Motorists call for courtesy, legal riding by bicyclists

After last week’s column, Tucsonans sent the Road Runner more than a dozen emails and voicemails about bicyclists riding dangerously on local roads.

Nearly all of them lamented the deaths and injuries caused by collisions between motorists and cyclists, but they complained about bicyclists riding three abreast, running stop signs and “whizzing” through intersections as motorists tried to turn right.

To get a sense of the size of the problem, the Road Runner asked Tucson police how many collisions involving bicycles happen in town. Their records show 269 collisions in 2014 and another 280 in 2015.

As for who is at fault in the collisions, neither Tucson police nor the Pima County Sheriff’s Department have that information readily available.

“The root cause of the problem is that bicycles are small, light, unprotected vehicles that don’t go very fast, and cars are big, fast and powerful,” Steve Bacs, Arizona representative of the National Motorists Association, said in response to questions from the Road Runner.

Bicyclists and motorists have the same rights on the roads, he said. They also have the same responsibility to follow the law.

Motorists are responsible for driving without distractions, such as texting, and giving bicyclists extra room on the road, he said.

The expectation of the motorist is that everybody will follow the law at stop signs and lights, he said. But due to a “little bit of arrogance in the bicycle community,” some bicyclists don’t follow the rules.

Bacs said the “professional bicycling crowd” often does what callers to the Road Runner complained about: riding three abreast, failing to use their arms to signal turns, and running stop signs.

The best solution is for everyone to follow the law and “show common courtesy,” Bacs said.

“At the end of the day, we all have to share the road,” he said.

Tucson-Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee member David Bachman-Williams said bicyclists running through stop signs is “not creating a noticeable increase in danger.”

However, “there are idiots out there who give us all a bad name,” he said.

The biggest concern among bicyclists are “right hooks,” in which a motorist turns right and collides with a bicyclist heading through the intersection, he said.

The motorist is responsible for avoiding that type of collision, Bachman-Williams said.

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As for bicyclists riding three abreast, that usually happens in the early morning hours or on weekends when traffic is light, he said.

Fellow committee member Collin Forbes used public information to compile a database of nearly 2,200 crashes between 2007 and 2012.

Right and left hooks accounted for 26 percent of the crashes in Forbes’ database, and the motorist was at fault in most of them, Forbes wrote on his website bikecolli.info.

Cyclists riding the wrong way and colliding with a motorist making a right turn accounted for 23 percent of the crashes.

Bicyclists sometimes ride on the wrong side of the road so they can see oncoming traffic, Bacs said. But drivers at intersections are looking in the opposite direction for oncoming traffic, which means they might not see the bicyclist.

Tucson attorney Eric Post also serves on the committee and helped create the crash database. In an email to the Road Runner, Post said when fault could be determined from reports, drivers were at fault by a 2-to-1 ratio with cyclists.

“All these conflicts, all these problems make it look like car drivers are the bad guys,” Bacs said.

However, he said nationwide, the majority of collisions between motorists and bicyclists or pedestrians are the fault of the bicyclist or pedestrian.

While motorists and cyclists negotiate the roads, cyclists also compete with pedestrians on The Loop.

A March 16 public advisory from the Pima County Bicycle and Pedestrian Program said the “number one complaint” on The Loop was cyclists “traveling at excessive speeds; passing without alerting other users; and often times passing into the lane of on-coming users.”

The county asked bicyclists to control their speed and alert other Loop users when they are going to pass.

One of the suggestions made by callers to the Road Runner was to require bicyclists to use license plates so motorists could report unsafe riding.

Bacs said such a requirement “would be carrying things too far,” noting the plates would likely be too small to read from a car.

Bachman-Williams said it was “an interesting idea on the face of it,” but the cost would far outweigh the gains. In addition, most modern bicycles do not have fenders where the plate could be placed.