Category: traffic violence

the worst drivers

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I frequently travel to cities on the west coast and the intermountain west, and just recently traveled to several cities in the southern and eastern states. When I travel, I am always paying attention to transportation systems and driver behavior, in no small part because I get around by walking, bicycling and transit. From these experiences, I can state clearly that Sacramento has the worst drivers of any city I’ve visited. The incidence of aggressive and belligerent drivers is probably about average. What is so different, though, is the low skill level of drivers here. A brief list:

  • unawareness of traffic law (California Vehicle Code), both old and new
  • oblivious to what is going on around them, focused on their phone or car or daydreaming, not paying attention to others on and off the roadway
  • no understanding of taking turns at intersections with four-way stop signs; the most basic rule of intersections, first come – first served, is apparently not known by most drivers
  • uncertainty about where their vehicle is on the road; drifting into adjacent traffic lanes and bike lanes, stopping where they probably did not intend to stop; this is not just a problem of oversized trucks and SUVs where the driver cannot actually see the roadway, but for most drivers of most vehicles; the damage to vertical delineators, medians, traffic circles and roundabout, and curbs, attests that they don’t know where their vehicle is, or don’t care
  • unwillingness to stop (or yield, as the law states) for people walking across the street at intersections
  • failing to look when entering or exiting driveways for people on the sidewalk
  • running stop signs
  • running red lights

And most irritating to me, stopping for bicyclists when the driver has the right of way and the bicyclist does not. This teaches bicyclists to go when it is not legal for them to do so, and not safe. It also delays bicyclists. I once totaled up the amount of time I wasted waiting for drivers to take their legal right of way, and it was about 20 hours per year. Time that I will never get back.

I agree that really solving bad driver behavior requires correcting the roadways. But we have spent billions building unsafe roadways, and will have to spend billions making roadways safe again. When will we have that kind of money?

Again, Sacramento is sort of in the middle of cities making changes to their roadways. Much less than many cities (most notably the bay area), but significantly more than many cities. So the lack of safe roadways does not explain all of the bad driver behavior. Drivers here really are less skilled.

Why? I don’t know. But I’m certainly getting tired of it. Nearly every trip I take walking and bicycling, I am threatened by unskilled drivers, yes, and sometimes belligerent drivers. Sometimes many times on a single trip. I have a high level of skill in both walking and bicycling, watching out for and responding to unskilled driving. But what of everyone else who does not have that skill level? It is ironic that I, as a walker and bicyclist, need a high level of skill to navigate our transportation system, but the same expectation of drivers does not exist.

how to stop red light running

Dan Allison2 Comments

I’ve posted about the red light running epidemic: red light cameras and law enforcement; the end of red light enforcement; how do we get more red light cameras?; red light running consequences; SacCity red light cameras and crashes; Sac Vision Zero intersections & red light cameras; red light cameras; pandemic of red light running; and red-light-running bullies.

Of all the traffic violence occurring on our roadways, this is the one that concerns me the most. When one driver runs a red light and hits another driver going on the green light, the result is almost always serious injury and sometimes fatality. It is a particularly high impact crash because the driver running the red light is often accelerating into the intersection, because they have decided (consciously or not) that they are going to run the light, and want to get through as quickly as they can. T-bone crashes, which red light running crashes almost always are, are especially damaging.

The red light running epidemic started with the pandemic, in my observation, though it has always been present. I’ve seen multiple explantations of why this is, but the relative lack of cars on the road, and the resulting perception that the road belongs to the driver alone, is one common explanation. But as the pandemic has faded, red light running has not faded, it has increased month over month. If you observe any moderately busy intersection, you will see drivers run red lights on nearly every signal cycle. Other drivers, and people walking and bicycling, have responded to this lawlessness by not going on the green. People now expect someone to be running the red light, and pause until all the vehicles have stopped. Green lights and pedestrian signals were never a guarantee of safety, but now they are a guarantee of danger.

