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Save Traffic


If you spend enough time with something you might fall in love. And for many people they spend a lot of time in traffic but all those wonderful hours spent in traffic are in jeopardy as some politicians want to mitigate traffic. Mitigate is just another word for kill. Please help save traffic and watch the following video.

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Right to drive not auto-matic


[Note MD stats: 2.3 million drive to work and average 631 traffic fatalities a year.]

Legislators need to update the way Oregonians get -- and keep -- their driver's licenses

More than 3 million Oregonians are licensed to use a deadly weapon.

Most of them use it every day: their automobile.

The casualty count -- about 450 highway deaths each year -- is considerable. But beyond grief and suffering, traffic accidents, including the most minor, carry a secondary -- and enormous -- social cost.

They cause congestion -- worsening pollution and wasting precious fossil fuels. That then prompts ever greater investment in ever more infrastructure in an effort to keep things moving. Meanwhile, the simple truth remains that if everyone in Oregon drove properly, there would not be a capacity problem on any of our highways.

It's time now for Oregon to take far more seriously the business of licensing people to drive. The current system is broken.
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As for taking the test, sure there's a written exam. Cramming for it takes all of 12 minutes. Then there's that brief spell behind the wheel during which you go nowhere near a freeway or need to parallel park.

And once you snag a license, it's pretty much yours for life.
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The next step is for legislators to thoroughly revamp the ways in which Oregon drivers get -- and keep -- their licenses. It makes absolutely no sense that we continue to spend billions on expanding Oregon's transportation infrastructure -- and next to nothing on teaching Oregonians how to use it.

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Tucson bike lawyer


The Arizona Daily Star has an article today on Tucson's "bicycle friendly" nature. It features comments by Richard Corbett and others about Tucson's desire to be the second city in the entire nation to achieve "Platinum" status by the League of American Bicyclists. This would put us at the very top in terms of how "bike friendly" our city is.

I have lots of mixed feelings about this, as readers of this blog know. For one thing, once you are at the top there should be nowhere else to go, but I see lots of room for improvement. Particularly in terms of how local law enforcement handles bicyclists who get assaulted by motorists, but also how it handles those who are injured.

I have clients who were hit in left-hooks, right-hooks, hit by baseball bats, shot at by paint-ball guns, struck head-on, deliberately struck from behind, and hit with fists -- all of whom got next to no help from the police department. I have a client who was charged with misdemeanor damage because his body left a dent in the car that swerved into him.

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Where do you ride in your mind?


Where you ride in your mind can be more important then where you physically ride. This video has some really cool transitions between urban cycling and mountain biking. As long as you have the wind in your face anywhere can be a pleasant place to ride.

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Santa Cruz Offers Bicycle Traffic School - Class Similar to Program For Motorists


SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- Bicyclists ticketed for cruising through a stop sign or other violations can now avoid a hefty fine in Santa Cruz by attending a special traffic school designed for those who pedal around town.

The two-hour class, which costs $35 and is patterned after traffic school for motorists, allows bicyclists to escape tickets costing up to $200. State law requires bicyclists to follow the same road rules as vehicles.

The Community Traffic Safety Coalition of Santa Cruz County came up with the program because the university town has a lot of bikes on the road and a lot of injuries

Santa Cruz police write up to 30 bike tickets each month

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Bicyclists blamed twice as often as drivers for...unsafe speed


[For reference in Baltimore cyclists are at fault 43%, drivers at fault 9% and no fault indicated 48%.]
By Erin McCormick, San Fransisco Chronicle Staff Writer

Bicyclists were twice as likely as drivers to be at fault in the nearly 2,000 collisions that killed or severely injured Bay Area bike riders in the past decade, an analysis by The Chronicle shows.

Bicycle and safety advocates say the deaths two weeks ago of two cyclists hit by a Santa Clara sheriff's deputy's cruiser should serve as a call to improve relations between cars and bikes on the roadways.

The advocates say large numbers of cyclists fail to follow the rules of the road, running stop signs and red lights, and drivers are becoming more aggressive.

"There is a juggernaut out there - the tension between the cyclists and the drivers is so high that it's become a war," said triathlon coach Marc Evans, who is starting a campaign to get the cycling community, drivers and motorcyclists to put more focus on avoiding deadly collisions on the roads.

The Chronicle's analysis of the 33,000 Bay Area collisions involving bicyclists since 1997 shows that, in the most serious accidents, the driving behaviors of bicyclists often were blamed for the crashes. Data collected by the California Highway Patrol show that bicyclists were deemed at fault in 1,165, or nearly 60 percent, of the 1,997 accidents that killed or severely injured cyclists; drivers were blamed only 520 times, or 26 percent. In most other cases, no one was listed as being at fault.
Suspicion of bias

Bicycling advocates said the statistics might in part reflect a bias among police officers, who they say often "blame the victims," especially because cyclists might not get to tell their side of the story as they are being carried off on stretchers.

"There is a prevalent perception among police officers that bikes don't belong on the road," said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

Yet even the most staunch cycling advocates acknowledge that some cyclists give others a bad name by failing to obey traffic laws.

