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SFist Tonight
We can barely bring ourselves to write about this excruciatingly uncomfortable incident in Berkeley, in which, to our dismay, bicyclists successfully provoke car drivers into behaving very poorly indeed. Who's at fault here? Unpleasantly, nobody seems to be able to agree. Cars, with their bulk and speed, are generally are viewed as the bullies in these sorts of situations; but like in that scene in Arachnophobia when the spiders crawl up out of the shower drain onto the lady, there is power in numbers. Did the Critical Massers use that numerical power for good or for evil? Perhaps you'd like to furiously scream your opinion in the comments.
Remember, here at SFist, if you think your comment might be neither funny nor polite, we encourage you to challenge yourself to improve upon it before posting.
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The bike nazis prevoked the whole thing. They harassed two elderly people, and then used their children as pawns. Fuck 'em.
When you are in the minority and you are trying to persuade people of the righteousness of your cause bullying senior citizens isn't going to gain you much sympathy
I have lost much interest in the biker's cause because of these incidents and to be honest am pretty tired of people who move here to live out their leftist fantasies. Go change your own hometown. Stop bullying people
Remember, here at SFist, if you think your comment might be neither funny nor polite, we encourage you to challenge yourself to improve upon it before posting.
I was so upset when I saw clips of this video on the news this weekend. I've always been a big fan of Critical Mass but between the incident last month and now this one it has left a bad taste in my mouth. When the Critical Mobsters can learn to stop picking on little girls and Senior Citizens I'll get back on board.
p.s. How come the video has conveniently left out the part where the mobsters break the old man's windshield?
It's hard to be funny or polite when you see such dangerous and stupid behavior. Sorry MattyMatt.
And again, Fuck 'em.
i bike every day to and from work. i've never riden in critacal mass, and don't really care about their agenda or possible motives. i will say this, though, it is dangerous to deal with cars and buses and often the drivers of these massive death vehicles are real assholes. of course, there are real assholes on bikes as well. the freedom and ease of getting around this city without having to pay for gas or a muni pass is something everyone should feel safe to try. as more and more bikers get on the road, it really does make snese to have bike-only lanes & have them painted so the cars know what they are. just an opinion. seems like all critical mass does is fan the flames.
I am not generally pro-Mass, but it's hard to argue that the driver didn't intentionally run them down. Somebody may have thrown a bike under there after the fact, but the video clearly shows one cyclist being knocked off his/her bike and that bike going under. I'm not saying that cracking the attacker's windshiled was fair retaliation, but I can imagine the anger that provoked it.
Since I pretty much walk everywhere I go, I get to observe with both bikes and cars ... and they both more or less completely ignore pedestrians and each other. A day doesn't go by where I have some car sniffing up my tailpipe as I try to cross the street while they absolutely have to make a right hand turn at a stop sign they didn't stop for. And likewise, a day doesn't go by where a bike blows by, or worse yet rings a fucking bell at me, after ingnoring a stop sign while I'm in the cross walk. I've actually counted, and it only takes me about 10 to 15 seconds to get across a normal (stop sign controlled) intersection, so how about all the cars 'n' bikes give the common people a breather, yeah?
hey jas ... i grant you that bikers can be jerks & scare pedestrians. one thing, though, is that many bikers are very adept at navigating the streets, and most are in complete control of the 3 feet of horizonal space that is them & the bike. "whizzing past" is exactly that ... whizzing past. the ring is just to say "i'm here, don't worry." it's imperfect, and maybe uncool or uinfair, but the reality is that biking is a mechanism of getting around that relies of momentum. since it's human powered, it is easier for the bikers to keep moving than it is to start and stop. it's hard not to take personally, though, especially when the cityscape is filled with impatient, crazy, or dangerous people. sorry ... on behalf of the bikers.
It's clear that the de facto organizers of critical mass (that's you, bicycle coalitions) need to make big changes. I was extremely disappointed with SFBC's response to the last incident -- a first-class cop-out.