I have said before, and continue to strongly believe, that automated red light enforcement is the top solution to this behavior. I believe that most drivers would stop doing it if they were ticketed a few times. Some would not, or course, because there are drivers on the road for whom the cost of a ticket is meaningless, and their consideration of other people’s lives is nil. Such drivers will create a pattern of law breaking that can be identified and stopped by suspension of drivers license, and more importantly, confiscation of their vehicle. In my observation, most of the red light runners are driving high value cars. Tickets mean nothing, but loss of their expensive car will get their attention.

Red light running is the traffic violence issue probably least amendable to infrastructure solutions. It is a choice by drivers, and one not primarily induced by poorly designed roadways.

There are research papers from the 1990s through early 2010s that suggest changes to the signals to reduce red light running. Bigger and brighter signals. larger brighter reflective backplates around the signals (these have been common recently with the yellow reflective backplates). Changing the all-red interval to a longer period, or the yellow signal to a longer period, but drivers adjust to this and increase their risk behavior to compensate. Placing advance warning signing or flashing lights, more appropriate for rural situations than cities. I don’t believe that any of these have a significant impact. Horizontal rather than vertical placement of the signal heads may have some beneficial effect.

Moving signals to near-side locations of the intersection is the solution in many parts of the world. Near-side signal placing does reduce red light running because the driver is responding to the signal on the close side of the intersection, not the far side. Research supports this, but the US refuses to make this change.

And of course education, encouraging drivers to follow the law and to cease actions that endanger others. I’m pretty cynical about education. Education works when someone does not know the consequences of their behavior. But drivers do know the consequences of their red light running. They’ve gotten away with it so far, but I doubt that any of them think they will get away with it forever.

Redesigning roadways and intersections to create more friction, such as narrower lanes and curb extensions to slow drivers, reducing the energy of crashes, but neither prevent red light running. Protected intersections reduce the hazard for bicyclists and walkers, by better separating movements and shortening crossing distances, but they don’t prevent red light running.

Though research clearly supports daylighting for increasing visibility between drivers and walkers, it may also increase red light running because drivers do, or think they do, have a better view of the intersection and whether approaching vehicles are going to cause them problems. I’m all for daylighting, but this issue must be acknowledged.

I believe automated red light running enforcement is the most effective solution, but others should be considered in addition to, not in place of, automated enforcement.

I searched for but did not find any research or even preliminary information on red light running and solutions since the beginning of the pandemic. It is possible some is underway. It is not the sort of thing that would be funded in the current administration, but it might not be rescinded.

Howard Chan and traffic deaths emergency

Dan Allison1 Comment

Note: I have always thought it was part of my role to say the things that other people are afraid to say, for fear of rocking the boat or retribution. But this needs to be said.

On November 12, the city Law & Legislation Committee considered agenda item 6, Councilmember Proposal Request for Committee Consideration – Declaring a State of Emergency Regarding Traffic Deaths. This was introduced by Council Member/Vice Mayor Caity Maple and also sponsored by Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Mayor Pro-tem Karina Talamantes. The item was amended before the committee meeting to remove item 3, ‘Direct the City Manager to work with the Police Department to ramp up enforcement of traffic laws, especially around distracted driving, speed enforcement, and crosswalk violations’ which was opposed by most of the transportation advocacy community including Civic Thread and SABA, which led community discussion of the proposal and made recommendations for improvements. This is a sign of progress, though many have questioned whether it will make a difference, given that there is only support for and not specific funding tied to quick-build projects to make our streets safer, now.

How did we get to the point of emergency?

I believe City of Sacramento City Manager Howard Chan is the person most responsible for creating this emergency. Chan has opposed including any funds in the city budget for addressing the crisis. When the proposal from Sacramento Active Transportation Commission for $10M in funding to address the problem came before the council, he nixed it. Chan has a regressive understanding of public safety, which counts the number police officers and ignores other threats to the safety and lives of citizens. Chan is uninterested in public health. Chan has supervised the Department of Public Works, accepting and promoting the idea that roadways are for moving cars, and not community resources for access and life. Chan has created a city staff culture that avoids innovation and accountability, live in fear of getting sued or getting fired. Chan carries out projects and programs that he is interested in, and ignores everything else.

