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| 5/24 |
| 2007/4/4-7 [Transportation/Bicycle] UID:46198 Activity:moderate |
4/4 http://www.csua.org/u/ie1 What really happened in the SUV driver vs. Critical Mass incident. \_ http://www.csua.org/u/ie2 "... witnesses told her that Ferrando "recklessly accelerated" into a crowd and hit the bicyclist so hard the bike was lodged under her vehicle." \_ I thought it was a Toyota minivan, and the police said the bicyclist told them that the can tapped the bike's wheel and he was not hurt. \_ "No one was hurt, although cyclists told police at the scene that driver Susan Ferrando should be arrested because her vehicle allegedly bumped one of the biker's tires." There's a difference between bumping one tire and hitting the bicycle so hard the bike was lodged under the vehicle. \_ Another http://SFGate.com article: http://www.csua.org/u/ie3 "When the alleged bicycle victim was approached, however, he said he wasn't hurt. He also refused to give his name or any other information. Then, after a few swear words, the alleged victim took off on his bike while the rest of the crowd continued to yell at both the cops and the van." If the bike was hit so hard that it was lodged under the vehicle, as it was clamined, how did the cyclist take off on his bike afterwards? \_ Yeah, you already posted this before. Endless repetition of the same lie does not make it more believable. \_ Sorry, I didn't see that other thread below, and it wasn't me who wrote in that thread. What part of my post above do you think was a lie? -- PP \_ The whole Matier and Ross article is basically a fabrication. \_ Oh, okay. -- PP \_ You base that assertion on what? \_ eyewitness reports, and the fact that it's completely implausible. \_ SUV? It was a first-generation (pre-2004) Toyota Sienna minivan. See the second picture in the article whose link you posted. The text in the article also said minivan. See the pictures in the article whose link you posted. The text in the article also says minivan. \_ Numerous witnesses corroborate that SUV/minivan driver deliberately drove into a bicycle and tried to take off afterward: http://tinyurl.com/29hj9s \_ It's okay to try and kill someone with your minivan as long as \_ It't okay to try and kill someone with your car as long as there are children in your car. \_ THERE ARE CHILDREN IN THIS CAR. \_ This guy sounds like he's speculating. (Or at least embellishing) |
| 5/24 |
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| www.csua.org/u/ie1 -> www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2007/04/did_critical_mass_really_go_cr.html went nuts on Friday and started attacking a poor innocent family. I was on the ride and know how ridiculous that story was so I wrote Andy Ross (a colleague of mine on the City Desk NewsHour cable television program) the following e-mail. Andy, C'mon, man, you can't tell me that you actually believe the scenario that you spelled out in your column today. If you aren't going to bother to seek out the other side (I was on the ride and you could have called me), at least you've got to smell-test this stuff to see whether it makes sense. That's the first thing I teach the reporters I work with. Try this version and see if it makes a little more sense. A driver gets angry and impatient after getting stuck in Critical Mass and tries to drive through the crowd (which is stupid, illegal, and dangerous). To prevent injuries, the standard practice in such cases is for riders to place themselves and their bikes in front of the car. She hits said bicyclist (sure, maybe not hard enough to produce an injury, as you pointed out, but contact is contact) and then keeps driving forward. The rest of the bicyclists urge her to just stop driving, please, which she refuses to do because at this point she's agitated and indignant. They pound on her windows, pleading with her to stop driving into a crowd of hundreds of bicyclists with her deadly object. Pretty soon, a bicyclist loses it and smashes her window. Now, none of this excuses the act of smashing her window, which understandably shook up her kids. But to simply report this woman's version of events is irresponsible and simply bad journalism. Or worse, it is a calculated effort by a writer with a clear bias against bicycling (as I've heard you express on several occasions) to spur a crackdown on Critical Mass. Whatever the case, it was a very disappointing article that I intend to counter on our website. Please let me know if you have any comments about my criticisms and the far more realistic scenario I've presented. |
