A specter is haunting Seattle—the specter of a War on Cars. All the powers of Old Seattle have entered into a “holy” alliance to win this war: Seattle Times publisher and city council president, columnist Joni Balter and developer Kemper Freeman, Rainier Club regulars and suburban slobs.
Where is the advocate for increased bike and pedestrian safety who has not been branded an anti-car “militant”? Where is the politico who has not used the “War on Cars” rubric as a tool for demonizing the nondriving classes, for marginalizing our city’s walkers, bike riders, and mass transit users?
The mindless repetition of this “War on Cars” falsehood—by car advocates harboring a phony, self-serving sense of victimhood—has led to a situation in which this “War on Cars” is acknowledged by most Seattleites to be real. Because of this regrettable specter, it is high time that cyclists, pedestrians, and their transit-riding comrades openly publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of a “War on Cars” with a manifesto of and by the nondrivers themselves:
I. The car-driving class must pay its own way!
For cars we have paved our forests, spanned our lakes, and burrowed under our cities. Yet drivers throw tantrums at the painting of a mere bicycle lane on the street. They balk at the mere suggestion of hiking a car-tab fee, raising the gas tax, or tolling to help pay for their insatiable demands, even as downtrodden transit riders have seen fares rise 80 percent over four years.
No more! We demand that car drivers pay their own way, bearing the full cost of the automobile-petroleum-industrial complex that has depleted our environment, strangled our cities, and drawn our nation into foreign wars. Reinstate the progressive motor vehicle excise tax, hike the gas tax, and toll every freeway, bridge, and neighborhood street until the true cost of driving lies as heavy and noxious as our smog-laden air. Our present system of hidden subsidies is the opiate of the car-driving masses; only when it is totally withdrawn will our road-building addiction finally be broken.
II. All power to the people’s transit
If Seattle is to become a people’s paradise, our buses, rail, streetcars, and ferries must stretch into every neighborhood, running reliably, affordably, and at all hours of the day and night. Since mass transit serves the masses, the mass of our transportation dollars must hereafter be spent to meet its needs.
III. The pedestrian and bicycle classes must be protected. And served!
The history of transportation is the history of struggle between the drivers and the nondrivers whose lives and limbs have literally been crushed. Between 2000 and 2009 in King County, 19 cyclists and 238 pedestrians lost their lives to cars, while injuries sent another 423 cyclists and 1,656 pedestrians to our hospital wards for two days or more after being hit by cars. If there is, in fact, a “War on Cars,” then the cars are winning—as a look at recent headlines confirms. Saturday, September 10, brought the death of a young cyclist in the University District, and Sunday, September 11, brought the death of a woman biking on the Olympic Peninsula while wearing a helmet and a bright protective vest. Both were killed in collisions with cars.
The bikers and walkers, which neither slurp government dollars nor consume natural resources at the pace of the drivers, demand safer streets and sidewalks. As the Economist suggested on September 3 when responding to Seattle’s spate of recent cyclist deaths, cars on streets with bike lanes must be subjected to “traffic calming” methods already used in European capitals like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Portland. When cars must slow down below 20 miles per hour, they kill less than 5 percent of collision victims. And the busiest bike lanes must be physically protected from the four-wheeled instruments of death through concrete buffers, rows of trees, or other barriers. In some places, whole streets—yes, whole streets, we have plenty to spare—must be closed to cars, creating bike and pedestrian malls and paths of the kind found throughout more forward-thinking, class-conscious cities.
We make these demands because, unfortunately, we must. Our epoch, the epoch of the car, possesses this distinct feature: It has created a simplified antagonism. Seattle as a whole is now more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly fighting each other—car driver and nondriver.
This antagonism traces directly to the creation of the modern car driver, a privileged individual who, as noted, is the beneficiary of a long course of subsidies, tax incentives, and wars for cheap oil. But the same subsidies that created this creature (who now rages about the roads while simultaneously screaming of being a victim in some war) can—and must, beginning now—be used to build bike lanes, sidewalks, light rail, and other benefits to the nondriving classes.
September 11: About three miles west of Port Angeles, a Mercury Sable driven by a 65-year-old woman struck a woman riding her bicycle along Highway 112, according to the Peninsula Daily News. The cyclist had been wearing a helmet “and a neon-yellow safety jacket” when she was hit from behind. She died from the injuries.
September 10: Robert Townsend, 23, was delivering a sandwich for Jimmy John’s just after 6:00 p.m. Riding his bicycle south on University Way Northeast, he collided with a Hyundai Sonata that was coming from the opposite direction and turning left onto Northeast Campus Parkway. “As far as I could tell, the car’s windshield was hit pretty hard and there was a terrible pool of blood in the middle of that intersection,” says witness Tyler Brown.
