Written Comment on SCPD OTS Grant Proposal

by De Clarke


WRITTEN COMMENTARY IN THE MATTER OF THE SCPD OTS GRANT PROPOSAL

Submitted to

Mayor Tim Fitzmaurice
Sgt Tom Bailey

Submitted by

D. A. Clarke
151 Dufour St
Santa Cruz
CA 95060

January 26th 2001

This commentary is based on the full text of the SCPD OTS grant proposal as sent out by Cheryl Schmitt on behalf of SCPD, via email, Thursday Jan 25.

A plain text version of this commentary is also available at http://www.daclarke.org/AltTrans/SCPD

The plaintext version was submitted via email on January 26th 2001, to meet the deadline for written commentary.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The SCPD OTS grant proposal suffers from an evident bias in favour of motorists and against pedestrians and cyclists. It also suffers from traditionalism, i.e. a failure to consider recent trends and research in traffic management and traffic safety.

Several amendments are recommended to overcome these weaknesses of the proposal. They are:

Specific language which should be added to the proposal to implement each of these amendments, as well as the supporting argument for each amendement, will be found below in the "Specific Notes".

A general amendement is that SCPD and the City should consult with national, as well as local, bike and pedestrian advocacy groups to achieve these goals. There are tremendous resources freely available, which can and should be tapped for our benefit.

[END OF EXECUTIVE SUMMARY]


[FULL TEXT OF COMMENTS]

WRITTEN COMMENTARY, SCPD OTS PROPOSAL
January 2001

My commentary is divided into two main sections: General Notes on the proposal as a whole, including some weaknesses in the presentation of statistics; and Specific Notes on the goals listed in the proposal.

However, I'm going to start in a less dry and impersonal tone, with a True Story. This really happened, and not to a friend of a friend; it happened to me, in Santa Cruz, in broad daylight, and only a few months ago.

TRUE STORY

I was proceeding legally and at reasonable speed (about 10mph) at the extreme right hand verge of the paved roadway, through the Water/Soquel interchange Westbound. I was just about to make the right turn onto Soquel.

When I was only a few feet from the corner, a driver in a pale blue subcompact came quite fast from behind me and cut across my path at 45 degrees, narrowly missing my front wheel. She cut the corner so hard that, even though the rounded sidewalk section there is broadly faired down into grade for wheelchair access, her front and rear wheels bounced hard on the curb at about half of normal curb height. Or -- in less technical terms -- she drove on the sidewalk.

I caught up to her at the next light and spoke to her. I asked (or even beseeched) her courteously and very sincerely to please be more careful, because cutting off cyclists like this is very dangerous -- the smallest misjudgement by the driver, or any panic on the cyclist's part, and serious injury or death could result. Mine, in this case.

Her response?

She looked at me sternly and said with absolute conviction: "Well, you should be on the sidewalk."

Why didn't I report her? Believe me, I would very much have liked to do so. The car was brand new and had no plates.

I could have gone to the (local) dealer and demanded the names of all people who recently bought a car of that make, model, and colour. But why bother? Things like this happen all the time.

The driver was not drunk, she was not a giddy teenager, she was not a confused elderly person. She was cold sober, eminently respectable, fairly affluent, early-middle-aged, and extremely angry with me for being where she was sure I had no right to be.


GENERAL NOTES

This grant seems to be two separate grants glued into one.

There are two distinct components. First, there is an acknowledged problem with night-time injury/fatality collisions (auto). Then there is an acknowledged problem with (mostly daytime) pedestrian/bike-vs-auto injury/fatality collisions. The proposal seeks to remedy both.

I have no quarrel with SCPD's desire to throw more resources at night-time collision response. I would like to see more of a focus on collision prevention by stricter enforcement, particularly of speed laws. But I do not question the understaffing problem SCPD are facing, nor the problem of responding to automobile incidents, and to non-auto crimes against property and persons, with limited night-shift staff. I therefore don't take issue with the stated need for additional resources to respond to, and hopefully reduce, night-time traffic injury and fatality collisions. Nor do I wish to quibble over specifics of the budget.

I'd like to restrict my response therefore to only that portion of the grant proposal which regards pedestrian and bicycle injury/fatality incidents and the desire to reduce these.

I wish to note for the record some reservations I have about the statistics used as justification for the proposal. I think there are some flaws which weaken its impact and may reduce its chances of being funded. Other flaws may strengthen the proposal on the surface, but could undermine it if closely examined.

