[*BCM*] Central Square Crackdown

[Robert Arnold]

Turtle, your response is sensible. I'm for equal rights as well.
However, equal rights applied equally. Police cannot turn a blind eye
to much more hazardous behavior from motor vehicles while
simultaneously ticketing cyclists for completely minor infractions.
(My offense: rolling too far into the intersection, then wanting to
get out of it when cars started coming my way.) Wouldn't it be most
intelligent to crack down on ALL dangerous behavior, thus enforcing an
air of civility along Mass Ave from all vehicles, motorized or not?
Why target a single population? Just two nights ago a pedestrian was
killed by a car on Mass Ave right near where I was pulled over. This
is literally a life and death situation, and the City of Cambridge
puts itself in qute an awkward position by vehemently profiling
cyclists rather than getting to the root of the problem. Central
Square is chaos to ride through and so we ride chaotically. To make
cyclists behave in Central Square, and along the entire Mass Ave
corridor, you need to first make the
cars/taxis/busses/delivery-vans/garbage-trucks/psycho-moms-with-strollers/etc.
behave. That would mean issuing tickets to jaywalkers, issuing tickets
to double-parkers, issuing tickets to commercial vehicles parked in
bike lanes out of convenience, issuing tickets to taxis for driving
recklessly, and, yes, issuing tickets to cyclists who run red lights.
But the effort has to be concerted, consistent, and visibly equal for
it to have any kind of effect.

rob

On 6/23/05, turtle <turtle at zworg.com> wrote:
> By the way, Kathy Murphy is the head of the Bicycle Patrol in Cambridge,
> and she's a great person.  You might want to try to get a meeting with
> her and she what she's got to say about the whole thing.  She works
> closely with the Bicycle Committee and MassBike, so she's very involved
> in the Cambridge bicycling community.
> 
> Kathy even helped MassBike develop the Bicycle Awareness for Police
> Officers training program that will be offered nationwide through the
> National Highway Transportation Safety Association, as well as being
> included in Massachusetts' standard officer training programs in the
> near future.
> 
> -Turtle
> who did some bicycle awareness training for the Cambridge Police
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