While there are wonderful officers in the SFPD, so many of them are bound by a tradition of being obstreperous. They refuse to see situations as individual ones and instead lump everything bicycle related into one, big, stupid bag of prejudice and ineffectiveness. Many of them can not even pretend to be impartial and will willingly and openly blame victims for being victimized.

The whole department needs good old customer service training. They need to learn how to speak more effectively. They need a lot of practice in impartiality. More of them need to come out of their cars and start walking a riding their beats (I have found beat cops to be way easier to deal with on average).

But in my own experience traveling around the city each day I basically never have problems with cyclists. (I can tell there must be lots of badly behaved cyclists because so many drivers seem afraid of them and will yield even when the driver has the right of way.)

So the other night I walked down Page St. (a bike route) from the upper Haight to the “wiggle” in the lower Haight and back, and kept my eye out for cyclists to see how many did dangerous stuff or failed to yield. Result: I saw about a dozen cyclists and none failed to yield when they should yield. (At stop signs, usually there was no other traffic or pedestrian and the cyclist would roll through). I crossed the street a few times and was never menaced by any car or bike. Actually, every driver and cyclist that I saw behaved well.

Yes, you will occasionally encounter bad behavior by drivers or cyclists. But if you yourself keep aware of your surroundings and follow the rules and exercise common courtesy you will rarely if ever have problems.

I understand you’re frustrated, but looking at it the way you are, as I understand it, is too simplistic and the solutions are weak – think about it:

- How much will this educational campaign really reach people? If you’ve worked in any kind of campaigning, nonprofit communications, or advertising or PR at all, you’ll know how hard it is to really get a response.
- Even if you reached everyone, how long would the effect last? Is there a foreseeable point at which the cyclist culture on the Wiggle will just shift and everyone will be more mindful of pedestrians?
- As SFResident has pointed out – how economically viable or sustainable is this?

On the other hand, if you actually research traffic behavior (or human behavior in general), you’ll find yourself looking at the conditions that lead to this behavior and asking how those changes can be improved. The biggest determining factors of patterns of human behavior are the social and physical conditions in which they are present – this basic principle applies to traffic (and therefore street design). Street changes not only prove to be a very effective method time and time again – they are inherently effective, as it is the very environment through which users must navigate.

Now, the Wiggle is a major bike route with a high volume of cyclists (which bolsters an extra sense of safety and right-of-way for them). While we want to encourage the use of this route, we also want to maintain the safety of pedestrians. But these intersections, like 99% of San Francisco, have tight sidewalk corners and long, barely marked crosswalks.

You yourself, smushmoth, have said you’re a daily cyclist. Imagine the difference approaching one of those intersections at which the sidewalk extends into the crosswalk to the width of the parking lane, the crosswalk marked brightly in yellow solid stripes. And the corner doesn’t have a parked car on either edge of it, so you have a wide field of vision.

On the other hand, picture yourself crossing one of those intersections by foot – approaching a minimal-length, heavily marked crosswalk, which before you enter places you in an open field of vision for bicyclists and motorists to see (maybe even with some pedestrian-scale lighting).

Now, honestly tell me which one will make you feel safer – flyers and promoters or a pedestrianized streetscape.

We might take more seriously your challenge to the SFBC to go after cyclists you think are riding badly if–if–you were already on record somewhere publicly holding AAA accountable for not taming bad San Francisco motorists, like the one who ran over my foot in a crosswalk. Or the one who hit and knocked a child off a bike on Valencia and then fled justice.

But you haven’t called for AAA to go after such bad motorists, have you? You haven’t applied the same standards to motorists and their lobbyists that you hold cyclists and our advocates to, have you?

Aaron himself said that he is hesitant to cross the street along the wiggle because of cyclists, don’t you think there is a problem?

As for counts, sit out and count the cars and bikes stop or even slow down at the corner of Haight and Scott.

“as the counts show that they as a whole do stop”

I’m honestly curious where I can find these “counts?” Because in my experience as a pedestrian neither bicyclists nor motorists care much for stop signs – and I certainly worry about the cars more than the bikes. Can you provide a link to some raw data or peer-reviewed articles?

“When asked if they could station people (cyclists) down there to educate cyclists and skateboarders about their responsibilities”

That would cost a lot of money and/or volunteer time and these organizations have very limited resources. If you’re so concerned about this why not be the good citizen and do it yourself? Print out handbills or something.

You seem to be viewing this whole issue through a moral lens which might make you feel self-righteous but isn’t going to lead to safer or better streets. Bad street design in the wiggle area doesn’t excuse bicyclists, motorists, and pedestrians who break the law but it does help to explain why so many of them do it and what we can do to fix or lessen the problem.

That is passing the buck.

The point is not to try to pass responsibility from cyclists, it’s about looking at what guides the behavior of cyclists and all users. Education may help in the short-term, but we need real, long-term solutions that will guide the behavior of any person using our streets, “educated” or not.

If you don’t want the pedestrian improvements I proposed, then I don’t know who can help you.

I know, heaven forbid a member of the press is on hand to observe and ask questions!! I thought that’s a sign of a democracy.

You said he didn’t stop, but still had time to make a witty comment while no doubt traveling at an excessive rate of speed.

I live on the wiggle (and commute by bicycle daily) and had my leashed dog in the crosswalk hit by a cyclist riding up haight turning left at scott blowing by a car yielding for me. Of course he did not stop, but told me it was a dog eat dog world. After asking the pedestrian people, Nick Ford, who is a city bike person, if the city, or the SFBC could do some outreach to slow the bikes down in the neighborhood, they told me that if I had a problem I should contact the police.

The driver of the truck was a soldier, back from Iraq. He did not have insurance. After coaching by Westminster police, he changed his story. No charges were filed. Here are two stories:

http://www.ocregister.com/news/truck-208378-cyclist-bike.html

http://www.ocregister.com/news/dieu-126681-gloria-vu.html

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Last week a 9 year old boy, Nicholas Martley, was ran over by another monster truck. He was in a cross walk in front of the raised pickup, and was killed.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/mortley-222539-boy-school.html

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So, in a relatively small area in Orange County we’ve got two gruesome killings of bicyclists by monster trucks. The owners of the trucks install lift kits, etc. to raise the vehicles which impairs their vision, and then explain why they kill innocent people because “I never saw them.”

Is this Alice in Wonderland??? How can you raise you truck so you can’t see a bicyclist and then explain the death of the cyclist by saying you didn’t see them?

Based on the witness statement, the vehicle making the illegal left-turn is primarily at-fault. The absence of a headlight on the bicyclist is a contributory factor to poor nighttime visibility and will be used against the bicyclist as an example of not exercising due care and caution. All this means is that if there is a payout, less will be paid than if there was a headlight.