Townsend soon died at Harborview Medical Center, according to the Seattle Police Department. The driver was not cited at the scene, and a final determination of fault could take months. “For us, this is as serious as a murder,” says SPD sergeant Sean Whitcomb. “About the same amount of care and detail goes into this type of investigation.”
But the cyclist likely had right-of-way southbound on University Way Northeast. There are no green arrow lights that would give the Hyundai driver a free left turn onto Campus Parkway. Whitcomb confirms what most road users already know: “When two vehicles going the opposite direction have a green light, typically the one that is making a turn must yield to oncoming traffic.”
Pete Marino, the Illinois-based spokesman for Jimmy John’s, says the company requires its delivery riders in Washington State to wear helmets—and, Marino added, “Robert was wearing one at the time of the accident.”
July 28: Mike Wang, 44, was riding in the northbound bicycle lane on Dexter Avenue North in the late afternoon when an SUV struck Wang, killing him. The driver then fled the scene. Wang was wearing a helmet at the time.
July 22: John Przychodzen, 49, was wearing a helmet and riding on the shoulder of Northeast Juanita Drive traveling to his brother’s house for dinner in Kirkland when a truck struck and fatally wounded him.
Chris Davis, an attorney who specializes in representing cyclists and pedestrians hit by cars, says the number of those cases coming to him “has been increasing steadily over the last couple years.” Typically, he’s had one dozen to two dozen of each type of case annually. But recently his number of such cases climbed by 20 to 30 percent.
Why more cases?
In part, Davis credits more cyclists on the road—including some who “ignore laws.” Also out there, Davis adds, are more “ignorant motorists to endanger cyclists.” Yes, confrontational cyclists can contribute to the problem, Davis says, but he thinks that overall “anti-cyclist sentiment” is the major factor in the increase in cases he’s seeing.
“Motorists will become frustrated and crowd bicyclists and not give them enough room, come up on the bicyclists fast and out of frustration,” he says. “The frustration translates into actions, sometimes intentional acts against the cyclist.”
Davis’s experiences—more injuries, more clients—appear to be borne out by citywide data that shows more collisions.
According to the Seattle Department of Transportation’s 2007 bicycle and pedestrian collision report (which appears to be the most recent such report produced by the city), the number of collisions between bicycles and vehicles showed an uptick over six years. While there was an average of about 275 collisions per year from 2002 to 2005, that number rose to an average of 349 per year in the next two years (roughly a 25 percent increase). The following years were also up, according to separate data reported last month by the Seattle Times. The newspaper reported an average of 328 collisions per year from 2008 to 2010.
Fatalities from bicycle and car collisions have also risen: The city report shows only two fatalities in the four-year span from 2002 to 2005 (half a fatality a year on average, as macabre as that may sound). But over the next five years, according to the city’s and Seattle Times‘ reports, bicycle collisions resulted in 10 fatalities. That is, on average, four times as many fatalities a year. And that average is borne out again this year, where as of last Saturday, two cyclists had been fatally hit in Seattle.
At the same time cyclist collisions and deaths have risen, the anti-bicycle rhetoric has grown more divisive and violent. Who is behind it? Consider the words of Michael Cornell, chair of the Green Lake Community Council.
“Bicyclists are militant and looking to cause a conflict whenever they can,” he said at the group’s community meeting on January 12 in the company of Seattle City Council member Tom Rasmussen. Seattle spends volumes more on car infrastructure than on bicycles or pedestrians, yet Cornell has complained of the “radical agenda against cars,” saying, “I call it the war on cars and the people who need them,” and describing the pro-bicycle agenda as a “war waged on people who drive cars.”
So cyclists are all militant.
They’re seeking out conflict.
They’re specifically waging war on drivers.
And… now there’s an uptick in drivers killing them.
Go figure.
But Cornell is hardly alone in ramping up the anti-bicycle-rider rhetoric.
Seattle Times columnist Joni Balter is equally divisive, if not as inflammatory. “Increasingly, cars are being shoved aside,” Balter wrote in a recent editorial, “as evidenced by efforts to jack up commercial parking rates, the constant plea for more light rail, and significant transfer of asphalt to bike lanes.” Shorter Balter: Funding non-car infrastructure is an attack on drivers… the same illogic some Christians use to claim same-sex marriage erodes the traditional penis-in-vagina kind. According to the US Department of Transportation, the number of passenger vehicles on the roads has increased by four million since the 1960s, yet always the victim, Balter bleats as if cars are an endangered species.
In a cavalcade of logical fallacies, Balter uses the Seattle Times as a platform to instigate more anti-bicycle sentiment. For instance: “Every new bike lane can make a road less appealing to a car or a truck. Bicycles prevail, freight mobility takes a sorry hike” (false dilemma). Also: “Bike and pedestrian lobbies, whose efforts began before the arrival of [Mayor Mike] McGinn, are already getting improvements that infuriate some motorists” (association fallacy). She asks “whether this group of citizens can impose their will on the rest of the place” (argumentum ad populum).