The statistical ranking of SC among other allegedly similar towns I find unconvincing, due to the "reasons for this high ranking" included in the report itself. The reasons for the high ranking are exactly those reasons which make SC not similar or comparable to the towns to which it is being compared. I listed several of these factors in private email to a CC member earlier this week.

There are two very relevant axes on which towns were not measured for comparability. One is bike population, and the other is cars per square mile. To use merely census population, or merely miles driven per annum, can be very misleading. A far more sprawling town might drive more miles per annum, yet have a lower car density and very few cyclists or pedestrians due to its car-centered, inefficient design. But it would have fewer bike/ped "accidents" -- thus looking "safer" than Santa Cruz despite more miles driven. This would make SC look "bad," but would not reflect reality.

I also take issue with the SCPD oral presentation at the Jan 23rd City Council meeting, in the matter of its statistical assignment of fault in injury collisions. There is a persistent and documented bias in favour of the motorist and against the cyclist or pedestrian throughout this country. Santa Cruz is no exception, as we saw recently in the case of Mr Gutierrez, who was allowed to depart uncited from what credible eyewitnesses asserted was a deliberate "road rage" collision/attack against a cyclist.

When fault is assigned as unfairly and arbitrarily as the cycling community feels it was in this case, it is hard to put great faith in statistics which are based only upon police reports of the same kind that Shawn Duncan is now challenging. These statistics are said to "show" that pedestrians and bikes are at fault "about 1/3 of the time", motorists 1/3 of the time and that "the other third could not be determined." I think most pedestrians and cyclists in town would assert that fault mostly can be determined, and it is mostly bad driving that threatens non-drivers in their travels across town. What the statistics show may actually be the same reporting bias that is documented elsewhere in the country.

Though I doubt that SC is as bad as it is made to look in this report by comparison with other towns, as a quotidian cyclist I have no doubt that there are hazards to bike and pedestrian travellers which need to be addressed. The nature and severity of the consequences of these hazards is not expressed in the proposal with sufficient detail and clarity, however, and this also weakens the proposal.

I find it frustrating that fatal and injury collisions are all lumped together, so that we have no idea how many fatalities we've had vs injuries. Nor have we any idea how serious the injuries are. I would find it much more useful in understanding what's going on out there, to see a breakdown by "minor injury" requiring no medical assistance, "moderate injury" requiring medical treatment, "major injury" involving paramedic intervention, and fatality. These numbers should, imho, be published monthly by SCPD on their website, in a "Traffic Incident Report".

Why is this relevant? If all our ped/bike injuries are merely skinned knees and sprained ankles, then we still need to curb our drivers somewhat and train our kids to be careful -- but it hardly seems a justification for a large police budget increment. The lumping together of all severities of injury with each other and with fatalities deprives the reader of important information. If I were a funding agency reader evaluating a proposal, I would find this to be a weakness.

I am also frustrated by the categories of collision type listed. For example, "Speed Related" and "Alcohol Related" are separated out from "Pedestrian" and "Bicyclist" incidents. I doubt that all drivers who strike pedestrians and bikes are always sober, or never speeding; surely many pedestrian and bike hits are by drivers who are DUI or speeding.

Breaking out peds and bikes as if they were a unique, indeed causal category such as "alcohol" or "speeding" is misleading. There is an implication here that there exists a special kind of incident which involves a bike or a pedestrian; in my experience there are mostly incidents which involve bad driving. I believe it is unrealistic to single out cyclists and pedestrians as if the incidents in which they are scared, hurt, or killed are somehow essentially different from other automobile collisions.

I am relieved to see that the list of persons in need of education and outreach, as mentioned in the overview and introductory text, is "motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians" -- with motorists listed first. However (see below) this unfortunately looks like mere window-dressing after one examines the actual goals list.

One last note: the cover memo is a sad testament to a failure of democratic process. It's dated January 24th and yet it requests public input by January 26th, in writing, to a mailing address. This reminds one inevitably of the extremely poor process and the embarrassingly short public comment period on this proposal.


SPECIFIC NOTES

As regards the list of concrete goals:

In reading the list of 19 specific goals to be achieved with the requested funding, I notice that every educational and social engineering effort listed is directed at children (implicitly as cyclists and pedestrians, since children don't drive), or at adult cyclists and pedestrians.

Even though the word "motorist" has been added here and there to the introductory material, the actual focus of the grant proposal (as revealed in its specific goals list) is on behaviour modification for cyclists and pedestrians.