| www.csua.org/u/ie2 -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/04/BAGLRP2LEI8.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea This minivan, in a Mountain View repair shop, has $5,300 ... Police said the bike ride, in which thousands of bicyclists take to the streets, spun out of control on Friday, with bicyclists surrounding the van and using their bicycles as weapons. No one was hurt, although cyclists told police at the scene that driver Susan Ferrando should be arrested because her vehicle allegedly bumped one of the biker's tires. Ferrando told the Chronicle that she didn't known she was driving into the path of hundreds of cyclists. She said the car -- carrying herself, her husband and five children -- was suddenly surrounded by bikers who pounding on the vehicle, and that one person eventually threw a bike through the rear window, shattering it. Bicycle advocates, however, said today that Ferrando did more than tap the bicyclist, and that the incident occurred toward the end of the ride, when there were dozens -- not thousands -- of bicyclists in the area, as Ferrando claims. Bicycle Coalition executive director Leah Shahum said witnesses told her that Ferrando "recklessly accelerated" into a crowd and hit the bicyclist so hard the bike was lodged under her vehicle. "It's a terrible incident and I don't want to overreact to it," Newsom said. We're going to have a chance to calmly take a look at what the protocols have been." Speaking at a news conference in the city's Mission District about a tax credit program for low-income families, Newsom was peppered with questions from reporters about the Critical Mass incident reported in Wednesday's Chronicle. "Obviously we've got to address the concerns that remain," he said, referring to the lack of arrests in the case. "People are frustrated that certain people can break the law and certain people can get away with breaking the law as it looks in this case." Newsom called Friday's incident "egregious and aggressive" but said there have been significantly fewer incidents associated with Critical Mass rides in recent years compared with a decade ago when police cracked down on the event. "In the past we overindulged with so much police presence that we created more problems," Newsom said. The mayor had sharp words for the city's bicycle advocates, including the San Francisco Bike Coalition, which the mayor called on to issue a statement denouncing the alleged behavior last week. Shahum, the head of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, a group that has been at odds with Newsom over his veto last year of legislation that would have closed Golden Gate Park to cars on Saturdays, also serves as Newsom's appointee to Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors. "What happens in certain circumstances like this is the bicycle community, the bike advocates, do themselves a remarkable disservice when they allow bad actors to come in and break the law in an aggressive manner," Newsom said. "I would encourage the bike coalition to come up and say, 'Hey, we won't put up with this. The driver shouldn't have hit the bicyclist and the window shouldn't have been broken," she said. "It's irresponsible for (Newsom) to imply that the situation was significant as he seems to be, rather than put it in context that bikers and pedestrians are injured by reckeless motorists all the time in this city." |
| www.csua.org/u/ie3 -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/04/BAGF7P12RN23.DTL&hw=critical+mass&sn=004&sc=808 View Archive It was supposed to be a birthday night out for the kids in San Francisco, but instead turned into a Critical Mass horror show -- complete with a pummeled car, a smashed rear window and little children screaming in terror. The spontaneous Critical Mass bike rides, in which thousands of free-spirited cyclists roam the city, have been a fixture on the last Friday night of the month since the early 1990s. But even bike-weary cops, who have seen their share of traffic disturbances and minor skirmishes, weren't prepared for what happened during the latest exercise of pedal power. Here's the story: Susan Ferrando, her husband, their two children and three preteens had come to San Francisco from Redwood City to celebrate the birthday of Ferrando's 11-year-old daughter. They went to Japantown, where they enjoyed shopping and taking in the blooming cherry blossoms. Things took a turn for the worse at about 9 pm, when the family was leaving Japantown -- just as the party of about 3,000 bikers was winding down its monthly red-lights-be-damned ride through the city. Suddenly, Ferrando said, her car was surrounded by hundreds of cyclists. Not being from San Francisco, Ferrando thought she might have inadvertently crossed paths with a bicycle race and couldn't figure out why the police, who she had just passed, hadn't warned her. Confusion, however, quickly turned to terror, she said, when the swarming cyclists began wildly circling around and then running into the sides of her Toyota van. Filled with panic, Ferrando said, she started inching forward until coming to a stop