Cars are being forced off the roads, Balter insists (falsely), and oooh, it just makes her so angry! And she’s hardly alone.
Portland radio host PK on Jammin’ 95.5 pushed the pedal to the metal in 2006, announcing: “If you are a cyclist, you should know I exist, that I don’t care about you. That I don’t care about your life,” the blog Bikeportland.org reported (the station never released an archive). “When I hear on TV that a cyclist has been hit and killed by a car, I laugh, I think it’s funny.”
While some people foment anti-cyclist rage, others are content to merely blockade spending on transit infrastructure. Seattle’s prime non-mover-and-shaker is city council president Richard Conlin, who twice in 2010 voted to suspend the city’s Transit Master Plan, thereby delaying rail planning. Conlin was also the city’s chief advocate for a $4.2 billion deep-bore tunnel that lacks transit, and was for years a leading voice to stop the monorail project. And last year, Conlin advocated advancing construction on the new, wider 520 bridge in an effort to head off transit advocates from tweaking the design to accommodate light rail.
His pro-roads/anti-transit agenda lumps Conlin in with some rather unsavory company: the right-wing think tank Washington Policy Center, which has claimed that “Seattle’s war on cars is a war on drivers”; Fox News, which relentlessly drums up the “Seattle’s War on Cars” meme; and wingnut local blogger Stefan Sharkansky, who takes aim at Mayor McGinn for “punishing people for driving.”
All the sort of violent rhetoric that can’t help but have a violent end.
If money is ammunition in the war on cars, then cars have most of the firepower. The pie chart above cites the city’s spending on various transportation projects. Only $18.4 million—about 7 percent—of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s $270 million in expenditures last year was dedicated strictly to bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Another 6 percent, approximately, goes to transit, such as paying for buses in the downtown ride-free zone. But the vast majority of the city’s transportation dollars—more than 85 percent—is dedicated to projects that solely fund vehicle infrastructure (such as parking programs) or primarily fund vehicle infrastructure (such as the Spokane Street viaduct and other major road construction). While the latter may include some pedestrian or bicycle amenities, the projects primarily serve cars. “It is false to argue that there is a war on cars,” says SDOT spokesman Rick Sheridan. “When you consider the spending on road building, maintenance, traffic signs, and signals, we spend a significant percentage of our budget on vehicles.”
Wallingford resident Doug stepped outside his home on August 26 to discover that city transportation workers had painted a giant bicycle on his street. “I now live on a giant bike path,” he said. “We are winning the War on Cars!”
Indeed, between 2000 and 2009, car use declined in Seattle by 7.7 percent, according to the American Community Survey. During this same period, transit use increased 10.9 percent, biking increased an astounding 59 percent, and walking increased 4.4 percent. US Census data shows that in 2009, nearly 40 percent of Seattle’s population walked, biked, bused, or carpooled to work. That number is only going to increase as the city becomes easier to navigate without a car.
For instance, voters approved a funding package in 2008 to extend light rail north to Northgate and east to Redmond. Two years prior, Seattle voters passed the nine-year, $365 million Bridging the Gap levy, applying a parking-lot tax that funds transportation maintenance and improvements. Since then, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has added roughly 180 miles of bike lanes to city streets and a series of green “bike boxes” that give cyclists right-of-way at signaled intersections. In 2009 alone, SDOT added 26 blocks of new sidewalk to city streets, 40 new “countdown” crosswalk signals, and repainted more than 800 crosswalks. In the last few years, several road diets have eliminated vehicle lanes and replaced them with bicycle thoroughfares on 125th Avenue Northeast, Stone Way North, and other streets around the city—despite the protests of petulant neighbors who bray as if their freedom were under siege. Meanwhile, a First Hill streetcar connecting the International District to Capitol Hill is set to begin its circuit in 2013.
All the while, gas prices are rising and parking rates costs are increasing. The carless commuters see victory on the horizon.
Our heroes are fueled not by petrol, but by the inspiration from King County Council member Larry Phillips, who pushed past a phalanx of suburban Republican lawmakers to approve a $20 car tab fee this summer that will save commuters from a 17 percent cut in bus service. To put that victory in perspective, consider this: Metro’s average monthly ridership is up 3 percent from 2010. (In May alone, the number of weekday bus and van trips exceeded predictions by 22,115.) “The best thing King County can do to recover the local economy is to keep buses on the streets so that people can get to work,” Phillips says.
He isn’t our only trailblazer—Wallingford resident Cathy Tuttle is head of the group Spokespeople. She’s leading Seattle’s “greenway movement” to convert select nonarterial roads that connect neighborhoods into dedicated bike routes, where driving is discouraged. In 2009, Tuttle wrote a grant asking the city to turn 44th Street, between I-5 and Stone Way North, into a greenway. Her grant was awarded last year and Seattle’s first greenway will be open to riders by the end of November. Now at least five other groups in the city are organizing to build greenways in their neighborhoods.
