Arizona Bike Law Blog

Bill would ban cell phone use by novice teen drivers

Here’s a news item that has a pretty good rundown on SB1056, introduced by John McComish (R-20, which happens to be my district).

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the NTSB has called for a total ban on use of portable electronic communications by drivers — thats text, talk, handsfree or not — the whole shootin’ match.

This bill is a total ban; but targets only permitees and new drivers under 18 (but only for six months); which seems like a pretty logical place to start. The youngest drivers don’t have the experience and also tend not to understand the consequences of their actions that only comes with maturity and experience. When questioned about difficulty of enforcement, McComish pointed out that it is a secondary offense, like seat-belt laws, and that it will give parents a useful tool.

In case you’re wondering how this affects bicycle riders; it doesn’t. The licensing statutes are in Chapter 8, and bicyclists are only bound to follow Chapter 3, 4, and 5, see 28-812.

The hearing in front of the senate Public Safety and Human Services committee 1/18/2012 (direct link, does that work?) was very good; it’s near the end, and is about 10 minutes. This bill is something of a follow-on to some graduated driver’s license restrictions (the Teen Driver Safety Act, enacted in 2007.  Bill number?). Stuart Goodman spoke in favor on behalf of AAA; i would like to quote him, and i might be in the minutes(?) but in sortof paraphrase he said that according to CDC the number one cause of death for teens is traffic collisions; that the graduated license restrictions were good/helpful and there is evidence that as from 198?-2007 as alcohol-involved teen deaths have decreased,  the overall rate of teen fatalities has remained largely unchanged… and that is largely attributed to an increase in distracted driving as becoming the primary culprit. He then rattled off a bunch of age-related stats that seemd to indicate teen deaths are way down (due presumably to graduated license restrictions, like nighttime driving, and limiting the number of passengers for novice drivers). It passed unanimously out of committee.

Here are the new sections, as introduced:

28-3154

C. A PERMITTEE SHALL NOT DRIVE A MOTOR VEHICLE WHILE USING A WIRELESS COMMUNICATION DEVICE FOR ANY REASON EXCEPT DURING AN EMERGENCY IN WHICH STOPPING THE MOTOR VEHICLE IS IMPOSSIBLE OR WILL CREATE AN ADDITIONAL EMERGENCY OR SAFETY HAZARD. A PEACE OFFICER SHALL NOT STOP OR ISSUE A CITATION TO A PERSON OPERATING A MOTOR VEHICLE ON A HIGHWAY IN THIS STATE FOR A VIOLATION OF THIS SUBSECTION UNLESS THE PEACE OFFICER HAS REASONABLE CAUSE TO BELIEVE THERE IS ANOTHER ALLEGED VIOLATION OF A MOTOR VEHICLE LAW OF THIS STATE.

28-3174

F. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN SUBSECTION K OF THIS SECTION, FOR THE FIRST SIX MONTHS THAT A CLASS G LICENSEE HOLDS THE LICENSE, THE LICENSEE SHALL NOT DRIVE A MOTOR VEHICLE WHILE USING A WIRELESS COMMUNICATION DEVICE FOR ANY REASON EXCEPT DURING AN EMERGENCY IN WHICH STOPPING THE MOTOR VEHICLE IS IMPOSSIBLE OR WILL CREATE AN ADDITIONAL EMERGENCY OR SAFETY HAZARD.

Why Seattle is safer than Phoenix

An op-ed written by one of the wsj editorial board staffers illustrates a certain strain of belief in have-your-cake-and-eat-too-sism. Kaminski, in decrying how the mayor Mike McGinn (whom he gleefully points out is referred to as mayor McSchwinn by his political foes. Get it? it rhymes with McGinn) of Seattle worked to block the building of some car-based project; later claims that “Seattleites say they want to save the planet from global warming, but in their personal lives they want safe streets…”.

The disconnect Kaminski, and others of his ideological ilk, is this; that somehow streets can be made safer by ever-expanding the number and speed of privately operated motor vehicles. But this is simply not possible. Faster and more always equals more dead; mostly more motorists, but also more dead peds, and more dead bicyclists. The numbers are stark; comparing e.g. Phoenix with Seattle (metro areas), the Dangerous by Design survey estimates Phoenix to be FOUR TIMES more deadly to pedestrians than Seattle. The number spills over not just in pedestrian deaths, but also cyclists deaths, and also to MOTORISTS deaths; see e.g. Beyond Safety in Numbers: why bike friendly cities are safer (for everybody).

Thus Kaminski rejects car-user-fees as hair-brained; yet motorists are the source of enormous externalities — economic impacts that aren’t paid for by their users — from air pollution (never mind ‘global warming’), to mayhem, to free parking.

By the way, McGinn has only been mayor for the past two years; I’m not suggesting that McGinn has made it safer. It was already safe, relatively speaking — due in no small part to its general overall “anti-car” culture.

