In early March a rookie Santa Clara County deputy
sheriff veered into
the opposite lane of traffic and struck three bicyclists, killing two,
including a rising star in the Bay Area cycling community.
The group of riders hit by the deputy on Sunday were on a stretch of road frequently used by cyclists, but also heavily traveled by gravel trucks en route to a nearby quarry. In 1996, a 46-year-old Cupertino man was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer rig while riding a bicycle near the scene of Sunday's accident.
Borba said his racing team regularly uses the road for training rides because it is considered safe.
"It has a large bicycle lane that is safe," he said. "That's why we ride that route every weekend."
This led the San Francisco Chronicle to run a series of articles about the incident and cycling safety in general. They talked about Kristy Gough the champion triathlete killed.
As an amateur triathlete, Gough won in her age group in the 2004 Ironman Hawaii triathlon.
"That's the world championship; the biggest you can win as an amateur," said Björling by telephone from his home in Sweden.
Her biggest achievement as a professional triathlete was finishing third in the Ironman in the United Kingdom in 2006.
And Matt Peterson, the other victim
Peterson's goal in road racing, for at least two years, was to win the Merco Credit Union Cycling Classic in downtown Merced. So focused was he that he kept a picture of the race trophy - a river rock - as a screen saver on his computer.
The deputy later admitted that he fell asleep behind the wheel and his lawyer blamed fatigue as he'd worked a 12.5 hour shift with 10.5 hours off before starting his next shift. [Warning: the description of the crash is pretty vivid and gruesome] Later it came out that he had been charged with a DUI in the past.
Council was charged in 2001 in Los Angeles with drunken driving and engaging in an exhibition of speed, records show. The more serious charges were dropped in a plea bargain, and Council pleaded guilty only to street racing, earning two years of probation. The Department of Motor Vehicles said Council had no other blemishes on his driving record in the past 10 years.
"I hate to see someone tagged for life for something they did when they were 20," Sansen said.
Making matters worse for Council and his family, Sansen said, is that he had a sister who was struck and killed by a vehicle at age 7, when Council was 3 or 4.
It does not appear he was drunk in this case and a blood sample was taken. On a wider scale they wrote about the rise in area bicycle fatalities, published a bike accidents database, list of the 25 most dangerous Bay Area roads for cyclists and a controversial "who's at fault" database that went with an article about how cyclists are often blamed for crashes. [This is based upon police determination of who's at fault which many have argued has a survivor bias as well as a pro-car bias. Bob Mionske, author of the excellent Bicycling and the Law, wrote about this - and media bias - in his column.]
I've found numerous examples of how police choose to interview the driver, but fail to interview the cyclist, before erroneously concluding that the cyclist is at fault in the collision. And when the cyclist can’t be interviewed, because the crash was fatal, it’s even easier to get a one-sided account of how events unfolded. I've also encountered all-too-frequent examples of police reports concluding that safe — and legal — riding practices are erroneously interpreted by police officers as “cyclist error.”
What possible purpose could be served by linking stories of reckless and scofflaw cyclists to a tragic crash in which two law-abiding cyclists were killed?
We know what happened in Lloyd’s and Brett’s crashes; their right of way was violated, and the police blamed them for “speeding.” How many other crashes where the cyclist was blamed for speeding — remember, this is what the Chronicle identifies as the leading cyclist-at-fault collision — were actually crashes involving a driver violating the cyclist’s right of way? A few more? A lot more? All of them? And how would accurate police reporting of the causes of those and other crashes affect the conclusion that cyclists are twice as likely to be at fault in crashes? We’ll probably never know, but we do know that until law enforcement officers begin reporting what actually happened, rather than what their biases tell them happened, we’ll continue to get reports skewed by false tales of speeding cyclists, and newspapers will continue to report statistics skewed by the erroneous conclusions of those biased reports.
Finally, the SF series covers a memorial ride,
One thousand cyclists, most with white flowers in their helmets, pedaled slowly and solemnly on Saturday through the Peninsula foothills to bid two fallen comrades farewell.
and a lawsuit
A bicyclist who survived a collision with a Santa Clara County sheriff's patrol car that veered across a roadway and killed two of his riding companions filed a claim against the county Wednesday seeking unspecified monetary damages for his injuries.
I can't imagine the Post dedicating so much space to cycling safety issues.
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