Others can’t be left out: Seattle City Council member Nick Licata is a tireless advocate for the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans, which call for adding new sidewalks, crosswalks, and over 450 miles of new bike lanes to city streets by 2017; Representative Jamie Pedersen (D-43) pushed through a vulnerable roadway users bill this year that imposes up to a $5,000 fine and 90-day license suspension on drivers who kill other road users. And it goes without saying that behind all this is the invisible hand of the Cascade Bicycle Club.
But perhaps our greatest mmm-asscot is Seattle City Council member Mike O’Brien‘s perky ass, honed from 10 miles of bicycle commuting every day (O’Brien’s ass has only bused to work three days since taking office in January 2010). One of O’Brien’s goals is creating a dedicated bike route, like a cycle track, in downtown Seattle. “I don’t know what street makes the most sense,” he says, “but right now, it’s a little scary downtown. There’s a huge gap for new riders between what’s possible and what we have today.”
Keep your quarter; O’Brien’s ass is so tight you could bounce a brick off it. 
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#102, your complaint should be with The Stranger, which titled the article, “Okay, Fine, It’s War.” They are the ones calling for a “war on cars” by the idiot cyclistas. It’s a phenomenally stupid idea, but then The Stranger has been racking up a pretty long list of especially stupid crap lately.
How about those elitist mother effing cyclists on the bike trails…no one talks about the damage and deaths(O yes!)those jerks get away with.
#105, I’ve talked about them. The Burke Gilman trail is chock full of homicidal maniacs on bicycles. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.
The problem for Seattle is that it increased its density without adding a single new arterial.
Hence, for example, a neighborhood street like 45th in Wallingford is now the equivalent of State Route.
There are few if any East-West highways throughout the entire PNW region. There are none in Seattle proper other than the West Seattle bridge.
This results in huge numbers of cars pouring into neighborhood streets and making them virtual freeways but without any safeguards or separation between cars and bike-peds.
Contrast this with Portland, which has an abundant network of highways — concentric rings of expressways and radial spokes. It’s very easy to get to a highway entrance…jump on and jump off — just like you’d expect in well planned city. However, in Seattle, just the opposite. People crawl through neighborhood after neighborhood. A journey of 15 miles around here can take an hour…even if there is no traffic…because you have to navigate through lights and stop signs.
Density is the culprit and lack of highways.
Want an answer. Look in the mirror…urbists.
#107, do spend any time in Portland? I do, and it’s mayhem down there. Cyclists and drivers are at each others’ throats, and congestion is off the charts because they’re refused to build freeways while making the city streets harder and harder to drive on.
The end result: The city Portland’s economic growth has stopped. Any new jobs down there are created in the suburbs, which coincidentally are not involved in this cyclista nonsense.
Contrast this with Portland, which has an abundant network of highways — concentric rings of expressways and radial spokes. It’s very easy to get to a highway entrance…jump on and jump off — just like you’d expect in well planned city.
You obviously don’t spend any time down there. The city of Portland is congested as hell, because they’re refused to build freeways while at the same time making it harder to drive.
The result is that Portland’s economy has stopped growing. Any new jobs in that region are created in the suburbs, which coincidentally are not part of the cyclista nonsense.
Incredibly idealistic and heartfelt, but where was the call to action?
Gee, Stranger, somehow your upfront message doesn’t make me feel any safer. You call for war, when that’s what we already have. How about a heartfelt call for truce? The data and the horror stories are useful, the implication of our superiority as biking humans not so much–you’ve spurred the same old venting. Nothing new going on here. I get from point A to point B safely on my own hyper-awareness and on the tenuous tolerance of my existence by people in big machines. You aren’t helping.
The factual part of this is useful. Calling for our own war, not too damn helpful. You have spurred the same venting and belligerence we always get when these things happen and the blame game has to be rerun. I was encouraged to hear Mayor McGinn’s plan to try to address this, but your article puts us back in the same paradigm. How about calling for a truce, with both sides getting their act together?
Great, so now the Stranger has decided to speak for all non motorists and sunk down to the other side’s level in calling this a war. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are some psychos out there on the road who don’t view cyclist’s life as worth anything.
Public safety and transportation are issues that shouldn’t be politicized. But unfortunately it looks like everything nowadays is devolving into an Us VS Them battle.
Richard Conlin is STILL IN OFFICE? That guy has been useless for years, how does he get re-elected so much? Oh right because he’s like an “environmentalist” or some shit like that?
I haven’t lived in Seattle for over 10 years- it’s amazing how little has changed in the zombie-like political system up there.
#111, excellent point. If I were a cyclist, I’d really be uncomfortable with The Stranger‘s ludicrous article calling for the legions of people on 25-pound aluminum vehicles to declare war on the much larger legions of people in 2-ton steel vehicles.