Even a shallow survey of cyclist and pedestrian advocacy groups in this country (and indeed throughout the world) will quickly reveal that a very serious safety issue today is the underpolicing of motorists, excessively lenient fines and penalties for motorists who drive dangerously, and failure to report and cite motorists who drive dangerously. I refer the reader to some randomly selected stories and statistics describing both deliberate and unconscious bias against pedestrians and bikes in injury/fatality collision reporting and traffic law enforcement, and to a debate in the UK House of Commons on this very important issue.

I concur wholly with a NYC bike advocacy group:

"Everyone understands that civic conscience is weak behind the wheel, and drivers will obey the law only if it is enforced."
The SCPD proposal does not understand or acknowledge that civic conscience is weak behind the wheel. Aside from token mentions in introductory text, there is no acknowledgement that motorists are primary contributors to the safety problem faced by pedestrians and cyclists.

Incidents such as the Gutierrez/Duncan one a few days ago lead us to question whether the law is being enforced (a) sufficiently and (b) impartially. Ticketing a cyclist $300 for riding on the sidewalk, but letting a motorist go free when there is strong eyewitness testimony of his deliberate misconduct, is not impartial enforcement. The cyclist riding on the sidewalk is breaking the law and should be reprimanded. But he is doing something far less endangering to others than the motorist driving aggressively. There should be some sense of proportion in these matters.


It is often very helpful, when one hasn't the funding or staffing to conduct an extensive, in-depth statistical analysis of one's local situation, to look at the results of large, high-dollar studies that other cities have been fortunate enough to fund and pursue.

One very comprehensive study of cycling fatality accidents and safety recommendations was done in Toronto in 1998, in response to a local rise in both injury and fatality cyclist/auto collisions. In Canada, where a public health care system has to absorb the costs of public health problems, government is strongly motivated to achieve measurable results. There was also strong public pressure on the local city government to address the problem, due to publicity about recent tragedies. An extensive study was authorized, to analyze data from the preceding ten year period and make recommendations for increasing cyclist safety.

The Coroner's Office of the City undertook the study. It identified 13,475 collisions involving motor vehicles and cyclists between Jan. 1, 1986 and Dec. 31, 1996 - 38 of which were fatal. After careful analysis of the collision reports and coroner's records, the report concluded that the greatest possible improvement in safety would be gained simply by giving cyclists greater precedence.

"The concept of motorized vehicles yielding to non-motorized vehicles. . . seems to be a common sense rule which should be accepted by all road users. Entrenching this principle . . . (would) likely significantly reduce risk of injury and death," the report added.

By contrast, the SCPD grant proposal seems to be tightly focussed on teaching non-motorists to give way to motorists, or to practise passive survival skills.

For example, we find in the SCPD proposal a traditionalist emphasis on persuading cyclists to wear helmets more often. The Toronto report, reviewing its ten years of data, puts less emphasis on this strategy, though noting some beneficial effect:

The report offered only limited support for bicycle helmets, noting studies have shown no reduction in deaths or injuries and mandatory helmet laws might actually discourage cycling.

"Helmets are an asset, not a panacea. The helmet does nothing to prevent a collision," the report added.

-- Toronto Star, Sept 9, 1998

Note the emphasis on prevention in this analysis. The Toronto study concluded that preventing collisions was more effective than either post-collision prosecution, or the promotion of protective safety gear for individuals.

The finding of the Toronto study was that the best safety strategy was to go to the root of the problem and start taming the cars, i.e. re-educate motorists to give more respect to cyclists, and giving cyclist precedence in ambiguous traffic situations. This was the best method of preventing collisions.

And prevention, as the saying goes, is the best medicine.


In summary, my consistent criticism of the SCPD grant proposal is that it is car-centered. It is a blueprint for persuading or forcing Santa Cruz pedestrians and cyclists to adapt their habits and movements so as to marginally increase their chances of survival in dangerous traffic. Only a 5 percent reduction in injury and fatal incidents is aspired to, which seems a depressingly modest goal. The proposal disregards entirely the possibility of making the traffic less dangerous. Its language is fatalistic. It concludes that as density increases, things can only get worse and more dangerous; so we must train our pedestrians and cyclists to survive, as it were, in a war zone.

This strikes me as a clear case of treating the symptoms rather than the disease. It is not likely to be effective.

I think we should consider very carefully the degree of bias in favour of motorists which is reflected in the SCPD's proposal. Recall that it lists "pedestrian involved" and "cyclist involved" as if they were special categories of accident, whereas we know from experience that a speeding or careless driver often accounts for both. And all of its 19 goals are tightly focussed on modifying the behaviour of pedestrians and cyclists, not on modifying the behaviour of drivers.

