Dear J-
There’s a scene in Finding Nemo (we have been finding him a lot lately) where the overprotective father Marlin, having passed through the jellyfish forest twice to save his friend Dory, wakes up on the back of the sea turtle Crush (himself channeling the spirit of Jeff Spicoli). After a brief conversation, Crush advises that he “has serious thrill isssues, dude,” referring to the game he and Dory played to pass through the jellyfish forest. Yesterday a bicyclist was killed at an intersection I ride through twice a day, and today I drove to the vanpool despite my incomplete understanding of what happened.
The scene: Genesee and Governor, where Genesee runs north-south and Governor east-west; both are substantial arterials in suburban neighborhoods, and Genesee has the added distinction of being the only connector from Clairemont, where I live, to points north when you’re riding a bicycle (the other choices for cars all involve freeway driving); our vanpool picks up at the east end of Governor, where it runs into I-805. Genesse is the lone surface street passing through San Clemente Canyon. The bicyclst, Mr. Freeman, was coming south on Genesse and wanted to make a left (east on Governor); he crossed out of the bike lane to presumably assume a stance on the right edge of the left turn lanes, where he was hit from behind by a police car — significantly, the cruiser was responding to another accident without lights and siren. So what happened? Mr. Freeman apparently did everything right in terms of visibility — wearing a vest, but perhaps he didn’t check behind him as he was cutting across traffic; the cruiser was going under the limit (45 MPH), and preliminary photos of the bike indicate that it was struck from the side. It was just after 7 AM, and so darkness wasn’t a factor either.
More significantly for me, perhaps, is the fact that these were actions that I’ve taken — that I take — when I’m on the bike: I come west on Governor and hang a left to head south on Genesse, crossing over lanes of traffic near the cars that are already stopped for the light, thinking that traffic coming up from behind will surely slow for the stopped cars. Yet it’s unavoidable — because Genesse is the only way to home, because it’s such a major intersection (two lanes of traffic plus protected left turn lanes and right turn pullouts — each street is six lanes wide at the intersection), you have to find some way to make it work. And now I’m scared that what I thought were acceptable tradeoffs and common practice are fatal risks; I couldn’t find a solution in time this morning to justify the bike.
Mike


