I was hit by a car pretty bad last week. I was taking a left onto a completely empty Mass Ave from Garfield St. and was most of the way through the intersection when a woman in a big black SUV shot out of the bank driveway trying to go straight up Garfield. I ended up with a bent fork, buggered brakes and a very bruised leg. But this is where it gets interesting…

Callie (sp?), the woman who hit me, parked immediately and got out to see if I was ok. Meanwhile, a concerned woman walking by called 911. I waved them off when they came with the ambulance, but we decided to make a police report. And then Callie and I chatted and exchanged phone numbers, and she picked my bike up in her SUV and drove me to the Wheelworks on Elm. She even offered to pay for my damage.

I thought I was in the fucking Twilight Zone. Callie and I chatted and joked in the car, musing that we could tell people about how we became friends – “We met by accident!”  Lol.

The one onion in the ointment that reinforced bitter reality turned out to be the reaction of the cop that came to take our statements. Stout, bitter little officer 303 took us individually to the side and listened to our description of the accident. When she then brought us together to give us her accident report spiel, she made it clear that she did not believe my side of the story. Scowling, she pointed to where I indicated that I had fallen – just at the south west corner of the intersection. “You’re trying to tell me that your bike moved faster than that SUV??”, she demanded.

“No, I had already entered the intersection and was mostly through it when the SUV, which had previously been parked without indicating any intention of moving, exited the bank parking lot and hit me.”, I explained.

Scowling, the cop proceeded to lecture me about how I should have been more careful, and continuing to question my version of the story in the face of both the woman who hit me and the witnesses. I could only boggle at her. Why should she believe one of our stories over the other? Why would she treat the SUV driver with respect and deference and the cyclist, who had just been injured, with suspicion and hostility?

Ultimately, no-0ne was cited (Callie and I discussed the accident at length, and her attitude was a large part of why I wasn’t more adamant about laying blame.) and there wasn’t that much wrong with Krankenberry – nothing that the guys at Ace couldn’t handle in a day.

And then today… today..

Riding home from work, I was traveling up JFK on the way into Harvard Square when another black SUV pulled abruptly into the bike lane ahead of me and then jumped into reverse to park – directly into me.  I was quick enough to swerve out of the way, and on the way I laid a slap on the SUV’s flank and intoned, “Look in your mirror, Jackass.”  The driver retorted with some colorful language and I went on my way… only to be pulled over right in the center of Harvard Square by a cruiser who had been a few cars behind us.

Both cops got out of the vehicle and when I asked them what was up, the first said, “You ran a red light back there.”

Bullshit. I had not. The lights had been straight green until I hit the square and the last light I’d gone through was yellow. They didn’t push the issue, I suppose because they knew they were fucking lying.

He then began to lecture me about how cars are dangerous and I have to be more careful (I had been in the bike lane, riding at about 12mph. How I be more careful, holmes?) and how it’s my responsibility to protect myself because ‘drivers are not gonna pay attention to  you, and they’ll be hostile at you if you’re in the road’.

Umm… then why don’t you stop them, as is your job, and instruct them to be less hostile to cyclists and more observant?? Why the fuck are you stopping ME??

He then went on to tell me, ‘You can’t put your hands on people’s property.” That’s funny, I replied; I’ve been hit and run no less than three times in Cambridge – the motorist definitely ‘touching my property’, and after they drove off, when I called into the police, I was asked, “What do you want us to do about it?”. He stammered something about how that must have been the decision of the dispatcher, and I went on to ask about who I should speak to if I want to hold someone accountable for a hit and run even if I’m not injured. He didn’t have a good answer for me, and I could tell he was getting a bit uncomfortable. He told me to be safe and sent me on my way.

Who is teaching these officers how to interact with cyclists? Because whoever they are, they’re doing a pretty shit job.  If the people charged with keeping cyclists safe see us as liars,  miscreants, and essentially nuisances on the road, how can we ever hope to protect ourselves?

Even with all the work that cycling advocacy groups are doing to raise awareness and influence infrastructure, it still doesn’t seem as if anyone’s speaking to the police force about changing their perception of the cycling public. I try, each and every time I speak to the police, to adequately describe the hardship, persecution and neglect that we face every day, but ain’t nobody got time to listen to me.

Or not…

This blog has fallen a bit by the wayside in the last couple months. This is not because I’ve been low on complaints about the cycling situation in Boston – far from it. Rather, I am feeling a bit jaded about the struggle to instigate change in a city that is so woefully politically and capitalistically corrupt and totally devoid of compassion. Despite the grandiose claims by Tom Menino, Nicole Freedman, Richard Davey, none of the issues plaguing the city when I began my own campaign for change have been solved, or indeed described any measurable improvement. The MBTA is still totally unaccountable for it’s unlawful transgressions and terrible service. Motorists are as abusive and neglectful as ever to the cycling community. Public servants continue to treat cyclists as second class citizens, and people keep getting hit and menaced with no hope of justice from our fundamentally flawed legal system.