"When I see a rider run a red light, I cringe," Shahum said. "Not only is it totally unsafe, it makes me and all other cyclists look bad."

As for drivers, the data suggest their behavior is getting worse by the year.

Serious crashes

The number of serious Bay Area crashes in which cyclists were at fault has hovered at about 100 per year for the past decade, but the number in which motorists were blamed has steadily risen - from 38 in 1997 to 61 in 2006, the last full year for which data were available.

In addition, the number of accidents involving drivers hitting cyclists and then fleeing has spiked in recent years. Hit-and-run drivers killed four cyclists and severely injured 26 others in 2006 - significantly more than any other year in the past decade.
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"The majority of cyclists obey the rules, and the motorists, too, but then you get these outlaws," George said. "It's an ongoing battle, and in recent years the tensions have gotten worse."
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According to the data, when drivers were at fault in an accident, the most common type of violation cited was not giving cyclists the right of way. For bike riders, unsafe speed was the most dangerous violation, followed by riding on the wrong side of the road.
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Cyclists battle for road survival


By Mario Cacciottolo BBC News

Cyclists will tell you it's a jungle out there, especially on the busy, car-choked streets of our major cities.

Motorists and pedestrians, on the other hand, will gripe about those who have got on their bikes, complaining that they don't stick to the rules - or paths - designated to them.

Now Conservative leader David Cameron has pedalled into the argument, after being photographed by the Daily Mirror jumping red lights and cycling the wrong way up a one-way street.
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Mr Cahill, who says he has been hit by cars three times, is dismissive of the claims made against Mr Cameron.

"I've jumped the lights before, but I'm not a crook. There's a negative attitude towards cyclists from motorists.

"Cars park on cycle lanes, so we can't use them, but no-one does anything about it. And if you followed anyone around with a camera, then they'd eventually do something wrong."

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Vehicle speed is only important if it's the cyclists who is speeding


[I hear too many times that the fact that a speeding motorist is not found at fault in a crash with a cyclists, if the cyclists speed is important in this case then motorists speeds should be important in all cyclists crash cases. Our deepest sympathies to the Clarke's and their loss.]

A trial date is set for early July to determine whether a 17-year-old Incline juvenile was at fault in a vehicle vs. bicyclist fatality last year at the intersection of Country Club Drive and Village Boulevard.

The youth, whose name is not being published because he is a juvenile, faces two charges, one of which is vehicular manslaughter, stemming from the Sept. 20, 2007 collision that killed 43-year-old Lloyd Clarke, a Hagerston, Md. native.
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'An unfortunate tragedy'

According to initial Washoe County Sheriff's Office reports, Clarke was riding a bicycle southbound in the early evening of Sept. 20 on Country Club Drive when a northbound truck driven by the juvenile turned left into the intersection of Country Club Drive and Village Boulevard. Clarke was unable to stop, and hit the side of the truck. He was pronounced dead shortly after deputies arrived on the scene at 6:55 p.m.

Shortly after the incident, sheriff's officials said preliminary investigation pointed to the juvenile not being at fault, due to the possible speed of the cyclist since Country Club Drive is steep at that point in the road.

After a three-month investigation, however, evidence and witness testimony suggests the initial reports were inaccurate, thus bringing the charges against the juvenile, said WCSO Lt. John Spencer, who took part in the investigation.

"Our job is to let the evidence prove or disprove, and the evidence brought to us concludes that these charges should be brought against (the juvenile)," he said. "In my heart I don't feel there was ever any intent by (the juvenile). He simply made an improper left turn. This is just an unfortunate tragedy that has cast an unfortunate shadow over two great families."

Sherol Clarke, Lloyd Clarke's widow, spoke with the Bonanza in a phone interview Wednesday evening.

She said the past six months have been very hard for her and her 11-year-old daughter, Elta Clarke.

"It's unfortunate that the statements released prior to the investigation were not retracted; had they been, things would be a lot different today," Sherol Clarke said. "It's been very difficult for us to understand. I'm having a hard time trying to explain it all to my daughter. This event has changed so many lives."

As part of the investigation, detailed scene photographs the day of and the day after the incident were taken, detailed scene measurements using computer survey systems were taken, a witness and the juvenile were interviewed, toxicology tests were take from the juvenile and Clarke, a mechanical examination was made of the juvenile's truck and Clarke's bicycle, and speed reenactments were conducted.

The speed reenactments were a key part in the investigation, Spencer said, because it helped determine whether Clarke was exceeding the road's 35-mile per hour speed limit.

"We brought in a sheriff's officer who rides a bicycle and had him come down the road, and it disproved that," Spencer said. "There's no way the bike could have been going that fast."

The toxicology results also were important to the investigation, he said.

"Nowhere does it imply that either party was either impaired or were reckless leading up to the accident," Spencer said.

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Safe riding in narrow lanes


Two League of American Bicyclists certified traffic cycling instructors shoot video of each other "driving" their bicycles safely and legally by controlling lanes on streets that are part of the route they use to train students in the Bike Ed

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