As a long time bicycle commuter in the city, I know how easy it is to become frustrated with auto drivers who won't share the road. But there's no excuse for getting violent, threatening, and destroying personal property. Everybody involved should have received citations, I can't believe that Berkeley Police could just walk away from a situation that was so obviously out of hand.
Critical Mass looks like a lot of fun for the participants -- they need to make it a lot less annoying for everybody else. Mainly, that means stopping where the law requires it and not blocking intersections. Oh yeah, and being the 'better people' when the occasional asshole in a van challenges them. Until then, in my mind CM is counter-productive to the entire bicycle-as-transportation movement.
As I read in the most recent issue of Good magazine, we have a lot to learn from Europe in terms of transit congestion.
Check out these awesome bike lanes in Copenhagen! Pedestrians, cyclists and cars are all kept completely and pleasantly separate from each other.
Another interesting story from Good is the concept of Naked Streets, which is being implemented in The Netherlands and England. Apparently, eliminating traffic signs and lights makes people pay attention to each other, and thus, reduces accidents.
Compared to these cities, the U.S. is still living in the dark ages...
SFnative: how about a little perspective? Unless there's more to this video than is shown in this clip, I don't see how anyone can say who provoked who. At 1:08 we first see the minivan with a bunch of bikes in front of it. The guy then starts driving forward and over the bikes. That's some scary shit. If he freaks out and floors it, a lot of people could've gotten hurt. Maybe the bikers were being assholes, but is that really a justification for destroying bikes and endangering people?
Last weekend a biker was balancing himself in the cross-walk perpendicular to grill of my car. He hadn’t noticed that the light had changed, so I said, “Green means go.” Of course, his girl friend takes offense and picks a fight, yelling, “We have the right of way.” And, proves her point by trekking the rest of her journey home right through the center of the one lane road. Meaning, I had to drive at the excruciatingly slow Zero to 10-MPH in just under 60-minutes pace of bicycle from behind the wheel of a car. This sucks.
Right of way does not mean, right in the way. Rather, it means keep right and when you can’t, I’ll keep left of you. Stop biking in front of cars when you don’t have to.
Life is too short for drivers to waste behind bikers and bikers should trust drivers with their life.
According to the news, the police report (from witnesses) says the van had the right of way and when he started to go the bicyclists deliberately got in his way.
The bicyclist with the footage has refused to publish anything but these little clips. SCAM!
Before attacking me and bullying me, let me say I'm a full-time pedestrian and don't feel like I have a dog in the fight for vehicles or bicycles.
I strongly believe that the brazen attacks upon pedestrians/bicyclists/vehicle drivers have a lot to do with understaffed police departments.
Our traffic patrol in San Francisco is less than half staffed. This encourages drivers to travel at excessive speeds downtown. The unsafe conditions on the streets encourages bicyclists to ride bikes on the sidewalks. Pedestrians are vulnerable to both the vehicles and the bicyclists.
We need more police now.
The video does seem to be edited to start *after* as opposed to before the initial conflict, but with neither bias nor a dog in this fight I can say that there are a couple issues that are plain to the eye in the video.
1. The bikers are surrounding the car and yelling and beating on the windows before any bikes are knocked over or crunched.
2. What led to this is not shown. The tape begins right here. Convenient editing, or happenstance? We don't know.
3. In the first seconds you can plainly see bikers positioning their bikes directly in front of the car so that it can't move without hitting them.
4. With bikers beating on the window, the elderly driver tries to escape by moving forward... slowly.
5. What we don't know is if any windows are broken before he starts moving forward, but clearly given the size, number, and anger of the crowd I think it's reasonable to assume that the driver was under some stress and had legitimate reason to be worried for his safety. If windows were broken prior to this, then clearly he had legitimate reasons to want to move ahead and try to force the people that were blocking him to get out of the way.
6. What seems to happen is that the bikers who are in front blocking the car have gotten tangled up with each other, and as a result can't move out of the way.
