Monday, August 18, 2008
By Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A.J. DeMartino admires cyclists for reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, but she wasn’t too keen on the one who zoomed off the Clemente Bridge through a red light, and cut in front of her car on Fort Duquesne Boulevard a few days ago.

“I had to slam on my brakes,” said Ms. DeMartino, a Downtown resident. “He could’ve ended up dead. … I’m really angry at the people who don’t follow the rules.”

The city’s announcement last Monday of the hiring of Stephen Patchan as its first bicycle and pedestrian coordinator drew cheers from the pedaling crowd, but inflamed some motorists who resent cyclists who flout the laws.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl pledged to improve enforcement of traffic laws near bike lanes — one step in making Pittsburgh “the most bike- and pedestrian-friendly community in America.”

Now, though, motorists and cyclists aren’t always chummy.

“[Recently] I was coming back from Penn Hills,” said Gerald Cefola, an Oakland resident and retired mechanical engineer. At Bayard and North Neville streets, he said, “here’s a bicycle, goes right through a red light.”

He said the cyclist cut in front of him one foot in front of his car, which had not yet started moving though the light was green.

“If I was a hot rod,” he said, “that person would’ve had it.”

The Pittsburgh Police Bureau does not have statistics on car-on-bike accidents. Mr. Ravenstahl said it will start tracking such incidents.

Mr. Patchan said it wouldn’t be right to characterize cyclists as scofflaws, any more than it would be to say “that all motorists break the law.”

Scott Bricker, executive director of Bike Pittsburgh, said that cyclists should “ride predictably and obey the law.”

But he said the onus to avoid collisions rests most heavily on motorists.

“The real concerns are people driving 4,000-pound machines that have the ability to kill pedestrians, cyclists and people in wheelchairs,” he said. Read more»