Read More »

SacCity pedestrian safety emergency: enforcement

Dan Allison2 Comments

The draft City of Sacramento emergency declaration on pedestrian safety: ‘Declaring a state of emergency regarding pedestrian safety in the City of Sacramento and calling for immediate action to address pedestrian injuries and fatalities’ is available (pdf of text, 2 pages, 68KB) (pdf of attachments, 28 pages, 26MB).

This post focuses on the enforcement item.

3. “The City Manager is further directed to work with the Sacramento Police Department to ramp up enforcement of traffic laws that protect pedestrians, including speed limit enforcement, crosswalk violations, and distracted driving. The City shall prioritize enforcement in high-injury corridors and areas with frequent pedestrian activity.”

Three advocacy organizations specifically commented about the draft that it must focus on ‘equity and mobility justice’, as did most of the people who spoke at the city council meeting.

I’ll be blunt. There is a deep and well justified mistrust of Sacramento Police Department (SacPD) among people of color and low-income, particularly among, but not limited to, blacks. SacPD has a history of oppressing black people, and has often used traffic stops as a pretext to harass people. Many of these have escalated into arrest, beatings, and even death. I have seen no real evidence that SacPD has changed their stripes. They are not people that I want interacting with the public about traffic law. And, apparently, they don’t want to either. SacPD has reduced its traffic officer group to almost nothing, and does little traffic enforcement by traffic officers or any officers. It is time to move past the idea that law enforcement has much to contribute to reducing traffic violence.

At the same time, no enforcement of any sort is not the answer. People are dying when drivers violate traffic law, and these deaths are unacceptable. Speed is a contributing factor to all traffic crashes, and is sometimes the primary factor. Driving too fast for conditions, and these conditions include walkers and bicyclists on and close to the roadway, is always wrong, even though road design encourages it.

Automated enforcement is a partial answer. It avoids the pretextual stops, avoids harassment of people of color and low-income by police, at least over traffic law, avoid the escalation that police engage in, and is much less expensive than police officers.

The three main traffic violence issues to be addressed, at least at this time, are:

red light running: Red light cameras and automatic ticket issue to the owner of the vehicle are a partial solution to red light running. Of course some drivers will always run red lights, will always endanger others, and will not be deterred by tickets. But most drivers will notice that tickets are being issued, and will change their behavior. Red light running does have infrastructure solutions, including changing from far-side signals to near-side signals, and raised crosswalks and raised intersections. But there are not easy or inexpensive fixes, so automated enforcement is a good interim solution. When the county ended its red light program, which operated the red light camera in the City of Sacramento, the city made no effort to replace that program, and at least some city staff celebrated it (the red light runners?). The city should create a red light camera program of its own. It should be administered by Public Works, not by SacPD. There are equity issues, since the wide, high speed arterials that most encourage red light running are in low-income communities. Two solutions are to distribute cameras across the city in locations where red light running might occur, and not just those locations with a history. The egregious violators, which are who we really want to target, will be receive tickets eventually. The second is to adjust violation fees (and court costs) to a factor related to income. It would be awkward and perhaps invasive to base it on income, but it could easily be based on vehicle value.

failure to yield to walkers: Drivers have been trained by roadway mis-design to not yield to people in crosswalks. The recent SacPD, OTS funded, sting on J Street demonstrated how common this is. But again, as drivers have been trained to do this, they can be untrained. There are options for automated enforcement of failure to yield, but it requires more complicated and less widely used technology. The city should be experimenting with this technology (they are not), but in the meanwhile, this may be one situation in which in-person enforcement, on a limit basis and with close attention to equity concerns, may be justified. Any in-person enforcement by SacPD raises issues of police violence and over-reaction, including high-speed chases of violators. One solution is to ban high-speed chases. With technology such as helicopters (which the police love) and drones, there is no reason to endanger the lives of violations, bystanders, or officers themselves with high speed chases. Too many cops have watched too many movies with the thrill of high-speed chases. The practice must end.

speeding: There is available and highly reliable technology for automated enforcement of speeding. There is a state-authorized pilot program of speed camera enforcement in six cities and part of Pacific Coast Highway. Sacramento is not among them. To its credit, City of Sacramento asked to be part of this pilot but was not included. The city should strongly lobby the next legislative session for inclusion, and should have a program designed and ready to go when authorized. Speeding is the most common concern of the public, and it is true that speed is a factor in every crash, I’m doubtful that it is the biggest concern. I’d rather see a focus on red light running and failure to yield.