7. However the car is moving so slowly that the riders are able to get off their bike with minor cuts and bruises.
Who's at fault here? Judging by what I see on the video, I think the crowd has earned the burden of blame. By acting in a threatening manner, surrounding the car and blocking any safe exit route they have both inflamed the situation, and created a situation where somebody could have gotten seriously hurt.
If they were merely interested in safety a more responsible move would have been to get out of the driver's way and take down their license plate number if they were driving in an unsafe manner.
Surrounding the vehicle, breaking windows, shouting, and then trying to block their escape only made things worse.
It's a shame how out of hand this has all gotten. It shouldn't be a matter of pro-cyclists or pro-cars. Learn to share the road. Stop harassing each other. I'm sure the elderly couple didn't start their day thinking "let's go run over some cyclists!". Critical Mass ignores traffic laws and runs red lights, so there's bound to be the occasional run-in with a car or pedestrian. Sure the man in the truck shouldn't have moved forward onto the bike. I don't defend that, but I don't think it's right to provoke and elevate the situation needlessly. The kids crying was a nice touch. I think they were more freaked out from all the people yelling profanity at the driver and sticking cameras in their faces. Lets try to work on tolerance and compromise instead of adding to an already fierce division between two groups.
I actually drove by this incident while it was happening although I did not see how it started. The I did briefly speak to another witness who said he saw they cyclists provoking the driver.
As a lifelong cyclist, it pains me to see this kind of thing happening because regardless of fault I do not think it reflects well on the cycling community (regardless of who was at fault).
That said, I can not defend moving a 4,000 pound machine towards someone is relatively vulnerable. By the same token though, when I was there, there were no people underneath the van, and so I also can not see the sense in the cyclists putting themselves in harms way by surrounding the van for no reason whatsoever. If the driver had intentionally run in to them, do they really think that standing in front of him was going to stop him from rolling over them, especially when they were behaving in a way that I think reasonable people would find provocative?
Anyway - as I said, I don't know how this all started, but I don't think Critical Mass won any friends - they just further galvanized both sides.
yah, it's really hard to tell how it was started considering the relevant part begins with the van already surrounded by a bunch of folks yellin and screamin on bikes. clearly, the guy definitely should've stopped moving his van at that point. and those bikers should have gotten out of the way if they were concerned about it, it's not like he was flooring it or plowing into them, trying to block a vehicle with your body and bike to prove a point is just stupid. looks like mob mentality meets driving-while-senior and that's bound to lead to a ruckus..
here's what i saw:
1. a couple of freaked out old folks
2. a bunch of self rightous pricks
3. crying kids. i lol'd. that part of the video is my favorite, the smarmy apology the camera guy is giving them is pretty much a classic example of why progressives have trouble advancing a philosophically sound agenda based on reason and justice..all the rightwingers see is a group of idiot hippies, and who can blame them with dumbasses like that being so visible?
I rode in the Berkeley Mass, and I'm ashamed of my fellow riders in this incident. Clearly, they're steamed and looking for the ol' conflict with a driver. In this case, they may as well have provoked a classroom of mentally disabled children. When you throw your bike in front of mini van being driven by an elderly couple with Handicapped Plates, you don't like a righteous activist. You look like a child, hoping for a chance to play the victim.
Well that was just painful to watch. I don't care if the driver bears a remarkable resemblance to Dick Cheney, that doesn't justify bullying old, disabled people.
We've being played here by the politicians and the media who are fabricating a conflict for their own purposes.
Most motorists and cyclists are well behaved.
When cyclists are ill behaved it is an annoyance, generally the only person they put at risk is themselves.
When motorists misbehave life and limb are threatened.
When peds misbehave, it is generally suicidal.
There are few consequences for anyone who breaks the vehicle code. I'd bet that cyclists are ticketed disproportionately for violations when compared to motorists or pedestrians simply because the cops are suburbanites.
