Dalton McGuinty should re-think Cellphone Charges
Dalton McGuinty might well consider the following story and the growing number of stories of drivers killing pedestrians, cyclists and each other while talking and texting while driving. The Ontario government’s long awaited law banning such behaviour will hit the streets, complete with charges, February 1st.
Mr. McGuinty had the chance to deal with this problem in a responsible way, in the same way that many jurisdictions have, with heavy fines and jail time. Unfortunately Dalton decided that it was better to try and get re-elected then do the right thing.
In Ontario the maximum fine for talking or texting on your cell phone is $500.00. One wonders how many of the recent pedestrian deaths in the Toronto area could have been averted if the cell phone charges had been more heavily enforced with a harder hitting fine? Your tough enough to save us from pit bulls, but not enough to save us from negligent drivers. More people are killed by drivers then pit bulls.
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“Hi, I’m Carrie Patterson, Gordon Patterson’s wife,” she said softly. “We were married 23 years. But a distraction on a text message caused us his death.”
So ends the sad tale of a distracted driver, a teacher’s death and the ongoing lesson’s of why texting and driving is as bad as drinking and driving. In Washington’s states first vehicular homicide conviction due to text-messaging, Antonio Cellestine, 18 was sentenced to five years for hit and run on a cyclist while he was texting. Phone records indicate Cellestine was texting his girlfriend at the time his car hit and killed the Hudson’s Bay High School teacher.
“I’ve heard the term ‘accident’ used quite a bit today,” Bennett said after Cellestine pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and felony hit-and-run. “But this was no accident.”
Gordon Patterson, 50, was hit at 4 p.m. Sept. 15 in a bike lane near the top of the hill on Northeast St. Johns Road in Vancouver City, Washington. He was riding his bicycle home from school where he taught, when Cellestine’s car trailed into the bike lane and struck him from behind. Cellestine then sped away.
Based on witness statements and evidence gathered at the scene, officers arrested Cellestine the next day on suspicion of hit-and-run. They seized his cell phone and subpoenaed records from his cell phone company.
The records showed Cellestine had received and sent numerous text messages in the time leading up to and during the crash, said Deputy Prosecutor Jim David.
That constituted a disregard for the safety of others, David said, so prosecutors filed the vehicular homicide charge earlier this month.
“By focusing on the texting as opposed to driving, he wasn’t paying attention because he was watching his cell phone,” he said.
Cellestine first made up a story to police about smoking a cigar while driving and brought it up again in court Friday. But police say they found no evidence he was smoking.
This is the first of several cases dealing with homicide charges, texting and driving. A Bellingham teenager was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide for allegedly driving and texting when he hit and killed a pedestrian on New Year’s Day. He also was accused of drinking. That case has yet to be resolved.
“I never understood loss until I lost my dad — my best friend,” she said, her voice breaking. “I will always miss my dad …”
The biggest loss, Carrie Patterson said, was losing the future.
“He impacted thousands with his life,” she said. “And we can only imagine how many more it would have been if he was still here.”
Bikeway Network Event Public Notice
An email was sent to our super secret email that is so secret that we didn't even know we had one. Below is the information. Read it, memorize it and then come out and have your say. The city of Toronto is not going to do anything for you, so you better do it yourself.
The City's Transportation Services Cycling staff are hosting an important public consultation session regarding the Bikeway Network. Many of the ideas being presented are things the city's cycling advocates have been pushing for - these are long overdue, and most welcome improvements!
You are invited to join us on Feb 1st to give your feedback and to hear about some of the plans for 2010 - event details are below.
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Bikeway Network Event Public Notice
Date: Monday February 1, 2010
Time: 6:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Location: Metro Hall, 55 John St. Room 308-309
The objective of this meeting is to get community input on proposed new downtown bikeways that the Transportation Services Cycling Infrastructure and Programs group is working on for 2010.
Topics will discuss concepts and criteria for new projects, including:
• 2010 bicy cle lanes
• Rush hour sharrow bicycle markings on streetcar routes
• New bicycle lane intersection treatments at signalized intersections
• Locations for bicycle boxes at intersections
• Updates on the West-End bikeways project
Participants are invited to attend for a brief presentation and question period with City Staff from 6:30 – 7:00 p.m. From 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. the floor will be open for the public to view maps, talk to staff about projects, and submit comments and suggestions.
Visit the city's website at www.toronto.ca/cycling
Largest speeding fine, ever!!!
The $290,000 Speeding Ticket
We picked up this story, stolen really, though it was a clean get away, from Streetblog, about the world's largest speeding fine being dropped on a swiss millionaire, take that you bourgeoisie swine.
The fine, 299,000 Swiss francs, or just under $290,000. According to the BBC, the motorist was speeding through a swiss burg at 136 kph. Like the smart Europeans they are, the swiss frown on people endanging their citizens, of course it did not help the driver that he was a repeat offender.
In Toronto the same cannot be said. There have been numerous examples of Pedestrians and cyclists being killed and the perp getting away with it. The one that pops to mind is Micheal Bryant dragging Darcy Sheppard down Bloor Street and depositing him into a mailbox. There are many who believe Bryant will get off because of his standing, because of his money, because of his high paid lawyers and publicity department and of course that he was the former Attorney General of Ontario.