Three Foot Passing Laws

As of the 2011 legislative season, by my count, 20 US states have added three-or-more-foot passing provisions (not counting Missouri or SC, which both relatively recently added “safe passing” laws without specifying a distance). (Last update, PA/Pennsylvania PENDING legislation): Read the rest of this entry »

2010 FARS and PBcat

Commencing with the recently-released 2010 data FARS (The USDOT’s Fatality Analysis and Reporting System) will have far more specialized detail on Pedestrian and Bicyclists crashes.

618 cyclists (person type 6 bicyclist, and 7 other pedalcyclist) were killed in 2010 in traffic collisions — and as noted at the link above, only collisions with motor vehicles in-transport are tracked by FARS. So for example, a bicyclist who lost control and died as a result of crashing into a tree would not be tracked here, nor would a bicyclist who strikes a parked motor vehicle.

The added information becomes a new “table” (in the parlance of databases), if you download the raw data files, it will be all found in the file PBtype.dbf

The information follows more-or-less exactly the PBcat, probably no coincidence. PBcat is the Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crash Analysis Tool, and contains among other things the bicyclists direction, and a detailed crash type (or for the complete reference, see PBcat’s manual, appendix C)

So, say you were interested in bicyclists running stop signs; you would do a query and then a univariate split and take a look at Types 142, 144, and 147; all subtypes of “Bicyclist Failed to yield — Sign-Controlled Intersection”. There were 17+41+1 = 59 such fatalities recorded.

Since this is the first and only year where these national stats are available, they are of limited usefulness — that will change over time as the dataset grows and wil become a very useful comprehensive source of understanding bicyclist (and pedestrian) traffic fatalities.

48th Street; Piedmont to Guadalupe gets SLMs (sharrows)

I have a lot of thoughts about this stretch of roadway in Phoenix: 48th Street (turns into Guadalupe Rd), north of Piedmont.
It involves the odd geographic position of the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix; and the the almost complete lack of connectivity for Ahwatukee residents to anywhere else, (Tempe, Chandler, and indeed the main portion of Phoenix) except by car-choked umteen lane roads.

Ahwatukee is called — sometimes derisively, sometimes happily — the world’s largest cul-de-sac. Setting aside 48th street for a moment; Ahwatukee’s ONLY ingress/egress is Pecos Rd (which is loop 202, a limited-access highway), Chandler Blvd (10 lanes?), Ray Road (10 lanes), Warner Road (only 6 lanes?), Elliot Road (10 lanes?). So these are all either a limited-access freeway, or humongous monstrosities that have interchanges with I-10.

In short, these are all car-choked, car-sewers. They are not particularly bad for cyclists; two (Ray, and Chandler) have wide-curb lanes; Warner has nice narrow lanes;  I find Elliot road to be most annoying as it is (or was?) “critical width“; that is to say not wide yet not narrow enough to be perceived as too narrow to share by many motorists. Yet many cyclists, understandably, don’t want to do it. It is a thoroughly obnoxious experience for pedestrians, too.

48th Street/Guadalupe is the ONLY bridge over I-10 that is a reasonable human scale, it is 2-lanes (only 1 in each direction!), and has no interchange with the freeway, it’s just a bridge. Thus this makes a vital connection for anyone wishing to bike between Ahwatukee and, say, Tempe/ASU. And it also forms the ONLY connection for Ahawatukee bicyclists wishing to get to the rest of Phoenix  (through The Pointe at South Mountain, now called ???. Using what are actually private streets but there’s some sort of public easement). Read the rest of this entry »

Bicyclist stop sign law changes re-introduced

50th 2nd regular session (2012) HB2221. This is (i think) an exact copy of the bill from last year; which was a tweak to the original try in 2009.

HEARING SCHEDULED 1/26/2012 at 9AM by the House Transportation committee. All video is archived, in case you miss it live, you can also view the 3/4/2009 hearing at the archive — it’s kind of interesting.

BILL PASSES out of the Transportation Committee 1/26/2012, on an 8-2 vote. It was passed “DP” (do pass. i.e. passed without any amendment). If you didn’t see it live, you can catch it on archived, but it looks like there is a day or two delay…

Prima Facia

I haven’t paid any attention to this up until now (and it was in the bill since it was first introduced in 2009), and perhaps I should have because it looks to be a serious flaw. The bill as written automatically places bicyclists in a weaker legal position if they become involved in a collision with a motorist who also has a stop. This should be addressed an corrected so that bicyclists aren’t assumed to be liable in such a situation (liability should be assigned according to what actions the bicyclist and driver took, not just that a bicycle is a bicycle). I’m not sure if the Idaho approach, see 49-720, fixes this or not. I would think it does. They made a separate statute in the bicycling chapter; it doesn’t piggy-back on the yield-sign law.