That we expend resources on enforcement, and we should, those resources should be targeted towards violations that cause most injuries and deaths in SF instead of cop suburban predilections.
But let's not swallow the bait being put forth by the media and moderate politicians like Newsom.
When M&R and Ken Garcia begin to spout this shit, there is no doubt as to its provenance.
-marc
Biker gang attacks some old people. The whole thing reminded me of the deep south when you would see gangs of white people ganging up on black northers who happend to be in the wrong town at the wrong time.
The bikers' "we don't like your type around here" and we are going to use violence to intimidate you, approach, is disgusting.
Fuck CM.
That was neither funny nor polite.... but I thought long and hard about it.
That was juvenile madness, pure barbarism. Fools of the media generation playing for effect and to the camera.
Advice to bikers: when confronted with a dangerous person in a vehicle, get away from the vehicle, preferably far behind it. Do NOT crouch down in front of vehicle driven by someone you perceive to be threatening.
I'm a bike rider and rode in Critical Mass regularly before the Willie Brown-inspired riot, when it seemed to become counter-productive.
Spread the love, folks, our time here is short. We got not time for hating.
marc is Marc Solomon, who is a wannabe anarchist, had advocated violence to drivers (read Junto), supports terrorism (really). He is also one of the lead campaign consultants to Matt Gonzalez and Ross Mirkirimi, who sent him here to troll. Guess who will run against Newsom. And who will take your campaign public financing tax dollars to support CM?? marc stirs up pot so he can make money!
this video is edited to make the guy who made it look good. he has unsuccessfully filed 4 frivolous lawsuits in the past.
too bad carolyn jones at the chron linked to this, but then again she may have forgotten she no longer works at the Daily Californian in Berkeley but the "voice of the west."
Critical Mass is full of liars and thieves. May they all rot in hell.
Meanwhile Gavin appoints a Critical Masser married to the head of Gavinwatch to the MTA. What the heck is that all about?
Somebody please shoot the asshole with the camera.
This is why I don't live in Berkeley. I would want to run over too many people.
After too many years of seniors dodging skanky bikes on the sidewalks, it is good to see them stick it to the unruly mob. It was refreshing to see some seniors kicking ass and running bicycle shit over. AARP is in the house!
i felt kinda bad for that woman crying about her ruined bike. it's probably her main mode of transportation.
but then i remembered she put it directly in front of a car and joined in a mob trying to antagonize and provoke a couple of disabled senior citizens. i'd be more sympathetic to the CM'ers if they didn't work so hard to get victimized.
and the parent of the toddlers? holy f*&k - someone call child protective services. they weren't wearing helmets and they were put in a dangerous situation in all probability to make the situation worse and more dramatic. what kind of parents do that?
does anyone know the full story/after story for this incident?
"Marc" Solomon is the epitomy of what is wrong with San Francisco politics. Wannabe godfather of our local fauxletariat sect and uber eager koolaid drinker too "progressive" to wear his chicken suit in the bayview. Check out his posts on sfjunto.
Here is the cell phone number for the asshole with the camera. [SFist: We've reached an agreement with this commenter not to put anyone's contact info on this site without their permission. But that agreement doesn't extend to the Bicycle Civil Liberties Union's site, which has some telephone numbers prominently displayed.]
I cannot think of any scenario in which possession of this person's cell phone number could possibly make the world a better place.
I was hoping everyone could prank call him...
i agree that posting his cell phone number is wrong. but he did put it on his video himself. and he didn't have any problem putting a private citizen's license plate on the internet.