Let’s stop having “Wars” on things. It is not a very useful metaphor, and contributes to Us vs. Them thinking, which encourages divisive thinking generally.
I’m not at war with anyone. And yes, people on the roads should pay more attention and be generally more courteous to one another.
I’d like to see a pedestrian manifesto. Pedestrian needs are not the same as bicyclists needs. Every time I see a bicyclists not using bike infrastructure whizzing by pedestrians on the sidewalk, I get scared. Or when cyclists decide to use the crosswalk, instead of waiting at the light like a regular vehicle. I am happy to see cyclists lobbying, but we need to make sure people using their feet aren’t handed the short end of the stick. We need bike infrastructural, safe cycling education for cyclists in urban areas, and pedestrian infrastructure.
This is why they should make all cars, truck and busses out of NERF.
Are there any statistics about bikes hitting cars or pedestrians? Seriously.
I ride a Vespa and have done so for almost 30(!) years. I’ve been hit four times. Twice by cars (both times when some asshole does a u-turn without looking) and twice by bicycles, both times then I was legally taking a right (with my turn light on) and them passing (or trying to)on MY right, which is an illegal move.
And I’ve got a GREAT idea on how to fund more bike lanes and such; start ticketing bicyclist for not wearing helmets or running red lights and stop signs and use the money for the bike projects. No bicyclist can argue with that. I’ve gotten tickets on my scoot for doing the same thing…
#119, you fail to understand that bicyclists are better than everyone else, and therefore are above mere laws.
DEAR FELLOW SEATTLE DRIVERS:
You will gain my respect when you are capable of parallel parking in fewer than 3 attempts.
When do you find time to ride your bicycles between hugging trees and smoking pot? You all should be a lot more mellow one would think.
When do you people find time to ride your bikes so much in between hugging trees and smoking pot? Which also begs the question, why aren’t you more mellow?
@119:
Are you seriously suggesting that bicycles pull across a lane of motorized traffic and pass cars on the left? I don’t think that the solution is to simply expect bicyclists to conform to a set of rules that were written for cars & trucks. What we need is some proper infrastructure (grade-separated lanes, bike-specific signals at crossings, etc) – then we can start talking about rules of the road.
Hooooooooooooooooooooo boy……
War weapon number 1: a handful of roofing nails. When a motorist honks, yells, or swerves at me I toss the nails, to universally positive results:
1) Occasionally some go under the wheels of the attacker. Win!
2) Some hit the hard parts of the attacker’s car. Maybe they’ll remember that sound the nails made while waiting for AAA to change their tires and know: that kitty had claws.
3) Some of those nails will flatten tires of other drivers. “Innocent” drivers. Innocent…
A) Anyone who sees how few homicides perpetrated by motorists ever lead to charges knows there’s no such thing as an innocent driver.
B) Given how much of my property and income taxes go toward funding highways my bike is prohibited from using, or giving billion dollar tax brakes for oil companies, motorists paying for a tow truck or new tire is a small price to ask. They still have a huge subsidy to drive.
A few flat tires are simple, HARMLESS, collateral damage.
4) If I should run over one of my own nails, I’m patched and rolling within 10 minutes.
So hear ye, all cyclists. Roofing nails are just a couple dollars a pound. Keep a handful ready, and another handful in your pocket. With practice you won’t even need to stop to “reload”. Believe me, after a while, cars slow down and pass distantly, quietly, and as far as I can see, respectfully.
War weapon number 1: a handful of roofing nails. When a motorist honks, yells, or swerves at me I toss the nails, to universally positive results:
1) Occasionally some go under the wheels of the attacker. Win!
2) Some hit the hard parts of the attacker’s car. Maybe they’ll remember that sound while waiting for AAA to change their tires and know “this kitty has claws”
3) Some of those nails will flatten tires of other drivers. “Innocent” drivers. Innocent…
A) Anyone who sees how few homicides perpetrated by motorists ever lead to charges knows there’s no such thing as an innocent driver.
B) Given how much of my property and income taxes go toward funding highways my bike is prohibited from using, or giving billion dollar tax brakes for oil companies, motorists paying for a tow truck or new tire is a small price to ask. They still have a huge subsidy to drive.
A few flat tires are simple, HARMLESS, collateral damage.
4) If I should run over one of my own nails, I’m patched and rolling within 10 minutes.
So hear ye, all cyclists. Roofing nails are just a couple dollars a pound. Keep a handful ready, and another handful in your pocket. With practice you won’t even need to stop to “reload”. Believe me, after a while, cars slow down and pass distantly, quietly, and as far as I can see, respectfully.
@119:
“[I was hit] twice by bicycles, both times then I was legally taking a right (with my turn light on) and them passing (or trying to) on MY right, which is an illegal move.”
Ummmm, yeah. That’s called a “right hook”, and it comes from a motorist getting about 5 meters ahead of a cyclist, pretending that the cyclist no longer exists, then slowing and turning taking the turn right into the bike’s path.