Remember the driver who could very well have ended my career abruptly at the Soquel/Water intersection, because she was in a hurry, was driving recklessly, and was absolutely certain that I had no right to be on the road. This proposal does nothing to address the problem of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of drivers just like her; ordinary people, not monsters -- people who who are merely a bit careless and a bit ignorant, but whose carelessness and ignorance are seated behind the wheel of more than a ton of steel in motion.


SPECIFIC SUGGESTED AMENDMENTS

Specific suggestions for improving this proposal and making it more effective in increasing pedestrian and cyclist safety in the City of Santa Cruz:

1) add to goals: the promotion of bike lights

Safety experts all over the world concur that adequate lighting on bicycles travelling at night is a major factor in preventing collision after dark. Many bicycle fatalities and injuries due to automobile collision, occur in twilight or darkness, when the motorist can legitimately claim that he or she did not see a bike in the gloom. This proposal makes no mention of this major safety issue and therefore makes no attempt to address a statistically significant contributory cause of collision.

I strongly urge the modification of item 12, the distribution and proper fitting of helmets at "rodeos," to include

Also to distribute and demonstrate the correct use of bike lights, and to explain both the legal and safety advantages of both front and rear bicycle lights.
Low-cost bike lights such as PlanetBike (front bright-white flasher/steady lamp) and Cateye and other subcompact tail lamps (seatpost or reflector mount) are readily available, and can be purchased in bulk at good discounts. Any bike shop or catalogue could advise the SCPD on this matter. These small bright lights are also "cool looking" and I think would be attractive to children and even adults as a free gift item from SCPD.

I further suggest that we add a sub-item, or a new item, about bike light enforcement after dark. My suggestion is this: that patrol cars carry a small supply of the free bike lights; when unlit bikes are noted by officers on night patrol, the cyclist be given an explanation of the CVC and a set of free lights. This I predict will have a more positive effect than expensive (for both City and citizen) citation processing.

The neglect of bike lighting as a safety issue is a weakness of this proposal, and indicates an insufficient attention to prevention of collisions.

2) add to goals: education and outreach to motorists, reduce bias in official safety strategy

I consulted this week with a couple of leaders of large bike advocacy organizations and US bike safety experts. In the matter of reducing bias in accident reporting and thus achieving a more realistic statistical picture on which to base future decision-making, the Program Director of the League of American Bicyclists said (email):

There is an effort underway within NHTSA and FHWA to increase the accuracy of crash reporting by police officers to try and remove bias and improve accuracy of data. The League is involved with efforts to educate police officers about bicycle safety. Pete Flucke, president of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin, was a police officer and operates a program called 'Enforcement for Bicycle Safety' which includes proper crash reporting. He has seen that most police don't foster an active bias, necessarily, but simply don't understand traffic law as it pertains to bicyclists.

I might suggest that you try to work with your local police department to train officers in proper enforcement of traffic laws for bicyclists. Some states have Police Officer Standards and Training (POST) certification for materials for continuing education that is mandatory for all police officers. As soon as a program is POST certified, officers can enroll and learn bicycle safety or it can be taught at the police academy. Peter Flucke managed to get a grant to teach bicycle law enforcement for a living through his state DOT."

In light of this expert opinion, a specific suggestion I have is that SCPD should become aware of efforts such as these and participate in them. Police officers also need ongoing education, to keep their skills and knowledge up to date. Therefore I request that a 20th specific goal be added:

20. provide training for SCPD traffic officers, preferably using materials prepared by Peter Flucke and/or John Forester, to familiarize them with modern "effective cycling" theory and practise and to improve incident reporting skills.
Another specific suggestion:
21. working with materials from any of a number of resources on aggressive driving such as prepare informational flyers on the problem of aggressive driving in the US, and relate it to Santa Cruz's high injury/fatality rate. Mail flyers to all registered drivers in the City of Santa Cruz.

NB: a wealth of information on this problem is currently available, and it is imho an embarrassing weakness of the proposal that it makes no reference to the latest research on dangerous driving.

