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Thread started by Alex Thompson at 07.16.08 - 2:11 am
The Mandeville Canyon Taskforce had it's first meeting and generated some recommendations. I was not there, so all I know is what I read on LA Streetsblog:
4. Provide a means for homeowners to file complaints about and descriptions of unruly cyclists to the clubs so they can attempt to self discipline any members
How can it be that, in a meeting spurred on by a driver assaulting two cyclists, not a single one of the cyclists' recommendations relate to driver behavior?
There appears to be some implicit assumption that drivers are individuals who cannot be controlled, yet cyclists comprise some kind of hive mind whose behavior can be modified through some nebulous "self discipline" mechanism. This is a ridiculous groundwork for negotiations under any circumstances, but it's downright farcical in the context of that meeting, brought on by an incident of dangerous driving.
I can understand why cycling groups might be inclined to hold out an olive branch to a hostile community. That's basic diplomacy. But it seems that, in place of an olive branch, they're offering up the last tattered shreds of their dignity.
Who actually made that suggestion? If I'm ever in front of him in a car, I'm going to slam on my brakes and then report him to the leader of his club as an unruly cyclist.
AW POOR DRIVER, WE PUSHED THE GOOD DOCTOR TO HARD, THEM DAM CYCLIST ARE SO MEAN, ALWAYS RUNNING RED LIGHTS, NO RESPECT FOR THE LAWS, ENFORCED BY THE GOOD PEOPLE THAT MOSTLY DRIVE CARS, GOOD DRIVERS ARE JUSTIFIED TO RUN CYCLIST OVER WITH THERE 3,000 POND CARS, THOSE CYCLIST ARE NOTHING BUT HOOLIGANS, YA MAKE THEM GET OFF THE STREETS WITH THERE ILLEGAL FIXIES, AND RIDE THIER BIKES ON THE SIDEWALKS, ROADS ARE FOR CARS, NOT BIKES.....
?
WHAT THE FUCK ARE ADVOCATES FOR BICYCLIST ADVOCATING FOR MOTORIST?
THERE IS SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG GOING ON NOW, IT RUBS ME WRONG WHEN OUR ADVOCATES START ADVOCATING FOR MOTORIST EVEN ADMITTING THAT WE ARE NOT FOLLOWING THE LAWS.
NOT ALL OF US ARE RUNNING RED LIGHTS, DISOBEYING THE LAWS OF THE ROAD.
BUT THEN HOW MANY TIMES HAS A MOTORIST PASSED YOU DANGERLY CLOSE, CUT YOU OFF, SCREEMED AT YOU TO GET OFF THE STREETS?
this whole thing is a bunch of rich doctors in cars arguing with rich doctors on bikes
there is no point in riding on mandeville except to show off your $8000 cervelo and matching team kit and trying to pretend you're climbing the alpe d huez. it's a 5 mile dead end. every weekend it's full of 300 other jackasses doing the same thing.
i'm not trying to justify anyones actions especially intentional violence but the whole thing is the result of people being shitheads and not sharing the road, it works both ways
I can see the frustration with groups of cyclists constantly clogging up the roads for recreational purposes...... but their recommendations don't allow for discipline of the car drivers?
I'm going to speak my mind a little more openly here than I did on WSBSide.
All the bicycle advocates at that meeting utterly failed. To come out of a meeting inspired by motorist assault with recommendations which are hard on cyclists is a failure. It smacks of appeasement. What's much worse though is that they have tacitly endorsed the meeting and recommendations by not speaking out against the recommendations.
I'll tell you what I would do in the same situation, assuming Stephen doesn't do it first. If homeowners start recommending more policing of cyclists I'm standing up and stopping the discussion in it's tracks. I'm pointing out that this meeting is the result of a homeowner hitting two cyclists who were obeying the law. I might further make the point that you cannot act out your frustration with cyclists as if they are all the same, nor is it ever acceptable.