There’s also some confusion at 4-way (all-way) stops.

Bad Drivers and friendsofcalholman.com

(motorist) Cal Holman was killed in a horrific traffic collision in 2007 involving very high speeds and alleged street racing. Going on 5 years later a lot has and continues to happen, the two other drivers have eventually plead guilty to certain crimes, one went to prison. The other involved driver is currently requesting his probation be reduced.

The site friendsofcalholman.com is doing, and has done an excellent job of making things that we rarely see available; such as the actual plea agreements.

On a larger scope, they have exposed these two men’s driving history; again something we rarely get to see. According to friendsofcalholman the two,

Van Brakel was driving an AMG Mercedes, after hitting Cal Holman his car continued 75 feet past the intersection. Van Brakel hit first on the passenger side. He did not sustain any injuries in the crash…  Since 2004 there have been 7 tickets for various moving violations. Driving 55 in a 35 zone, 67 in a 40 zone, and failing to yield in a cross walk are a sample of his driving record… Van Brakel has several pervious driving violations. One ticket in 2004, was for doing 120 miles per hour in a 75 miles per hour zone. [link]

and the other:

Aronica’s Mustang flipped on impact and landed in the ditch on the side of Scottsdale … Aronica was injured with a broken arm and his passenger had minor cuts…. Since 2002 Aronica has had 13 citations. On December 3rd, less than four weeks prior to the accident where he hit and killed Cal Holman, he was cited for doing 88 miles per hour in a 60 miles per hour zone. This was in Texas while he was traveling to Arizona… Other citations include speeding. In Virginia speeding 84 in a 65 zone, in Florida traveling 20-29 miles per hour over the posted speed, again in Virginia speeding 79 in a 65 zone, in Maryland he had four speeding violations, and in Michigan he has 3 violations for speeding including a careless driving and a 78 in a 55 zone. [link]

This really makes me wonder how such repeated dangerous driving behavior can be tolerated — why weren’t their licenses suspended or revoked before they killed somebody? Traffic collisions, even after a marked decline, continue to be a leading cause of death for Americans. Who’s minding the store?

Do drivers stop at stop signs?

I thought this was completely non-controversial. We all know that a full stop is required (for bicyclists, too, by the way) by law, always,  and that there is no wiggle room. Do drivers slow down? Yes, often. Do they make a full stop? Rarely.

Or rather, it completely depends on traffic — if there is conflicting traffic they do (usually) stop; otherwise RARELY. Here is a brief clip where 1 driver stopped (well, almost, but I’ll give it to him) to yield to cross-traffic, and then the next SIX rolled through without stopping:

If that’s too short for you, here is a longer clip that I didn’t even bother to count — the story is exactly the same; DRIVERS RARELY STOP AT STOP SIGNS.

For the technically curious: there is no (marked) crosswalk in this direction, nor is there a painted stop line, here is the statute regarding stop signs: §28-855.

Why do they do it?

See Stop Sign Compliance for discussion and links to some social research studies that offer some explanations. In social research, it is referred to as an example of a “folk crime” (dubbed so apparently by H. L. Ross in 1961, see Traffic Law Violation: A Folk Crime, 8 Social Problems 232).

The more direct explanation is people (drivers and cyclists are people, after all!) act in ways that they perceive as rational and reasonable, and pay scant attention to the letter of the law.

Do drivers stop before making a Right Turn on Red?

It is the same story. Here’s a clip in case you are interested (sorry, but you’ll have to skip in about 40 seconds in order to be able to see the traffic signal).

Do bicyclists run Red Lights?

Here is an interesting published article that goes along along with the compliance theme  from AAP: Riding through red lights: The rate, characteristics and risk factors of non-compliant urban commuter cyclists, via a posting at www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/motorists-front-of-judea-what-have-the-cyclists-ever-done-for-us/

Camelback Road Diet and Buffered Bike Lane

Here are some city documents:

• Detailed UPDATED drawing.
• Detailed original drawings.
• Presentation discussing the Diet.

The Diet

The diet part of the plan seems like a slam dunk… Normally any road diet is opposed becasue of fears that the lane removal will increase automobile congestion. In this particular case, that isn’t possible because of the unusual circumatance that this 1-mile stretch of 3 through lanes in each direction, is bounded on both ends by 2 through lanes. I.e. both north of Bethany Home Road, and south of Camelback Road is already only two lanes.

The Buffered Bike Lane

The “problem” then became what to do with “extra” space? A generously wide bike lane, including gutter is only 6′ wide, and the diet meant that 12′ of space had to be filled (in both directions). The answer came in the form of placing a 6′ buffer between the bike lane and the rightmost traffic lane. A.k.a a Buffered Bike Lane, see e.g. nacto.org.