Another specific suggestion:

22. encourage Santa Cruz residents, by means of newspaper ads, radio PSAs, and bus posters, to call the day duty bike/pedestrian safety officer and report incidents of aggressive or unsafe driving. Encourage SCMTD drivers to log and report incidents of aggressive, careless, and illegal driving. Compile statistics on the number of calls per day and type/severity of incident. Do not require formal ID of car or driver unless caller wishes a citation issued.
In many cases, cyclists and pedestrians will say that they don't want the offending motorist to go to jail or pay a heavy fine (at least, if no harm was done this time) -- but they often wish that "someone would explain the Vehicle Code to that [fill in your favourite epithet]". SCPD could offer this as an alternative to citizens who wish to report and correct a dangerous driver, yet are reluctant to press a charge; if the driver can be positively ID'd, a "gentler" police response could be offered in which an officer calls the driver and explains the infraction, the risk, the possible consequences, the severity of a citation if one had been issued, and so forth. A followup paper letter could be sent to the driver's home.


As I write these last words, a car drives by my house, in a 25 mph zone, in heavy rain, in the dark. It's moving at least at 40 mph and possibly a bit faster. It makes a screeching, sliding turn at the corner and roars off into the night.

It's a cold and wet night, so we might hope there are no human targets out there for this driver to hit. But any cyclist who had been steadily pedalling around that corner, (quite legally and correctly) would have been endangered. Any pedestrian who wasn't expecting traffic at almost double the posted speed and who didn't hear the approach, could have been injured or killed. Pets are struck and killed routinely in our neighbourhood -- for a family to lose a cherished dog or cat to a speeding driver is at least a yearly event.

This kind of speeding is business-as-usual in my neighbourhood. I hear or see anywhere from two to ten cars per evening, speeding through this residential backwater. I do understand the difficulty police face in apprehending these anonymous, fast-moving criminals. It sometimes seems impossible to catch or cite them. However, we have to do something about them. If we can't catch them, we need to change their attitude.

Children used to play frisbee and kickball in the street when I first moved into this area. Now their parents keep them locked indoors as much as possible. This change has taken place in just the last ten or twelve years. Where are we heading, as a city, when we become afraid to let our kids play outdoors? Is it reasonable that our only response to the problem is to spend money on school programs teaching our children to be very afraid of cars?

This sort of driving is taking place all the time, all over town. It is not at all surprising that at least some of the time, people get hurt. We should be surprised and grateful that so many of these reckless drivers somehow manage to avoid killing anyone, most of the time.

I am not saying that pedestrians never walk out in front of traffic without looking carefully; or that cyclists never ride recklessly. But my confirmed impression, having been a motorcyclist, a driver, a pedestrian and a cyclist in Santa Cruz for two decades and more, is that our biggest problem is our motorists. Any momentarily careless behaviour on the part of a pedestrian or bike can easily become lethal with a dangerous driver in the vicinity.

While we have careless drivers -- angry drivers using their cars to express their frustrations -- drivers stunningly ignorant of the CA vehicle code -- all over our town, it is absolutely imperative that we educate motorists about the legal rights of bicycles and pedestrians, and the consequences of irresponsible motor vehicle operation. It is absolutely essential that this be included in the goals list for any program intended to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety. No such program can succeed without this effort.

Speaking now more specifically as an experienced cyclist and a cycling advocate:

As long as we have motorists who honestly believe we belong on the sidewalk and have no right to the road -- and police who will fine a cyclist $300 for riding on the sidewalk, but not cite a motorist for dangerous driving that injures a cyclist -- then no amount of public money spent on press releases, school programs, or "bike rodeos" will increase our safety.

I leave you with one final quotation, which though it may seem extremist from a car-centric point of view, I think boldly expresses the feelings of many a pedestrian and cyclist:

'Road Safety' produced the term 'Road Accident' to describe the serious and sometimes fatal result of people using lethal machinery recklessly or irresponsibly, fostering the notion that violence at the hands of criminals is somehow unavoidable or excusable when performed with a car -- a view confirmed in the courts with depressing regularity. It proceeds at base from an acceptance that motorists have a right to expropriate public space (the streets) and threaten others while in their 'private' vehicles; 'Get out of the way of cars!' is the road safety officer's unswerving theme.

-- Pedestrian advocate, Road Safety Conference, Leicester, UK 1995

I feel that the SCPD grant proposal as currently written exemplifies this ineffectual definition of safety: Get out of the way of cars! I think we need to change that. We need to have a far more ambitious and fundamental agenda than that, if we are going to get real results.

I thank you for your time and consideration, and hope that you will see fit to amend the SCPD OTS grant proposal to be less biased in favour of motorists, and more reflective of the real needs of our pedestrian and cyclist community.


de@daclarke.org
De Clarke