If the homeowners still insist on going there then I would make it clear that I will not discuss this and that I will be relaying to my constituents and the papers my disagree with these recommendations. If they still insist on putting forth recommendations for cyclists and next to nothing for motorists then I walk, and hopefully take other bike activists with me.
Maybe that attitude is why I wasn't invited to the meeting. Maybe that's why Stephen wasn't invited. I don't know. I do think that often as a cyclist you have to make a firm stand and defend your rights, and that our representatives in this case failed to do so.
i can't believe they didn't invite Stephen Box to the meeting!!!
WHAT?! That doesn't even make sense.
The sad part is Rosendahl had quite an opportunity to reach out to the community here as well, but it sounds like he had to do a bit of capitulating himself....
@stevestevesteve:
"there is no point in riding on mandeville except to show off your $8000 cervelo and matching team kit and trying to pretend you're climbing the alpe d huez. it's a 5 mile dead end. every weekend it's full of 300 other jackasses doing the same thing. "
you're aware that the guy who went through the doctor's rear window was a professional racer and is now a pro cycling coach, right?
And who the hell cares if it is a dead end or not. It is perfectly legal to ride there and should be possible to do so without fear for your life.
I know, for a fact, that in Burbank when homeowners sign, it states (in some legal jargon) that no matter what time of day, no matter where, (i.e. the sidewalk or street in front of their house) it will at some point be used for filming. That Burbank is a "film-friendly" town and as a homeowner within Burbank, they must accept that.
I get that LA is more Film-Friendly then Velo-Friendly -- but nothing stays the same forever and as times change so does everything else with it.. i.e. cyclists to homeowners (as to film productions to homeowners).
see this is why nothing gets accomplished in LA but a lot of whining
what do you want them to do? ban cars on mandeville? there is nothing you can do to prevent someone from intentionally hitting somone. that's why we have a criminal justice system.
what this meeting was to find out why people are being provoked into violent action and to defuse that situation. I honestly can't belive that you guys are saying that letting residents open a line of communication directly with cyclists is a "failure"
What would have been a "success" exactly? Cyclists should have no accountability whatsoever for their actions and should be allowed to do whatever they want? ban all cars on mandeville so we all can take sunday rides?
We need to use the opportunity with all of this media attention to push the fact into peoples minds that Bicycles are Allowed FULL ACCESS of the LANE. This is now an opportunity...
You're waywayway off. The first reaction to this incident should be demanding motorist accountability. The consequent recommendations should be aimed primarily at motorists, secondarily at road conditions, and finally at cyclists.
"We need to use the opportunity with all of this media attention to push the fact into peoples minds that Bicycles are Allowed FULL ACCESS of the LANE. This is now an opportunity..."
But at this point, I can only continue to take the right lane when I ride. So, suggestions for "push(ing) the fact into peoples minds that Bicycles are Allowed FULL ACCESS of the LANE" would be greatly appreciated.
the motorist is being held accountable, he has been charged with two felony counts each of reckless driving causing injury and battery with serious bodily injury and will be arraigned Aug 1st.
Fucking christ.... if I was at the motherfucking meeting I would of "shock and awed" those assholes...There are times for diplomacy and there are times just to be outright angry and rip into the bullshit status quo of "cars can do no harm" mentalities that people have...This is ONE of those times...
The only reason the homeowners of Mandeville Canyon opened this "line of communication" was to bitch and snivel about bicyclists. Had the incident that sparked the meeting been one in which a motorist or pedestrian was injured by a cyclist, this would have been appropriate. But it wasn't, so it isn't. Not by a long shot. Simple as that.
The cycling advocates, if they were worthy of the name, should have refused at the outset to continue the meeting if it was going to be framed as a discussion of the "problem" of cyclists on the road.
windmann is some kind of YouTube posting GENIUS!!! I predict that in the future he and his family of little windboyys and windgirlls will do the majority of their communicating via YouTube sharing.