I am somewhat skeptical of placing space between cyclists and overtaking vehicles. While this is presented as an un-alloyed good thing by many facilities advocates, it clearly has safety drawbacks which usually go unmentioned. here is a more balanced view, as presented in the Feb 2010 (the latest) Draft AASHTO Guide, p.78 (my emphasis):

Striped buffers may be used to provide increased separation between a bike lane and another adjacent lane that may present conflicts, such as a parking lane with high‐turnover or a higher speed travel lane. The benefits of additional lateral separation should be weighed against the disadvantages; a buffer between the bike lane and the adjacent motor vehicle travel lanes places cyclists further from the normal sight lines of motorists, who are primarily looking for vehicles in the normal travel lanes, and buffers between the travel lane and bike lane reduce the natural “sweeping” effect of passing motor vehicles, potentially requiring more frequent maintenance.

 That all being said, I objected to the original design which called for the outer buffer stripe to gradually arc into the intersection. This seemed to me to be a recipe for extra right-hooks. City staff readily agreed to my and Gene’s suggestion to end the buffer ahead of each intersection, and then a bit of dashed line; which is incidentally, as shown in the NACTO guide as recommended. (so thanks to Kerry Wilcoxon, and Joe Perez).

This should make the buffer “not bad” at intersections, yet doesn’t do anything for the many driveways. In other words, it should be no worse than a standard bike lane at intersections, but I fear it will raise risks at driveways relative to bike lane. So anyway, I’m reserving my judgement on the whole buffered bike lane thing. The hope is that it will encourage/entice cyclists off the sidewalks, where most collisions occur. However that doesn’t help the legally

The re-striping

The striping project apparently happened on schedule 4AM Saturday morning 1/7/2012, there are some pics on P4′s Facebook page (f.b. login required to view). TBAG has listed a ride to visit the new work on 1/8/2010.

Shoulder Use

— DRAFT —

Shoulder Use

When must I ride my bicycle on the shoulder? 

First, it’s important to define what a shoulder is, and isn’t.  ” ’Roadway’ means that portion of a highway that is improved, designed or ordinarily used for vehicular travel, exclusive of the berm or shoulder”  §28-601(22). Our roadways are typically divided into one or more travel lanes in each direction, with a solid white stripe, called an edge line (often referred to as a fog line), at the right edge of the rightmost lane. The area to the right of the edge line is the shoulder. Note that not all roads have edge lines. It’s also possible to have a left edge line and a left shoulder, for example on a one-way street or divided road.

A quick word about bicycle lanes: bicycle lanes are not shoulders, and shoulders are not bicycle lanes. Bicycle lanes must be marked according to MUTCD specifications and designated as such by the local authority; this usually involving both a stripe and painted symbol ground markings and (now optional) “bike lane” regulatory signs.

In Arizona a bicyclist generally may travel on any shoulder  – because it is not prohibited by statute. However, on controlled-access highways jurisdictions may, and do, restrict bicycle use (§28-733). Likewise, local authorities may regulate the operation of bicycles on roads under their jurisdiction; although this is uncommon (§28-626 & 627).

Arizona has no mandatory shoulder use law. §28-815A specifies where, laterally, a bicyclist must ride when riding on the roadway. It contains no provisions for requiring removal from the roadway onto any shoulder, ever.

Bicyclists must ride “as close as practicable” to the righthand edge of the roadway; but only if the lane is wide enough to share, and have no general duty to not impede other drivers nor to travel as fast as motorized traffic, that is to say §28-704A  and §28-701E are inapplicable to bicyclists because they specifically apply to drivers of motor vehicles. Bicyclists, on two-lane highways, that is one lane in each direction, have a duty to pull off the roadway, when safe, if impeding five or more vehicles and passing is unsafe (§28-704C). If a shoulder is available and safe (e.g. clear of debris, wide enough to completely exit the roadway), a bicyclist under such conditions would be required to leave the roadway and allow traffic to clear.

Typical roads in urban settings are multiple lanes in each direction, and as such 28-704C is not applicable. The law presumes that faster traffic can overtake in one of the other available lanes, so bicyclists are never required to leave the travel lane.

Eric Post, Esq.
CAzB Legal Advisor

Eric Post is a Tucson attorney, specializing in representing bicyclists who have been injured in motor vehicle collisions. In addtion to his activites with CAzB, he serves as the chairman of the Enforcement Subcommittee of the Tucscon-Pima BAC. Eric is an LCI, a League Certified cycling Instructor. Contact him here.

— DRAFT —

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Some further references

• Bicyclists are generally granted the same rights and responsibilities as a driver of a vehicle, see §28-812.
• ADOT policy 1030: Controlled-Access Highways as Bikeways specifies exactly which freeways bicyclists are allowed to use (shoulder only).
• More about designated Bike Lanes.
• More about Edge Lines; see MUTCD Section 3B.06 Edge Line Pavement Markings

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