Tuesday, January 22, 2013

two for tuesday: buses and pedestrians

unfortunately this morning on my way to work i witnessed a bus hit a pedestrian and her little dog (i guess s/he's a pedestrian too). made me think of what kind of city we live in, what kind of factors we need to negotiate in our daily lives just to get to work, to school, to wherever.

MustStop

the person looked like she'd be ok when i left. another bike commuter behind me commented, "that was hard to watch." indeed it was.

then this morning i got my weekly newsletter from the bike coalition talking about their taxi driver education program:
You probably know that the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition teaches free bicycle education classes. But did you know that last year we launched a program to teach all new taxi drivers how to share the streets with people on bike? We know that educating frequent drivers about safely sharing the streets with bikes is crucial to making your ride around our great city much safer. Last week, we celebrated our one year anniversary of the taxi training!

In 2012, our instructors have led two courses per month, and taught over 1,000 taxi drivers how to pass bike riders safely, how to avoid dooring, and how to safely turn when people on bikes are on the road! By working to educate these frequent drivers, along with our dozens of classes for bike commuters, we’re making our streets safer for everyone. Hopefully this great program is already making a difference in your ride. Please remember that the only way we can educate the thousands of people -- both behind the wheel and on two-wheels -- is with the support of people like you.

i believe they have muni driver's education as well, but i will need to confirm it. either way, makes me think of everyone's safety and how we judge importance of running lights, or getting ahead of the light to cross the street.

please stay safe everyone. and what's the hurry? you'll get to where you are going in due time. and muni, take some advice from your own campaign. and is driver education enough? what, dear readers, do you think we can do?

20090804 not-always-right

10 comments:

  1. The bumper sticker in SF that struck me odd is the one on cabs claiming them allowed to drop off and pick up fares in the bike lane. I am not sure why that bothered me, but it seemed like a big fuck off to reasonable city traffic. More like "I am allowed to cut you off, park in your bike lane and then try to door you" but maybe I am overreacting...

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    1. yes, that is sort of how i see it too, but some people, like the tall one, thinks it's ok. i hate it for the very reason that some passenger is going to ignore the curbside only exit rule and door me. ugh.

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    2. The cabs are only supposed to enter the bike lane to pick up or drop off the disabled. They abuse the privilege all the time.

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    3. @Tarik - Those stickers are blue with disabled iconography, but they're entirely bogus. The pretext is that a cab might need to pick up a disabled person, which is valid as per the "reasonable accommodation" clause of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). But those stickers are based on a claim that it's somehow unacceptable to question whether any fare whatsoever is actually disabled, which is wrong and the source of this bogosity.

      (This fraud was approved hook, line, and sinker by the SFMTA's Citizens' Advisory Council (CAC), which is currently devoted to ignoring the concerns of the 30% of the city's citizens who aren't addicted to using cars.)

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  2. Oh Lord, I cannot tell you how many times a city bus has passed so close to me that I did not have to reach that far to touch it! And taxi drivers? Forget about it! One time I had one who kept revving it's engine right behind me. We were on a one lane city street that had cars on both sides with a traffic light at the end of it. I was riding in the middle, and the light ahead of me was red. He was in such a rush to get to that red light!

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    1. that revving taxi sounds pretty scary. i've had a UPS guy do that behind me. scared the shit out of me (figuratively), and made me really upset and mad. what is the big hurry and what is it with the intimidation tactics? ugh.

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    2. I had huge problems with the 23 and 36 buses always passing to close and cutting me off in my neighborhood. So I started taking down bus numbers and times every time it happened and called 311 to complain about every incident. This was about 2 years ago. I have very few bus interactions with either line any more. It took about a month of calls, maybe 15 complaints in all. 311 works! Nothing works for cab drivers. Nothing. UPS does not like getting complaints about drivers. They really don't, and if you call with truck numbers and times they get on it quick.

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    3. ugh! that's so frustrating. how can there be a recourse for this (the taxi non-responsiveness)? i really wonder how the bike coalition taxi program will affect the real world. positively, i hope.

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  3. looks like the folks over at mission mission also noticed the incident.

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