Madeville Canyon has a CAR PROBLEM, not a bike problem
The meeting should have addressed the CAR PROBLEM - which has been a problem on this stretch of road for decades (generations).
The upper canyon residents resorted to honking their horns every time they drove over speed bumps that were placed at the bottom of the canyon due to lower canyon resident's complaints about excesive speeds.
The problem is with automobile drivers, ad could have been a gelling of political will to address this issue counter to the desires of the upper mandeville canyon road residents - who want to reserve the right to speed through a narrow mountain road in the death traps.
so basically no dialogue unless things are going to go your way?
So basically, incorrect. If you can't read well, read slowly: the point is plainly that the issue was framed all wrong, which makes dialogue under those conditions useless. No dialogue unless the other side acknowledges that the immediate problem is vehicular, not "unruly" cyclists taking a full lane as the law allows them to do.
"No dialogue unless the other side acknowledges that the immediate problem is vehicular, not "unruly" cyclists taking a full lane as the law allows them to do."
And not only that..As someone who rides on Mandeville Canyon Rd. often...Cyclists who are descending (going up we always ride single file because of slower speed) are often if not MOST of the TIME going the SPEED LIMIT...which is 30, 35 mph MAX...But as was the incident on July 4th it is the cars that feel they need to got 45 to 50mph on the road and that the road THAT ARE THE PROBLEM...Get it, got it, GOOD....
UNFORTUNATELY this meeting may have produced some leverage towards the attempted murderer Christopher T. Thompson's case. By the cycling groups agreeing to police themselves and for the focus to be on their wrong doing, it creates a situation of admitted guilt for behaving unlawful or uncooperative which creates some sympathy for the attempted murderer Chistopher T. Thompson. The cycling groups should never have agreed to this. I'm betting this will be used to establish that even the cyclists agree they are a nuissance and that the fact that they agreed to "police themselves" (read: behave better) is evidence that perhaps the cyclists were being provacative to the driver.
"The upper canyon residents resorted to honking their horns every time they drove over speed bumps that were placed at the bottom of the canyon due to lower canyon resident's complaints about excesive speeds."
thats an interesting tidbit of news.... where did you find that out?
Let's just be really sarcastic and grovel and cower, because we are lowly petty cyclists, and they are great and mighty SUV owners... Until they cant stand it anymore.
Or we could say,
"We cyclists have come up with the solution to all your problems:
GO THE FUCK AROUND US."
what exactly can you do? the fact is anyone can swerve into you at any time, that's just a fact of being a cyclist on a shared roadway. in light of that you'd think it might be a good idea not to antagonize other road users and try to cooperate with them but fuck that.
this agreement will have no bearing on the criminal case. battery is battery, it doesn't matter if you were provoked--if it isn't in self defense it's battery. the defense attorney will probably try to bring it up but the judge will not allow it (that is if it goes to trial which it won't).
I don't think any of what went on at the closed door meeting will ever become "evidence" to be used at trial. If the defense tries to bring this in, the D.A. will object or move to preclude it before the trial ever starts. It's not "relevant" to establishing the facts of the incident on July 4. It's not an admission by the injured cyclists either.
However, where it could have an effect in the public court or on the minds of possible jurors, especially if the media (TV/papers) covers the story. I don't think that's happened yet and hopefully those stellar TV reporters stay away from it. Otherwise, the sympathy card is still hard to play for the Doc.
Hopefully what doesn't happen here is that the cycling community gets divided by its own inner conflict between riders that are recreational/commuters/ or F.U.N. riders and the roadie spandex crowd with $8K cervelos.
Motorist aggression affects ALL riders....whether it's on Mandeville Canyon or on Vermont Blvd.
ugh, i keep reading mandevillians as mandeVillains
ugh, you'd think these assholes advocate attempted vehicular murder they way they piss and moan. actually i'm pretty sure some of them do. if they hate sharing a city with other people so much why don't they shut the fuck up and PAY FOR A FREAKING GATE already
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