In the future, understand the cyclist doesn’t just disappear the second s/he’s slightly behind your peripheral vision. Unless you’re prepared to take that right at 30 MPH, slow down, let the cyclist pass straight across the side street, then look in your side mirror, then turn. My bike and I are 0ve 300 lbs combined, you DO NOT want to right-cross me on a scooter!
@87:
“I’ll support bikes and bike lanes when [they] have to have a plate on your bike) so that those who ignore traffic laws can be tracked down.”
Really? So how are those license plates working out for the four American citizens killed every day by hit and run drivers? Not so well, huh.
I’ll support license plates, registrations, taxes, etc. for cyclists when all cars have black boxes, GPS trackers, automatic-stop for red lights and speed governors controlled by speed-limit signs. You want to improve roadway safety, start with the vehicles proven to kill 100 people a day, every day for the last thirty years. Once you’ve solved that you can chase those terrorizing cyclists.
Oh and add to tha suite of safety tools, a beacon bikers/peds can carry that makes all cars slow to 20 MPH when within 50 feet. Oh and airbags on the outside of cars, to dampen the impact of car-on-people collisions.
How do you like them apples?
Roads have gotten a lot more dense and congested since I started riding in Seattle 25 years ago. It’s not the same as when I used to Zip through red lights and ride against traffic for a block to make a short cut; more traffic, more risk. The Burk-gilman trail also seems to be a stupid magnet for bike riders, I won’t use it anymore because of the congestion. As the simple act of travel becomes a source of frustration, war begins. Seattle drivers don’t even know how to merge on the freeway, much less yield the right-of-way to bikespeds. It’s not personal, they just can’t conceive of putting your need before theirs; an attitude born in happier days of fewer people, open roads. To help this transition of attitude I suggest this tactic: for every bicyclist wounded or killed by a car, a random act of violence be committed to a car by each bicyclist the next day. Nothing like a kryptonite to the taillight to get the point across, randomness is the key.
A major problem, only briefly mentioned, is that bicyclists are very unaware in Seattle. I grew up in Lafayette, Indiana, where EVERYONE drives. I learned at a very, very young age that I had to assume that NO CAR EVER SEES ME AS A BICYCLIST. Riding around, I made sure of a few things: 1. Always make eye-contact with a driver that may be crossing your path. 2. If you need to slow down and stop to get out of the way of a car that doesn’t seem to be paying attention, SLOW YOUR ASS DOWN AND STOP. 3. The most dangerous situation you can be in is when you’re on the right side of the road and a car is getting ready to turn either left or right in front of you. Again, ASSUME THAT THE CAR DOES NOT SEE YOU. I have avoided at least half a dozen near-collisions, by SEEING EVERY CAR AROUND ME, MAKING EYE CONTACT, AND SLOWING DOWN AND STOPPING, if need be. Obviously, motorists are to blame for a number of these accidents, and awareness of bicycles needs to go up. But, concurrently, bicyclists MUST REALIZE THAT CARS CAN KILL THEM. This is as simple as being in a SMALL SEDAN and recognizing that a semi-truck can’t see you in most situations. You don’t cut off a semi-truck, you don’t cut off a car.
Also, has anyone ever taught pedestrians in seattle TO LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING THE STREET? Or is that just, like, some quaint Midwestern custom?
also, SEATTLE MOTORISTS ARE SOME OF THE MOST SPACEY, OUT TO LUNCH, CLUELESS bunch of motorists in the country. I’ve driven in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Texas, Montana, California, Wyoming, New York state, and Washington. The only people who come close to being as clueless and spacey as seattle are drivers in Montana, and THERE ARE ABOUT AS MANY PEOPLE IN ALL OF MONTANA AS THE GREATER SEATTLE AREA. I mean, seriously: SEATTLE DRIVERS ARE STUPID, POORLY TRAINED, AND COMPLETELY OUT TO LUNCH.
Unfortunately, the pedestrians and bicyclists aren’t a whole lot better
R127, keep it in mind next time you’re riding on Dexter or University Avenue. They dead.
MattC, there are more of us than there are of you. And now that you’ve decided bicyclists will be throwing roofing nails, I’ll feel a little less inclined to hit the brakes next time one of you fools zips through a stop sign in front of my car.
@pdonhaus:
You’re an idiot. WHEN ARE RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE EVER THE ANSWER? Only in video games, my friend. YOU are a major part of the problem. Without open discourse, discussion, commitment, and responsibility, nothing will be gained between these two (not even really separate) groups. Cars need to be more aware; bicyclists need to be more aware; roads need to be better marked. But really the bottom line is this: CARS AND BICYCLISTS NEED TO BE MORE AWARE. Being pissed off at other people, in case you didn’t know, actually makes you less aware of what’s going on around you.