The easiest thing to do, is to find an enterprising lawyer who will sue Marc Solomon as the representative of a class (all the bikers in the event) for conspiracy to disrupt traffic, cause vehicular damage, because lost wages, etc.
you should have to get a license to ride a bike. if that would happen i would hope that the city's transportation infrastructure would be set up to accomodate bicycles a little bit more, but at least that way riders would be responsible. lord knows we're not policing ourselves.
i'm curious as to what kind of response i'll get from jason meggs, or whoever responds to this email.
to the bclu,
you're not doing bicyclists in the bay area any favors by posting this video. i routinely ride in san francisco on a regular basis and am ashamed to see it. what exactly was the point? to show how aggressive cars are, because you didn't show the whole thing started, and all i saw was a gang of cyclists encircling a minivan and yell at the driver. why didn't you have a person at the front of the mass block the intersection before the rest of the mass showed up? i thought that was a common practice to help ensure that this kind of event doesn't happen. if you did do it, why doesn't the video show it? it looks like the van was in the middle of the intersection, which leads me to believe that your critical mass wasn't following a fairly necessary procedure to ensure relatively painless critical mass. also, why insist on pointing out the fact that you've been doing this every month for ten years? is the driver from berkeley? i suppose i could try and look it up since you were kind enough to film and publically post their plate numbers. was it necessary for them to drive through the person blocking their car? of course not. but by circling their car you gave them no alternatives. please pull your head out of your ass next time. you're not helping anyone, especially the bclu.
russell b
(some single-speed, hipster college kid)
"fauxletariat sect and uber eager koolaid drinker"? Shesh, it looks like the trolls figured out how to escape across The Wall's moat. Who are you people and what universe does that phrase make sense in?
suck! suck! suck! you all suck! lookitmee I'm a troll and I write illiterit comments of Sfist and think I'm big tough guy!
lookit meeee Im' an anarchist save me Josh Wolf!!!! lookit me I am a tough guy who posts on the wall under a fake name because I'm a chicken! WHHHEEEEEE! I'm so tough!
Big talk from little people who all have shortcomings if you get my drift! All cowards! Anarchists are all cowards and don't stand by their beliefs! THEY SUCK TOO!!!!
I dare Critical Mass and their critics to have a fight old school style and settle this? Oh wait they can't because they're all glued to the keyboard with all that bile they spew!!!!!
You all suck. Critical Mass sucks. The Media sucks. SFist does not suck.
Thank you, SFist for being the one thing I read today that did not suck.
yours,
Ever Oneder
That was either polite or funny; but I can't tell which.
I agree, we need more police enforcement of the laws. No bikes running red lights. And no cars speeding either, who kill far more people than bicycles.
Let's be real here, the roads were made for cars and the thought of sharing them with bicyclists is ridiculous. There should be more bike lanes and blah blah blah, but the fact the bicyclists feel that they have the rights of drivers AND pedestrians just pisses me off. Not to mention they always tend to get on crowded BART trains and take up half the car space, blocking everything....Critical Mass should be banned.
And one of you did bring up a good point- those children should have been wearing helmets. Not only are those people full of crap, they are terrible parents also.
Boy, these guys really shoot themselves in the foot, harrassing an old couple ... and one is disabled! I thought the driver was going to have a heart attack. he was smart to not back up... whatever he did, they would use to prove a point.
Questions:
1- If they are in danger, why are they surrounding him like a bunch of hyenas?
2- Why didn't they show the START of the clip???
3- Why didn't they show themselves breaking his windshield?
4- Why are they using the kids like pawns?
5- Do they have jobs?
6- How much ganja have they smoked in their life?
the video clearly shows one cyclist being knocked off his/her bike and that bike going under
Did you watch the same video? It doesn't seem to clearly demonstrate that at all. The video cuts away and zooms in on the van passengers, so it's quite hard to see how exactly the bikes end up under the wheels.
What I see is an angry mob, surrounding and yelling at an elderly couple, one of whom is likely disabled. Shouting orders at them ("back up now," "it's a felony hit and run, do not leave") only seemed to make the situation worse. I really can't believe the one guy chastising the woman, saying "I don't care how much you love your husband."
The cyclists seem to have initially positioned themselves right next to the front bumper while others yell and beat on the windows. And indeed the bicyclists seem to be acting recklessly even in the aftermath of whatever initial confrontation there was, by not wearing helmets and crouching in front of the van.
