After smash by cement truck, bicyclists are up in arms
Photo: SF Bicycle Coalition
After a 28-year-old cyclist was critically injured Monday at the problematic corner of Market and Octavia, bicycle activists gathered at the intersection this morning to press the city and CalTrans to do something about the confusing junction.
The problem is that traffic coming inbound on Market St. has no obvious way to get on the freeway — except to turn right, directly onto an onramp, and most people have a hard time understanding how turning right on a green light could be a problem. But the intersection wasn’t built for such turns, and right turns are forbidden, as several signs point out.
There’s coverage all over the web this week: SFist did a very nice feature, Beyond Chron and the Examiner were on it this morning, and so was Channel 7, which first posted a story on Wednesday.
The Chronicle? Uh, no. Not as of this writing.
SF Bicycle Coalition, which led the protest, was extremely pro-active in reporting, posting photos from today’s protest within two hours. These included the photo below of a temporary fix done by the city to make the bicycle lane more visible:
Photo: SF Bicycle Coalition
Meanwhile, the injured cyclist, 28-year-old Margaret Timbrell, remains in intensive care after being flattened by the cement truck. The truck’s driver was caught by SFPD a few miles away and did not realize he had run someone down, police said; he was cited for making an illegal right-hand turn.
Fran Taylor in Beyond Chron makes a typically provocative (i.e., typical for Beyond Chron) comparison between freeways and “gated communities” in the sense that both restrict access and divide communities. It’s an interesting notion, but IMO the comparison is not very apt in this case, because restricted access is, in fact, what the bicycle activists are pressing for. They want the city to enforce the safety — if not the sanctity — of bike lanes. They don’t want unrestricted access to the freeway, at least not if it means vehicles making illegal right turns through Octavia and Market St.
Taylor also asks a rhetorical question which seems naive. Extending her freeways=enclaves metaphor, she asks, “Would San Franciscans stand for half of Golden Gate Park becoming a gated community?” In fact, the Central Freeway was supposed to run right through town, through the Panhandle, and into Golden Gate Park, connecting to another never-built freeway that would have extended north from the Hwy. 280-CA 1 junction. These freeways, and many others, were cancelled by planners after what has been called the Freeway Revolt, and the relatively freeway-free city we enjoy today is a legacy from the activists of the 1950s and 1960s.
Just to set the record straight: It would not have been the Central Freeway that reached Golden Gate Park. That one would have been the Panhandle Freeway; the Central Freeway would have extended north along Polk to reach an extension of I-480 near Lombard. We are lucky these freeways were not built.
i don’t understand how it’s possible to get hit by a death monster making a right hand turn. either it’s hauling ass and banks hard to the right, or death monster driver and bicyclist are both totally oblivious to what’s going on around them. and if you’re a bicyclist going through that intersection, unless you’re totally new to the city, don’t you know that you’re likely going to be hit going through that intersection? if not today then soon? and if it’s a big truck making that turn, how fast could it possibly make that turn? maybe an electric bus that you can’t hear until you’re under it - that i could understand. but a massive truck that you can hear three blocks away? was she wearing headphones?
what am I missing? i see the ‘no right turn’ signs.
i tried riding in sf. too dangerous. sold my bike less than two months after i got it. not sure how folks do it. i’m all for being ‘hard’, but there’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity.
i was never active in the bike groups, but i’d be pushing for total segregation. death monsters are called such for a reason. bicycles and multi-ton, fast-moving metallic objects don’t mix. especially in sf. the bike situation here is appalling. shocking. you come out to sf, you expect a civil downtown bicycle scene. not.
i’m not sure what the solution to that intersection is, but i’m sure a good one can be found.
hope that girl gets better.
i’ll definitely check out the bike groups, now, to help pressure gavin grewsome to do something. either that, or i’ll help the bike groups shut down that entire intersection. that’ll get pretty boy moving.
Excellent followup post on SFist:
http://www.sfist.com/archives/2007/01/26/octavia_blvd_protest_support_for_margaret_timbrell.php#more
I saw the aftermath of this accident, just as the paramedics were arriving and pulling out the yellow backboard for the downed cyclist. Scary.
Market is pretty steep at that onramp, and it’s very easy to imagine a cyclist traveling at speed getting cut off by a car or truck making an illegal right turn there.
Of course you have to be alert, both as a cyclist and as a driver. But accidents, blind spots, inattention, and optical illusions happen. Wear a helmet. Drive carefully. If you’re a cyclist and somehow imagining or hoping that you’re somehow exempt, you’re being extremely naive. Riding your bike is a calculated risk (as is driving a car, or stepping out your front door), so you should be realistic about possible consequences.
As for segregation of cyclists and motorists, this study and others like it have shown that, counter-intuitively, the more plentiful are bicycles and pedestrians sharing the streets with cars, the lower the fatality or serious injury rate among them. Most serious accidents between bikes and cars occur at off-peak-traffic times and isolated intersections, not on heavily-traveled roadways.
Preventing right turns to the freeway ramp is retarded. I’m sorry that a biker got hit, but it shows that this was a piss-poor design that some group of idiots thought they could legislate safety rather than design it.
It would make loads more sense to improve safety there AND open it to right-hand turns - thus making everyone - car and cyclist - more aware of the traffic around them. Cyclists wouldn’t get lulled into a false sense of security by the “no right turn” signs that get ignored and would know that traffic is approaching. Cars wouldn’t be making unsafe illegal turns anymore.
So its either a ton more signage and some kind of extra, concrete blocks that make it impossible to turn right (but don’t restrict staight-flow traffic crossing market) or legalize the turns and make EVERYONE safer.
This is a fine illustration of why bike lanes are not what they are cracked up to be. Especially when there is lots of traffic and when someone at the head of the line is slowing down to make this right turn (illegal as it may be), the traffic is not flowing all that quickly. And if I am not mistaken, this is downhill so the cyclist can move pretty quick, either keeping pace with cars or not completely bogging down traffic. With a bike lane, the cyclist is isolated and ends up as a target. IF there was no bike lane (or if as a cyclist, you ignore it and “take the lane”) and a cyclist is in the lane directly behind the car in front of him/her and directly in front of the car in behind him/her, these sorts of right turn accidents would not happen. This notion that we, as cyclists, are safer in a bike lane that is to the right of traffic, on the side of the road, or worse yet on the sidewalk is maybe intuitive, but dead wrong- it puts you at risk to get hit by cars making right turns, coming out of driveways, etc…
Either way, this poor girl deserves justice.