You’re the typical head-in-the-sand, thumb-up-his-ass, entitled to the Nth degree Seattleite that doesn’t know a damn thing about anything outside of Seattle. SEATTLE IS ONE OF THE MOST BIKE FRIENDLY CITIES IN THE COUNTRY, and we’re STILL BITCHING?? Seriously, folks, travel around the country and see what it’s like to ride a bike somewhere else. You would probably be dead within a few hours.
@MattC:
You’re little “right hook” comment. I’ve been a cyclist for as long as I can remember (since I was crashing my bike in my driveway at age five). This is the type of situation where the bicyclist needs to follow my three steps above: BE AWARE OF CARS CROSSING YOUR PATH, MAKE EYE CONTACT, SLOW DOWN AND STOP IF NECESSARY. Sure, in an ideal world, the car would see you and adjust accordingly. But guess what? Not only IS A BICYCLIST FAR HARDER TO SEE THAN A CAR, but it’s also FAR HARDER FOR A CAR TO ADJUST TO A BICYCLIST, than it is for a bicyclist to adjust for a car. All this situation needs is the following: The bicyclist recognizes the cars intentions, slows to allow the car to pass him, then, if necessary, stops to allow the car to pass safely in front of him. Why is this easier than the car slowing down? A car slowing down in an intersection in which a traffic signal has not required this slowing of pace creates a potential accident-situation involving other cars in the area; there is the chance of being rear-ended, for example, by another car expecting the first car to clear the intersection. If the bike slows down and stops? It’s removing itself from the situation, and is not causing the potential for a dangerous situation.
It’s not JUST THE BICYCLISTS, it’s not JUST THE CARS, IT’S THE CARS AND THE BICYCLISTS.
Without open discourse and recognition of each side’s shortcomings, this is not going to go anywhere.
It’s pretty comical if not unimpressive that the “Stranger Staff” gets the byline on this cute slice of melodramatic quasi-journalistic turd. I understand. When you define cars as “four-wheeled instruments of death” and the modern car driver as “a privileged individual who is the beneficiary of a long course of subsidies, tax incentives, and wars for cheap oil” – what self-respecting writer would dare put his/her name on that?
When I start seeing more cyclists obeying traffic laws and cops treating them like motorists, riding in a far less cavalier and reckless fashion, paying some kind of registration, only then will I start taking your whiny rants seriously. Until then, keep yapping about this revolution and the car as a thing of the past, but don’t forget that in 2011, a staggering 3% of Seattle commutes via bicycle. Three per cent. You drama queens really have me pissing in my pants.
Look, if you don’t like the way things are, go to Olympia and change them. You don’t have the gumption? Then get a fucking car.
@smitsmckey18, cut it out with the CAPS. It’s obnoxious, and guarantees that no one will read what you write.
So, what about people who live outside the city that have to commute to work each day in order to keep what’s left of the economy going? I am a good and responsible driver, but it still seems people waste their time hating people who would like to get to work in one hour as opposed to 3 or 4? Gosh, I wish I had the opportunity for my life to function on a less efficient level. Perhaps no one should support the economy anymore, that way no one will be able to afford cars, gas or road repair, etc. Then we can all eventually begin to live like an Amish society of bicyclists. I am curious to know if you would all be waging war on cars if they were made out of and run off of hemp, like Henry Ford originally intended back in 1906? I am sorry a few stupid people have given you such a demeanor, but not everyone in a car is against you or deserves punishment.
@Can I Get a Witness?
If I read your gibberish correctly, you can’t handle a car sufficiently enough to pass a cyclist and are thus doomed to drive at 12-15 MPH. That slows you down, and the cars your car blocks. This is ruining the economy. Right? I recommend you get a bus pass, or a bike, and make the world a better place for everyone.
As a cyclist, I routinely have days where I pass about 50 more cars than pass me. Other days more cars pass me than I pass them. Overall we’re a tie score I suppose, none slows the other down. I for one get to work faster by bike than be subway or car, so I ride.
In the end we all get to work on time, and because I’m on a bike, the motorists have one less car to wait behind at a light, and can park one space closer to town.
So when you learn to translate Jibberish to English, please do reply.
I’m betting that a majority of this year’s dead bikers were following the law when they got hit, and that the majority of the drivers that hit them were breaking the law or being negligent.
I wonder what the ratio is of deaths caused by careless bikers to deaths caused by careless drivers.
yeah and 119’s story about cutting off cyclists when turning right in front of them really stinks.
#136/ smitsmckey18:
Right Hook, 101:
From out of nowhere, a slowing car overtakes a bike, bangs a quick right, leaving the cyclist attempting a panic stop but often injured or killed.
Per your story, Clearly you’re 6 years old and have a short memory.
Let me tell you about roads in the real world. Right hooks happen like this: I’m going down hill and with a tail wind, so my speed is nearly 20 MPH. I’m traveling straight on an arterial road. I’m riding as the law requires: “as far to the right as practicable”. Blinky lights, day-glo shirt, I’m doing all I can to help Mr. Mcgoo behind the wheel of his killing machine see/avoid me.