The whole incident doesn't seem to say much for the Mass. It's good that it happened where it did, next to the fire station, so someone of authority could step in before things got really bad. And I'm glad that it sounds like the police have some impartial witnesses, who can dispute this limited video footage.
I second the call for more enforcement of traffic laws on both sides, to prevent this sort of thing from occurring in the first place.
=v= Lots of comments here, but unfortunately they're based on not knowing the full story. By several eyewitness accounts, the motorist drove straight into the bicyclists, causing the incident. There was no sneaky editing going on; the initiation of hostilities was not caught on videotape simply because nobody was expecting it to happen.
So I can understand some confusion about how this all went down, but there can be no confusion about what is caught on videotape: the motorist deliberately running down three bikes and nearly crushing a woman's foot.
The police showed alarming bias by writing a report based on the driver's testimony but refusing to take statements from eyewitnesses on bicycles. The police claimed to have interviewed "independent" witnesses and passed along their allegations to the press, but the videotape flatly contradicts those allegations.
Jym --
I agree -- lynch 'em. String up those old whitey car drivers.
They should have lit the car on fire and burned those mo' fos' alive!
M
Bikes should be allowed to treat red lights as stop signs and stop signs as yield signs.
-marc
Now we're getting off-topic. You're welcome to use your own blogs to address side-issues.
there can be no confusion about what is caught on videotape
It seems like this has to be repeated over and over: it's not clear what is caught on the tape. Or is there another tape which you are watching? Does yours not cut away to look at the driver before the bikes end up under the van?
By several eyewitness accounts, the motorist drove straight into the bicyclists...refusing to take statements from eyewitnesses on bicycles. The police claimed to have interviewed "independent" witnesses
Several eyewitnesses *on bicycles* would be more likely to be biased, as they are likely part of the Mass. I'm not sure if police wholly refused to take their statements, but they should certainly be taken in perspective. And what exactly is the problem with independent witnesses? That they might actually get to the truth?
I usually side with the cyclists here since I am one and I have a need to defend (us) from all the yuppy trash this site seems to cater to (however, I still like this site :) ).
But, I agree. These bike hippies are just silly, whiney, over-dramatic losers that provoked the whole affair needlessly. Remember hippies, the bike is not to be used as a weapon or a barricade. If for some reason you begin to think otherwise: stop, get on the bike, light up your spliff, begin to pedal, shut the fuck up and last but not least - enjoy.
Hey, quick question: are any of the many bike/car harassment incidents being taken to court? Are the authorities in on any of them at all?
Hey, Biker Steve, as a bicyclist and pedestrian, I have to ask, are you saying that "whizzing past" pedestrians who have total right of way is really justified because "it is easier for the bikers to keep moving than it is to start and stop"? I assume that you're referring to blowing through stop signs and lights, which, as we all know, apply to bicyclists as well as vehicles.
I'm honestly not a fan of CM because of the blatant law breaking and really really offensive and embarrassing attitude and behavior of so many of the participants.
I'm not anti-bike, far from it. I'm an advocate, and have gone so far as to write countless letters to the city, newspapers, and a "pedestrian rights" organization or two begging them to run campaigns aimed at pedestrians, to educate them about the laws related to their obligation to respect right of way. Maybe it's the New Yorker in me, but when I moved here, I was astonished that there weren't more pedestrian fatalities. Every day I see dozens (perhaps hundreds, I don't keep count) of people walk out into traffic, oblivious to their surrounds and obligations. I mention NY only because my memories of the harmony between cyclists/pedestrians/vehicles - try oblivious jaywalking, or blindly weaving a bicycle in traffic, or riding against traffic, or running a light, on Queens Blvd... it's a death wish.
You may be interested that there's an edited version of this which tells the story and has some interviews at the end. Also, if you check http://bclu.org/ where there's a FAQ regarding many of the points of contention surrounding this surprisingly widely publicized (and nastily misunderstood/misrepresented) incident: