Bicyclist badly (fatally?) injured by speeding motorcyclist on Ashby tonight

That's so dangerous. I hope she survives. Today I visited Berkeley, and the street design and high density of Ashby and the whole area requires that a reasonable driver be ready to brake at any moment. There are people stepping off the curb, legally, at the crosswalks across Ashby. I remember I had to stop quickly when I was focused on a jeep following closely behind me in my mirror, then I spotted a guy pushing a big cart of furniture into the crosswalk, and anyone going above 25 or 30 won't be able to juggle these tasks and react. That is probably why there are so many rear end crashes. At the area near MLK where it goes from two lanes to one, there is lots of aggressive merging, and two people in wheelchairs have been fatally killed in different areas of Ashby. But what are you going to do... just tell people they can't cross the street, or install suburban style lights at each intersection with a 2-3 minute cycle?

Talk about pwning yourself with your own post!

"Fortunately (?) this neighborhood is always crawling with a bunch ofuseless killer cops, so the CHP must have been a block away, because they"

Yeah, those killer cops who were chasing down the moron who committed this MURDER against our fellow bicyclists and you take the time to rip on them.

Next time, get the facts about your own post BEFORE you post. Then, the self-pwnage won't hurt so much!

Cops are human and very imperfect, but what do you think the environment would be for bicyclists if there were ZERO law enforcement on the roads? Who is going to slow down Mr. Hummer then?

Nice job trying to defend the cops. They claim that they had stopped chasing the motorcyclist for safety reasons (as the sfgate article mentioned). (Thanks a lot for being effective at enforcing the speeding limit, cops! Maybe we need some other means of enforcement that could work. Ask any anarchist and we can come up with 2-3 other means of ensuring that our neighbors don't drive as if they want to kill us.) The CHP got in trouble a few years back over all the statewide deaths caused by CHP's participation in high-speed chases. The sfgate only listed a few local cases, but these killings were all over California. Check the Stolen Lives Project for the "tip of the iceberg," a listing of a few cases that volunteers were able to keep track of.

Some neighbors theorized that the cops could have hit the bicyclist. I don't think it's impossible, because it took a bit of time for what i interpreted to be the sound of the bike pieces to fall to the ground after the motorcycle was gone. Like, the bike could have been hit by the next vehicle. Think about this for a second: how can a motorcycle hit someone and not have its speed or course unaffected by the impact? What part of the motorcycle would have had to have hit the bicyclist so that the motorcycle could keep going? It'd have been a lot easier for a police car to keep going.

What is pwning?

"Talk about pwning yourself with your own post!

"Fortunately (?) this neighborhood is always crawling with a bunch ofuseless killer cops, so the CHP must have been a block away, because they"

1. OK, name some of those 2-3 "anarchist" solutions to bad drivers. I'm waiting...

2. So your problem with the cops is that they stopped the high-speed chase. Or is your problem with the cops that they have accidentally killed many people while conducting high-speed chases? You're not making any sense. You are also not taking into account the thousands of lives that have been saved by the CHP ticketing or arresting drunk or reckless drivers. I guarantee you that number is a thousand-fold the number of lives lost to high-speed chases.

If you were a witness please email me. She is doing OK but her leg is badly injured. I would like to know exactly what happened.

Hi,

I wasn't there and I don't know all the details, but the issue of police enforcement deserves some further information. May the investigation be fair and complete and reveal what really happened.

Of course it would be great if the police in Berkeley were fair and protective toward bicyclists and pedestrians. Some are much better than others, but the Departments as a whole (including CHP, BPD, and UCPD) have a long history of disregarding those rights at best, and deliberately violating them at worst. This despite many years of citizen-led efforts to reform their approaches.

Add to that the intransigence of Caltrans, who control Ashby as it is a state highway, and you have an especially terrible recipe for tragedy and injustice.

Some current events:

1. Emeryville police are ticketing bicyclists at a stop sign with no intersection (reports yesterday)

2. A bicyclist was seriously hurt on the Virginia bicycle boulevard on Bike to Work Day

Some history:

Ashby was to be an elevated 'free' way (anything but free). Residents fought this.

Two people who use wheelchairs were killed in recent years. Both were activists.

1. In the first case, Sharon Spencer was mowed down as she crossed in the crosswalk. Caltrans' response was to ban pedestrians!

