections – the diodes start blinking beside and ahead of drivers when a cyclist passes the sensors. It’s considered cost-effective to keep cyclists safe, as each serious accident or cyclist death costs the state as much as 1.7 million Danish crowns (US$300,000). Installation of the diodes and sensor at an intersection costs about 200,000 crowns (US$38,000). Via ::Ecoprofile (in Swedish)
The speed limit at that intersection is 25MPH. There are a ridiculous number of accidents there, most of them due to speeding, IMO. People drive VERY aggressively on that section of Forest Hill. Of note: There is an elementary school at that intersection!
The fact that the city sent her a bill for the damage to the cruiser just goes to show how woefully incompetent our city government is: Running over and injuring taxpayers and then sending them a bill for the privilege.
I swear I remember my driver’s ed teacher telling us that if you speed, you surrender your right of way. I hope she gets a good lawyer.
I realize the police in this town have a tough job, but that doesn’t give them the right to make up their own driving rules. A couple weeks back, I almost got hit by a cruiser who a) failed to stop at a stop sign and b) didn’t use his turn signal to indicate he was turning into my path as I crossed the street. When I raised my arms in dismay, he slammed on the brakes and yelled out his window at me. (I kept walking.) He was off duty and heading home (he lives about half a block away from this incident). Just because you enforce the laws doesn’t put you above them!
RPD has dropped the claim.
A couple of letters in Style Weekly weigh in on the dropping of the charges.
Those really surprised me – the first one’s downright nasty, actually.
Presuming they actually do live in town, those folks might want to do a little poking around to see how much RPD’s finest are costing them in body-shop repairs.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007753.html
It took six deaths to propel city leaders to action, but by April, Portland, Oregon should have 14 new http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1199420704323540.xml&coll=7bike boxes
at busy intersections around the city.
The idea behind bike boxes is simple: Like “blue lanes” and other biker-friendly lane markings, bike boxes (or “advanced stop lines”) demarcate a part of the street that “belongs” to cyclists–letting drivers know that bicyclists may be in the area. (Yes, this is an idea that wouldn’t mesh well with “shared space,” which I wrote about recently, but it is one that would integrate seamlessly into most US traffic-management systems.) The “box” is just a large, brightly-painted area adjacent to an intersection where cyclists are allowed to rest during red lights and where cars are not allowed to go. The boxes make cyclists more visible to drivers, give cyclists the first shot through the intersection, and reduce the likelihood that a driver will turn unknowingly into a cyclist’s path. A wide stripe at the back end of the box indicates to drivers where they should stop, and a strip of textured plastic will let drivers know if they enter the box. Additionally, in Portland, drivers at bike-boxed intersections will not be able to turn right on red–a change that could slow traffic a bit but will undoubtedly reduce conflicts between bikes and cars (and in conflicts between bikes and cars, the car always “wins”). Portland’s plans represent a significant improvement, from a cyclist’s perspective, on bike boxes elsewhere, which include no textured striping and allow drivers to turn right on red.
In Portland, the impetus for installing the boxes was two recent cyclist deaths that involved a “right hook,” in which a right-turning driver fails to yield to a cyclist riding on the right side of the road and hits the cyclist. Such crashes are the most common type of cycling accident in Portland.
Bike boxes haven’t caught on much in the US–the only ones I’m aware of are in New York City–but they are popular in Canada, the Netherlands, and the UK, where they’ve been installed throughout Bristol and in other cities with good results. According to a report by the UK Department For Transport, bike boxes can “significantly improve safety for cyclists at signal controlled junctions.” In Melbourne, Australia (where, incidentally, nine percent of cyclists ride “straight through” red lights without stopping), installing bike boxes increased the number of cyclists who pulled out ahead of cars to 93 percent, and cars generally respected cyclists’ space, stopping in the bike boxes less than a third of the time when no one was in them, and virtually never when someone was. For the US, those are the formulas, but Portland will be the petri dish. If bike boxes work in reducing accidents here–and all the evidence suggests they will–they’ll be an inexpensive tool in a kit of badly needed cycling safety improvements.
http://flickr.com/photos/drdul/177246142/in/photostream/