The impatient motorist doing 35MPH wants to take the next right… that motorist, already braking, passes me at 25 MPH slowing to 15, gets just a littttttttle past me, then cuts his wheel hard right. What I see for about 1.5 seconds is nothing – then car to my left – then car in front of me. No time to react, just a wall of steel appearing from out of nowhere.
Four fat tires and 1.5 tons of downward acceleration has much more gripping power than my skinny tires and rim brakes at maximum squeeze. I hit that rusty Chrysler Cordoba at about 15 MPH, go over the roof and land on the road, where the next car – “thump, thump!” finishes the job.
I’m dead because some asshole can’t wait less than 5 seconds to make the turn.
My “little” right hook comment is reality. If bikers stopped for every passing car we’d… well, we’d be stopped, all the time. Some motorists comit to the right hook before the cyclist can see or hear the car – so in effect, we’re blind and deaf. Place responsibility for avoiding Right Hooks on the average cyclist? No sale. No soup for you! FAIL smitsmckey18
The overtaking car sees the cyclist. The cyclist – no headphones, only the sound of wind in the ears – knows nothing of the swiftly approaching killer.
Nay I say. The driver is 100% at fault. The driver has committed [attempted/] homicide. Do you realize, that if a car is going 30 MPH and a bike 15, it only takes 5 seconds to get 100 feet ahead of the biker? Concurrently, if the driver is not going at least 15 MPH faster than the bike for at least 100 feet, there’s less than 5 seconds to make the turn.
#134/MassahG:
So, I threaten to litter the roads (with nails, or cigarette buts, or breakfast cereals, or fruit bats…) . You respond by expressing intent to commit homicide? Woah, talk about some m’n’f’n snakes-on-a-plane!
Please note I also drive a pickup truck. And since I’m in “bike mode” even when driving, I often toss me some roofin’ nails out the driver side window… you know, into the Southbound lane when I knows I’m a drivin’ Norh. The quession you gots’ta ask yourself is… You gonna ram every’ F-150 you see with the drivers side winnow down? ‘Cuz I gets a lots more roofin’ nails-per-mile when in my truck than on my bike, see?
I also toss some nails under every bridge I cross. You know, for the Trolls and such.
What next, Terminator 4: Turf Wars? Grow up, people!!
This shit’s something right out of Duel!
The driver is 100% at fault.
And the cyclista is 100% dead, because he failed to drive defensively.
Sorry, @91, but that bullshit doesn’t cut it…when most traffic is moving just fine at 25 mph, then you come along and slow everyone down to 10 mph, YOU are causing ALL THOSE VEHICLES YOU’RE HOLDING UP to burn more fuel. On a rainy day in Seattle, a car gets me where I need to go a lot faster, and a lot drier. Plus, if I have to pick up a lot of things, I have the room to carry all of it.
MattC is another one of those self-righteous cyclists who think everyone should get out of THEIR way, and NO rules should EVER apply to them. Wasn’t he one of the jerks involved in that holiday-time altercation with a motorist because a bunch of CriticalMassholes decided to block the ENTIRE roadway, and one of them got hit? His version of the story was quite different than the one the terrified motorist told the cops after he refused to stop because the cyclists were threatening him and trying to get him out of his vehicle. People like MattC need to be put somewhere that will make society safer without them.
‘I’d like to report a truck driver that’s been endangering my life….’
I wonder if the late, great Cary Loftin is rolling in his grave or laughing his ass off.
i was a bike courier for 3 years in seattle…the first thing the person training me said was “always assume no one knows how to drive” i took this to heart…i was never hit….the second thing he told me was “never ride in the bike lane” i rode right in the middle of the lanes downtown going at least the speed limit…and was hyper aware…if you decide to ride a bike be aware …12 deaths in 9 years…how many car on car deaths have happened in that time period? i’m not trying to be insensitive to the loss of life but you take a risk every time you drive or ride your bike…..as for the “i hate drivers” “i hate cyclists” claptrap…please go see a therapist….you have serious problems
I drive around Seattle a decent amount, don’t bike, and I have to say I’m failing to see the outrage. Treat a biker with respect and they give it back to you (usually).
I pay attention to the bikers and never pull the “right hook” (or was that the biker pulling the right hook? no matter). But sometimes I simply don’t see the biker. A great example is turning right from N 34th onto Stone Way N.
The BG trail runs right behind the (always awesome) Gypsy Cafe and often, runners or bikers don’t slow down or look for cars turning right on red. Yes, you have the right of way when the light is green. But we don’t want to hit you either and we can’t fucking see you.
So please, slow down at blind intersections and look out for douches cutting you off by turning in front of you. This “war” bs is nonsense. You don’t want to die and we don’t want to hurt you.
Glad to see the discourse has remained civil.