   Here's a video (sorry, it's corporate youtube, I know some will be offended) of a protest of that death:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrQjt8TrKPE

2. In the second case, Fred Lupke was killed and police faulted him. This despite some evidence that Fred was also in the crosswalk, not riding along the roadway as previously reported, and despite the fact that riding along the roadway would have been justified.

   BCLU spent some time attempting to get justice in that case:

   http://bclu.org/projects/wheelchairrights.html

We should all know by now that many traffic deaths and injuries are not reported, and of those that do, many involving bicyclists are incorrectly classified as the bicyclist's fault.

Finally, you may have heard of the recent case on the peninsula in which an officer fell asleep and ran across the road, killing two cyclists. There was reason to believe that there was a cover-up of the incident until (perhaps due to public9 pressure) the police finally admitted to what had obviously happened. Meanwhile, arguments continued to rage on the internet about how bicyclists don't stop at stop signs (as if that had anything at all to do with a police officer running directly into a group of law-abiding cyclists riding on the right side of the road). Note that motorists as a class commit rampant noncompliance against stop signs and other laws, and many fatalities result. To scapegoat bicyclists and blame the victim is a grotesque example of hypocrisy and blatant discrimination.

Regarding stop signs: Idaho is the most progressive state regarding this issue. They recognize that riding a bicycle is like a hybrid of walking and driving a car, and so give bicyclists the middle ground of yielding at a stop sign (rather than taking right of way, as a pedestrian may, or stopping, as a motorist must). Police in Idaho support the law there. Every indication is that this practice is as safe or safer than the regressive, anti-bicycle laws which attempt to penalize bicyclists by treating them like automobiles. Public policies to support bicycling demand a reform of the laws and the way law enforcement treat bicyclists.

As one final gripe: when professor Reginald Zelnik was killed on the UC Berkeley Campus where he had taught for 40 years (and had been a participant in the Free Speech movement), BCLU attempted to ensure that his death was not treated unfairly. In the course of meetings with a UCPD Lieutenant, I was disheartened to hear the Lt. attempt to justify faulting the professor by citing a hitch-hiking law (CVC 21957). It is quite clear that Professor Zelnik was not soliciting a ride as he reportedly begged the backing truck not to run him down. Evidence suggests Zelnik was in the cross-walk, and even if not, he was certainly in his rights to be in the roadway and there is no justification for killing him.

In short, institutional discrimination against pedestrians including those who use wheelchairs and bicyclists continues on all levels, despite increased rhetoric as to reducing air pollution, curbing global warming, and protecting and promoting healthier, more sustainable modes of walking and bicycling. Action to systemically address problems of driving, particularly unsafe driving, and all discrimination is more desperately needed than ever.

As a resident of the neighborhood, I wish the cops were around more, and did more. It is open air drug dealing, kids riding around on those illegal scooters, people driving like assholes. When somebody is shot and killed, maybe the cops drive by around a few times for a few days, then it's back to normal.

Here is another incident from a few years ago where Jie Wang was killed. The issue of whether to call off chases is very complex, with lots of tradeoffs to consider. Quite a few people have been killed when chases cause the criminal to drive erratically, but if it was a drunk driver or other dangerous driver in the first place, the police could potentially prevent a death, if they are skilled in stopping this driver first.

The intersection where this crash took place, Ashby and San Pablo, is about five blocks down from Acton. The drug dealer had been pursued several miles from El Cerrito. But if he had been doing a different category of crime, maybe it would have been worth it to chase him through a dense neighborhood?

http://www.kristieslaw.org/jie_wang.htm

At first I assumed this was a link to the same incident, but it turns out that across town, another bicyclist was knocked unconscious by a criminal driver.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/19/BA6710P2GN.DTL

What we need are more police!

Stop. Rewind. Repeat until done vomiting.

i doubt we need more cops, what would that have done anyway?

1. this person was from out of town, having more cops would not have stopped him.

2. the CHP are too blame for this, as they are the ones who chased him and encouraged him to go on the 13 (and through residential neighborhoods) instead of going through on the 80 towards oakland. Sometimes it's good to have a no-chase policy.


More cops are part of the problem not the solution.

I always thought they were spared from the usual cop-hatred. Apparently not.
So sorry for what happened to this woman. May she recover quickly.