True; there are many new bike lanes in the city. What good does this do if motorists, delivery vehicles, and taxis use them as a traveling and parking lane? And they do, every day, all day. True, there are new signs and sharrows indicating that the traffic respect cyclists as vehicles and allow them to travel accordingly. Motorists still honk, swear and menace cyclists – all day, every day. I know, because I am out there experiencing it.

All the work in the world done on the infrastructure of Boston’s roadways will do dick diddly squat to change the mentality of the area. Pedestrians remain aloof, ignorant, and self absorbed. Motorists will continue to be stressed out, wrathful, self important. Cyclists will remain recalcitrant, self-righteous, easily incensed. Public servants will continue to be lazy, unhelpful, belligerent. MBTA drivers will remain under trained, oblivious, and continue to disregard the safety needs of their position.  What we can do about all this… I really have no idea. I have always tried to do my tiny part to instigating a change in mentality – treating others with respect and care, trying not to be easily thrown into a rage by the abuse I suffer daily from drivers. I can keep this up, I think… but it doesn’t give me much hope for change in the future.

To be fair, hope is in short supply right now, for reasons we all know and I can’t bring myself to discuss in this blog. We are inundated with news of the horrors being wrought on our fellow man, our fellow creatures, our very world, by our own kind. I can’t really blame the average person for not having much good will to impart. Sadly, this is probably the point at which we need it the most.

Every day I ride south through Harvard Square, and every day like clockwork I have to kick one of the local Taxis out of the bike lane. The corner one must round as you enter Harvard Square from the north is a blind one, due to the subway entrance abutting the curb, which makes it impossible to see beforehand if your way will be blocked by an idling Taxi – this forces cyclists to make a split-second correction and swerve into the street. Large trucks routinely make their way through Harvard Square’s narrow streets, already threatening to infringe upon the bike lane.

When I round that corner and find a cab in the bike lane, I stop and knock on the window, letting the driver know that I will contact the Cambridge Police and have him ticketed if he doesn’t move out of the bike lane. Invariably, they react with incredulity and demand to know who I am. I let them know that I am only a concerned citizen that is having my safety threatened by their practice of parking in the bike lane. I restrain myself, with considerable difficulty, from telling them,

“I’m your worst nightmare.”

“I think you should write a formal letter of complaint to the Mayor.”

Uh..  ohkay.

I also tend to call the police ALOT; I have the numbers for Brookline, Boston District 14, Downtown Boston, Cambridge and Somerville Police Departments in my phone contacts. No, I’m not calling about the kids on my lawn. I call about double parked cars, people threatening my life, people parked in the bike lane, etc. I asked the gentleman I was speaking to today what the best number to call to get someone  on the scene in a NON emergency (see: person parked in the bike lane) is, and he said,

“Just call 911 and tell them its not an emergency. If you call the police station we’ll have to call them anyway to get to dispatch.”

So… yeah. I guess I’ll be calling 911 a bunch in the near future, and hoping I don’t get yelled at if the offender decides to take the hint and pull out of the bike lane and into the night, leaving me standing there holding the phone, so to speak.

The ride to work today was amazingly serene. However (there’s always a however), while entering Harvard Square from the north, I was once again forced out of the bike lane and into traffic by the ass end of a taxi. You know where I’m talking about :

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This is the same story, day in, day out. So this time I’m going to bitch about it, because that’s how I roll.
So far the only contact info I have for bike issues in Cambridge is cseiderman@cambridgema.gov, at 617/349-4629. The Community Development Department TTY line is 617/349-4621. If this isn’t the best person to talk to, hopefully she (Cara Seiderman) can point me in the right direction.
I have to admit, Cambridge is pretty tolerable to ride through, as compared to some of it’s surrounding neighbors like Allston, Boston Proper, Revere, etc. With the exception of roads like Somerville Ave and Prospect St., I don’t often feel crowded on the main thoroughfares. Cambridge Street has to be dealt with, though. If you don’t know already, the ‘bike lanes’ drawn up and down C-street are not actually enforceable by law, because there are no decals drawn in, nor posted signage. This situation arose because, or so I’m told, many business owners on the street protested a bike lane. I can’t really understand why, but I believe it has to do with delivery parking on the street, as well as stricter rules for double parking when there is a bike lane present. Either way, it’s ridiculous. I almost wish some guerilla bike advocacy group would paint in some little cyclists decals, just to get people thinking about it again. I would never encourage something like that, of course…