I believe that item 3 should be deleted for its likely failure on equity and mobility justice.

I have not yet written about the other six items, and don’t know when I’ll be able to get to it. However, I will say now, in case you were wondering, that by far the most effective city response is temporary (quick build or tactical urbanism) and permanent changes to roadway design. And what it will take to accomplish those changes is funding, from the city general fund. The seeking of grants, and waiting years or decades for the funding to address traffic violence, is only part of the solution. If this is truly an emergency, and it is, the city must spend significant funding to act on it, and act now.

traffic violence emergency at Sac City Council

Dan Allison4 Comments

It is likely that council member Caity Maple, along with Mayor Darryl Steinberg and council member Karina Talamantes, will introduce an emergency declaration on traffic safety at the city council meeting tonight, starting at 5:00 PM. The item is not on the agenda, so I presume it will be introduced during the ‘Council Comments-Ideas, Questions’ part of the agenda, after all the numbered agenda items. Council members get their ‘matters not on the agenda’ time, just like the public does. None of the advocates I have asked have a clear picture of how emergency declarations work. I presume the idea will come back to council one to many times in the near future, but tonight is your first chance to hear what the council has to say and comment on the ideas.

Caity Maple has posted about the recent injury (now fatality) and the emergency response she wants the city to take:

I’m devastated to see yet another person critically injured after being struck by a vehicle on Sacramento’s roads. Even beyond our City’s commitments to eliminate traffic deaths through Vision Zero, we need to take immediate and urgent action. This coming Tuesday, alongside my colleagues Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Mayor Pro Tem Karina Talamantes, I will be introducing a proposal that:

  • Declares a state of emergency for the City of Sacramento regarding the road safety crisis
  • Directs the City Manager to identify funding for a public education campaign focused on driver education, pedestrian/ bicyclist awareness, and traffic safety
  • Directs the City Manager to work with SacPD to ramp up enforcement of traffic laws that protect pedestrians, including speed limit enforcement, crosswalk violations, and distracted driving, especially in high-injury corridors
  • Reaffirms our commitment to Vision Zero and directs staff to expedite safety projects
Read More »

SacCity fails to act on traffic violence

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

At the June 11 city council meeting at which the 2024-2025 budget was adopted, seven of the council members spoke strongly about the need to address safety on the city’s streets, acknowledging that the city leads California as the most deadly for roadway users. But no modification was made to the budget to reflect that priority, and the city manager refused to make any changes to the budget to fund street safety.

In the two months since that council meeting, nothing has shown up on the council agenda to move forward on street safety, nothing has shown up to allocate funds, except some minor grant applications.

The city has long had a policy that it does not fund street safety projects, except for the required grant matches. Other than grant matches, no city general funds are expended to make our streets safer. The city certainly has been successful in getting some grants, but also has not been competitive on many others.

The Sacramento Active Transportation Commission (SacATC) made a recommendation in their annual report to allocate $10M to safety projects. Council members spoke in support of the idea, but no action was taken to fund those ideas.

We have an epidemic of traffic violence in the city. Yet the city is doing almost nothing to address that. Walkers, bicyclists, drivers and passengers are all dying in horrible numbers. What is the city doing in response? Submitting grant applications and hoping for the best. This is unacceptable.

The council must take this public health crisis seriously, and allocate funds to start solving it. It must also stand up to the city manager, who does not believe in spending money on street safety. The city manager runs the city according to his own whims, and rarely follows the direction of council on anything. The council must either stand up to, or fire, the city manager. So long as he is in the position, the city will not move forward on saving the lives of vulnerable roadway users.

SacBee: quit parroting CHP misinformation

Dan Allison1 Comment

An article in the SacBee today reports that a bicyclist died when he/she swerved into the path of a motor vehicle. The article parrots the CHP spokesman, that the bicyclist swerved. No doubt the uninjured driver would say that. The bicyclist is dead and has nothing to say, so the CHP takes the word of the driver.