Ther is the example of the BMW speeding, which is a light term for the speed the carbon burner was going, that careened off a couple of cars, ran a red and mowed down a woman crossing the street. No word on how that case turned out. There is the woman a few years ago who crashed into a crowded bus shelter. Many people injured, an elderly man lost his leg and the driver was fined $350 but didn't pay because she skipped the country. And finally the story of the elderly woman crossing the street at Avenue and St. Claire who was killed by a driver. He recieved a $150 fine with the excuse that he did not see her.
So this basically shows the differance between the European mind set and the North American. It also shows that if you want to assassinate someone in Toronto you just have to rent a car and run them down.
Twitter gets Michelle Mowery in a Tither
We stole thos one from the LAist written by Zach Behrens. It appears that someone has confiscated the identity of the Senior Bicycle Coordinator and used it to make a fake twitter account. PS we stole the picture from them as well, Oooopie.
By Zach Behrens
The cycling community is rife with exasperation over Los Angeles' Senior Bicycle Coordinator Michelle Mowery and it looks like her last comment comparing Portland to Los Angeles has people saying "enough already." At a City Council Transportation meeting earlier this month, this was the exchange that lit fires:
COUNCILMAN BILL ROSENDAHL: Alta Planning is reportedly one of the finest consulting groups in the world for bike planning. How is it that the City of Los Angeles kicked off the Draft Bike Plan process with Alta but did not incorporate the robust Bike Plan process that Portland used/is using to develop their own Bike Plan? For example in Portland Alta maintained eleven working groups, and they used community bike rides to engage and survey.MICHELLE MOWERY: With all due respect the City of Portland is 450,000 people. It’s a homogeneous community that is very white, and very progressive with respect to transportation. They have a trolley system that works very well, as well as their transit overall. We are a very diverse, disjointed city of 4 million people. They are 30 years ahead of us in the development of their, well, they’re not quite 30, they’re more like 20 years ahead of us in the development of their bikeway. So we’re a step behind Portland in what we’re trying to do. Granted, several of us would like to see a lot of changes in the city happen very quickly, but again we have a very diverse city with a lot of needs.
"Holy crap," exclaimed cyclist and Metblogs owner Sean Bonner, "will someone please fire her already so we can get someone who actually cares and can work on making a difference in that position rather than someone who just spouts off a bunch of useless shit all the time?"
Alex Thompson at Westside Bikeside also questioned Mowery's statement. "What possible connection can racial diversity have to it? By saying that Portland is homogeneous and LA diverse, Mowery seems to be making an argument that diverse places are inherently slower to adopt bicycles, or inherently dysfunctional politically. It’s not clear to me, but it smacks of a freshman political science major selling a bad theory. I can think of two examples of racially diverse cities that are politically functional (at least as compares to LA), and are making huge strides toward bike friendliness." Those two cities are Chicago and New York.
This is definitely not the first time Mowery has been the subject the cycling community's concern. In the past, she's been hit up for saying things like "I have more miles on my legs than they do” (in reference to some cyclists activists). When her office stated that painted sharrows--a standard street marking found in various other small and big cities--could be a slippery hazard, people said LADOT is purposefully stalling progress.
Now, whether it is fair or not, a fake Twitter account--MichelleMeowery--has been created. One of the first tweets: " can someone help me figure out how to get these damn cyclists off my back? it's bad enough that half of them aren't white..."
Iowa Law in Jeopardy
we stole the image from Jerry Alexander http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/776032-001/Stone
The Iowa Bicycle Coalition has a grand fight on its hands for 2010. A bill backed by the Coalition that passed the Iowa Senate last year has stalled in the Iowa House. The law would have passed into legislation making it mandatory for motorists to give cyclists a minimum leeway when passing.
The Coalition had hoped to force the state to include liability against a driver who strikes a cyclist with a car door. Mark Wyatt, the Iowa Bicycle Coalition’s executive director, says they will no longer pursue that part of the bill any more as they’ve been assured state law already covers that.
“That’s one of those things that we heard enough from the legislature that they believe it’s covered and that liability already would exist, so we’re not going to pursue that,” Wyatt says. “But we’re still looking at a passing distance for bicycles.”
The bill that passed the Iowa Senate this past spring would have required that motorists maintain a five-foot distance when passing a bicyclist.
“There’s 15 states currently in the United States, you know, Wisconsin and Illinois being closest to us, that require motor vehicles to pass three even five feet from a bicyclist if one is using a roadway,” Wyatt says.
Eight bicyclists were killed in collisions with vehicles on Iowa roads last year, while 430 were injured in wrecks.
Under the bill that stalled in the legislature last spring, motorists caught following a bike too closely would have faced a $25 ticket and if the cyclist gets injured, the fine would have jumped to $500. If the cyclist is killed, the fine would have been $1000.
The coalition’s “Iowa Bicycle Summit” is scheduled on Friday, January 29 and Saturday, January 30 in Des Moines at the Iowa Events Center.
A quick look through the world wide web could not find a reason why the legislation was not passed, a webpage with a petition for banning cyclists from Iowa’s farm to market roads might be reason. In a state as heavily into agriculture as Iowa is, one can only think how heavily the farm industry lobbied to have the bill killed. As one comment on the page might explain it all.
“I don’t understand exactly what they are training for but i doubt that its for the tour de france. Bicycling is a hobby, farming is a job. Bikes need to get out the way and let these men and women work”
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Puff the Magic Dragon
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Deese R’ da Daze dat we Rote
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