Note that no crash investigation has been conducted by CHP. Crash investigations take weeks, and require gathering of detailed information about the point of collision, and the direction of movement of the bicyclist and driver at the time of collision, and more information about the victim and perpetrator. But without the results of an investigation, the CHP just assumes that the bicyclist is at fault and the driver is innocent. This is victim blaming of the first order. Of course this is standard procedure for CHP, where almost every officer thinks that every bicyclist crash is the fault of the bicyclist, without evidence to support that assumption. CHP is not a safety-oriented agency, they are a victim-blaming agency. No surprise.

What is a surprise is that the SacBee would parrot the CHP’s misinformation about the crash. News media does not exist to reprint agency press releases. It should exist to question what agencies say, particularly when the agency expresses certainty about a crash that has not received an incident investigation. Please do better, SacBee. Report the facts that are known, not CHP speculation.

what is public safety?

Dan Allison2 Comments

This post is a response to the Sacramento City Council meeting last Tuesday on the FY 2024-2025 budget adoption.

A number of people spoke on the budget, the majority of them downtown power brokers who were adamant that the police department budget not be reduced. They painted a picture of lawlessness in the central city that could only be reversed by not only not reducing, but increasing the police budget. Most of the problem was blamed on unhoused people, who were presented as violent drug addicts and criminals (never mind the white collar crime going on inside the buildings). Mayor Steinberg right off the bat said that the police budget was being increased, not reduced, but that did not prevent the speakers from claiming that it was being reduced. Several speakers used the term ‘defund the police’, which was originally an effort to reduce police budgets to force the police to be more accountable to the people, but has now been weaponized by pro-police people to suggest that every effort to hold police accountable is an effort to defund the police. One speaker attacked Councilmember Valenzuela, suggesting that she was personally responsible for all the problems in the central city.

To say the least, I was very disturbed by these messages. These are people of great privilege, asking that the city elevate their privilege over other citizens.

Not one of these central city people spoke about the epidemic of traffic violence that is harming people more than traditional crime. Several city council members did speak about this, but none of the downtown power brokers.

None of the power brokers even mentioned other parts of the city. Were they concerned about crime elsewhere? Apparently not.

Only one of the people who spoke in favor of the police budget appeared to be a person of color. He was not from the central city, and expressed ambivalence about police, acknowledging that he was concerned about crime related to his business, but also that many people were uncomfortable about the police.

Not one person from the low-income parts of the city spoke in favor of the police, or the police budget. There is a deep, and well deserved, distrust of the police in large parts of the city. Police have served as oppressors and killers in many, many incidents. Take a moment to think about all the incidents where the police escalated the situation, and then started shooting. Think about the incidents where they showed up and started shooting before they even knew what was going on, and killed innocent people. Think about the incidents where an unarmed person was running away ‘resisting arrest’ and the police shot them in the back. This is a reality that low-income people of color live with and are traumatized by.

In my view, police do not keep us safe. They respond to incidents involving bullets and knives. They often don’t respond to other incidents, or respond very slowly. And it is always response, never prevention.

What does this have to do with traffic violence and safe streets?

The police budget takes a large and growing part of the city budget. These are dollars that could be spent on solving problems, making the city a safer place, but instead they go to the police, who have only one solution, themselves. Councilmember Valenzuela made an effort to keep personal in internal affairs, the police who investigate police malfeasance and crime, but was rebuffed by Police Chief Kathy Lester who doesn’t believe internal affairs is important. Several times the issue came up, as it has many times before, about transferring a small part of the police budget to efforts that actually make a difference, such as Department of Community Response, but no action was taken.

The number of deaths in the city from traffic violence is larger than the number from homicide. Yet the city has only eight traffic enforcement officers. Eight, out of nearly 700 sworn officers (there are others who work for the department but are not officers). This understaffing is a choice that the police department makes, it was not forced on them by anyone else. It reflects their attitude that people who die by guns and knives are worth notice, but people who die by traffic violence are not. It also reflects their attitude that it is better to respond to violence than prevent violence.

I am not in favor of direct traffic enforcement by police. Of the few stops that occur, they are almost all pretextual, meaning that the police officer has stopped the person for a traffic violation, but really is seeking other violations. Most stops are of people of color, as documented by the police’s own data. These stops not infrequently escalate, escalation as often on the part of the officer as the person stopped. Some of these stops result in death.

Automated enforcement is the answer to most traffic enforcement. The city had a red light camera program, but when the county dropped it, so did the city. The police made no request to continue to program. Though the city has encouraged the legislature to pass and the governor to sign automated speed enforcement, the police have been silent. Again, an attitude that only an officer can enforce the law, technology cannot.

I have watched police officers routinely ignore traffic violations, just sitting around waiting for something ‘important’ to happen.

So what is public safety? Public safety is when:

  • resources are spent equally on protecting all citizens, not just the privileged
  • police and the city as a whole focuses on reparation, reinvestment, and dialog to heal the trauma created by police oppression
  • police allocate their officers and other resources based on actual threats to the public safety, not on outmoded perceptions
  • the city reallocates budget to those programs that are making a positive difference in people’s lives, not just increasing the budget of the loudest voices

I know I’ll lose some readers with this post. I know that some people concerned about traffic violence and safe streets are also supporters of the police and of direct traffic enforcement. Sorry to see you go. But I can no longer be silent when I see police and pro-police people claiming the right to use the term ‘public safety’ for their own benefit, to the detriment of others.

RRFBs are being ignored

Dan Allison4 Comments

I was a strong supporter of RRFBs (rectangular rapid flashing beacon), where a safer crossing of the street is intended mid-block. I worked with transportation agencies in a number of locations to get them installed, and was very happy to see them go in.

They are used where multi-use trails cross roadways, and at intersections where additional traffic calming and safety are needed, but where the transportation agency does not want to add stop signs, or is unwilling or financially unable to install a traffic signal. The cost savings of an RRFB over a traffic signal are significant, about $25K for a RRFB, and upwards of $1M for a full traffic signal.

But…

Driver behavior has rendered RRFBs untenable for protecting people walking. I have observed a number of RRFB locations over the last few months. All of them are failing. Between 25% and 50% of drivers are failing to yield to people using these crossings, bicyclists or walkers. I have seen several people almost get hit by car drivers. Some drivers are slowing but failing to stop, or yield, and some drivers are not even slowing. Apparently the attitude of many drivers is that the RRFBs are only advisory and do not require yield to people in the street. Of course the law requires yielding to people crossing the street in a crosswalk, whether there is any type of signing or signaling, or not. But drivers don’t see it that way.

So, I find myself having to withdraw support for RRFBs. I will not support them as freestanding safety improvements, not as part of project. It is sad that driver behavior has erased the benefit of a safety enhancement, but it is a fact, and driver behavior gets continuously worse, never better.

Drivers are terrorists.

photo of RRFB on J St at 17th St, Sacramento
RRFB on J St at 17th St, Sacramento

San Juan Rd at Airport Rd kills another person

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I posted to Instagram about this, but it deserves amplification. “The Sacramento Bee had an article today that provided in-depth information about the death of a person crossing San Juan Rd in North Natomas. It included information about the dangerous roadway and lack of crosswalks and about the individual and family of the person killed. This is the kind of crash reporting we need to raise awareness and get the city to allocate resources to save lives.”

Apple Maps capture of intersection of San Juan Rd and Airport Rd in North Natomas, Sacramento
intersection of San Juan Rd and Airport Rd in North Natomas, Sacramento

I have worked off and on doing bicyclist education in North Natomas, and therefore crossed through this intersection many times, mostly bicycling but occasionally walking. It is not a safe intersection, for anyone.

Walking

The lack of crosswalks is obvious. The posted speed limit is 40 mph, but common practice and the design of the road sets that as a minimum rather than maximum. Knowing that this is a dangerous situation, the city has cross-hatched out the area from Azevado Drive to Airport Road on the north side, narrowing the roadway to one lane, but drivers routinely use this area for both travel and turning. Westbound drivers coming down off the overpass over I-80 accelerate to 60 mph. People walk across San Juan here. The city has decided to leave them to fate, and in this case the fate was death. A crosswalk without any additional protection would not be appropriate given the high speed traffic. It would require, at the least, a RRFB (rectangular rapid flashing beacon), which is a sign with flashing lights activated by the person wanting to cross. But given actual speed, it probably would need additional protection. Fixing poorly designed roadways is expensive, but so are lives.

There is a crosswalk over Airport Road, but given the wide-open design of the intersection, it is meaningless. Drivers turning from San Juan Road are unlikely to notice it. Drivers southbound on Airport Road generally stop over or beyond the crosswalk, because they need the visibility, and as much head start on the dangerous turn as possible. I know this from extensive observation.

Bicycling

Some people would say “but it has bike lanes”. Not really. Eastbound, motor vehicles turning onto Airport Road cross over the bike lanes at many points, regardless of any paint on the ground. If a person stayed in the bike lane, they would be exposing themselves to high speed traffic for along distance. Hug the curb to be further from motor vehicles, or use the bike lane so that you are more visible? It is a devils choice, forced by road design. West of Airport Road, the bike lane is missing for a distance, implying to drivers that they have the right-of-way over bicyclists. Eastbound, the bike lane is mostly continuous, except for the intersection itself (why?), but it is full of debris from construction traffic and car parts. To my knowledge, the city has never swept this bike lane.

It is difficult many times of the day to turn east from Airport Road to San Juan Road. High speed traffic, high volume at certain times, does not slow in the least in this area, and there is no signing to indicate they should.

Regular Class 2 bike lanes should be illegal on roadways posted over 35 mph. This road was mis-designed from the beginning. I don’t know whether the city later added bike lanes, though it is probably so given all the striping on San Juan to the east. The bike lanes did not make it safer for bicyclists.

Journalism

News media in general does a very poor job of reporting on traffic crashes, particularly when the victim is a walker or bicyclist. The initial news item parrots the law enforcement statement. Unless waiting for ‘notification of family’, the victim’s name is given, but the driver’s name never is. This is a strange inversion of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, making the driver innocent and the victim guilty. As I have stated many times before, law enforcement personnel have no training in analyzing the ways in which roadway design contributes, if not causes, traffic crashes. But they have a lot of ideas, not based in any research or training, that they are too happy to relay. One that will ring home with bicyclists is the repeated phrase ‘they weren’t wearing a helmet’, as though wearing a helmet protects against being hit by a driver traveling over the speed limit (they almost all are) or well over the speed limit, as is likely in this case.

A good summary of the issue is by SafeTREC, Media Narratives of Pedestrian and Bicyclist-Involved Crashes. If you want more, simply search the Internet for ‘poor journalism on traffic crashes’ or similar terms. Angie Schmitt wrote an entire book, Right-of-Way, about this issue and others. What about the next reporting? There usually isn’t any. The incident is never mentioned again. Law enforcement contributes to this by making sure that the incident report is delayed for weeks or months after the crash. In California, there is the common practice of law enforcement claiming that incident reports can never be released to anyone but immediate family. This is no backed up by state law, but it is common practice. So even when the incident report is completed, the public is unlikely to ever know the facts of the crash. All the public ever knows is the untrained, biased speculation of the law enforcement officer on the scene. The cynic in me can only see this as an intention on the part of law enforcement to protect drives and keep the public in the dark about traffic violence.

So, it was a wonderful breath of fresh air to read the Sacramento Bee article by Ariane Lange: A father died crossing a dangerous Sacramento road. His 13-year-old son was watching. The article went into depth about the person who was killed, and his family. It looked at the dangerous design of the road, and the fact that the city rarely fixes dangerous roads except with state or federal grants, not its own money. It talked about Vision Zero and the high injury network, of which San Juan Road is one, though in part due to problems further east. It talks about the statistics for death at various vehicle speeds, including 50% death at 40 mph (though it is very unlikely the driver was going that slow).

Traffic violence is pervasive in Sacramento, with the highest rate of fatal crashes in the state. The usual media reporting glosses over this, basically selling the story that if it wasn’t someone you know, it wasn’t that important. But it is always important, and sooner or later it will be someone you know, or you. These are real people with real lives, and real families and friends, and their death leaves a huge hole, whether they are homeless or not.

Thank you, Ariane, for telling the real story behind the death.