at Post and Gough streets, where she was surrounded by bikers on all sides. A biker in front blocked her as another biker began pounding on the windshield. "It seemed like they were using their bikes as weapons,'' Ferrando said. One of the bikers then threw his bike -- shattering the rear window and terrifying the young girls inside. All the while, Ferrando was screaming, "There are children in this car! She had the presence of mind to dial 911 on her cell phone -- and within minutes, the squad of motorcycle cops who were assigned to keep an eye on the ride descended on the scene. The cyclists were loudly demanding that Ferrando be arrested for hit and run. According to police, Ferrando had allegedly tapped one of the cyclists' tires. When the alleged bicycle victim was approached, however, he said he wasn't hurt. He also refused to give his name or any other information. Then, after a few swear words, the alleged victim took off on his bike while the rest of the crowd continued to yell at both the cops and the van. Ed Callejas -- the lead cop on the scene and a veteran of Critical Mass rides since their inception -- said he'd never seen anything like it before. "I've seen the bikes swarm cars, and scratch them as they go by. I've seen guys get out of their cars and start fighting with the bikers, but if you had seen the faces on those little girls in tears,'' Callejas said. "All I could do was apologize for what they had been through." The sergeant suggested that Ferrando write a letter to the mayor. For Callejas and other cops assigned to the bike ride, Critical Mass has long been a study in contradictions. For starters, San Francisco is a "green" city, and bike riding is about as green as you can get -- yet residents and commuters complain endlessly about getting trapped in the rides. The city tries to ignore the unplanned rides, but there are always cops on hand to monitor the gatherings, even though any kind of traffic planning is impossible because no route is announced. And even though the rides are held every month, Critical Mass has no organized leadership -- so no one can be held accountable for the group's actions. In 1997, then-Mayor Willie Brown tried to control the rides. The city's generally hands-off attitude leaves cops as little more than bystanders. "We sit there and they just go right through the red lights,'' Sgt. "The only way to control this is through a massive effort by police and the Sheriff's Department,'' he said. As for reaction from City Hall, Mayor Gavin Newsom said such acts of violence -- if true -- "only serve to undermine the worthwhile message of Critical Mass, which is to raise the awareness of bike transportation issues." The mayor also said that -- if the charges are grounded -- he expected the attackers to be "punished to the greatest extent of the law." Ma on the move: Rookie San Francisco state Assemblywoman Fiona Ma isn't wasting any time making tracks. Ma is one of six state lawmakers in France this week for a fun fact-finding tour of that nation's high-speed rail system. It was her third trip in the last year -- she also traveled to China on the dime of a nonprofit and to Morocco as a guest of that government. This time, she's using campaign funds -- and what a journey it's been. A perfect blend of political correctness, public relations and party, to boot. Play the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi goofy expression caption contest. And read the Extra, Extra, Extra musings and insights of friends including Rich "Big Vinny'' Lieberman and The Chronicle's Carla Marinucci and Don "Bad Reporter" Asmussen. |
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| SFGate.com Friday, May 14, 2004 Updated: 12:07 AM PDT ' I'm guessing that the best way to hail a cab or a bartender in Athens will not be by waving an American flag." Sorensen Capital group He's already got more money than god, but that isn't stopping Steve Young (above, right) from embarking on a second career in business. Gov's Balancing Act Schwarzenegger unveils revised budget containing spending cuts and (as promised) no new taxes. Wedding Date's Still On Same-sex marriage opponents lose bid to halt gay nuptials, scheduled to begin Monday in Massachusetts. Researchers say they've found evidence of impact greater than the one that probably caused the dinosaurs' extinction. Wars' $50 Bil Price Tag "It's a big bill," says Wolfowitz, who estimates the cost of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. No Plea From Anderson Using a wheelchair, the haggard-looking suspect is arraigned in the murder of Xiana Fairchild. Giants Left Stranded G-men leave 12 men on base, including two in the bottom of the 9th, and drop series to Philly. Sex, Drugs, And Then 5 Deaths Playboy Playmate tells how she got involved with 2 suspects, but left in just the nick of time. Pixar Growth Plan Wins Fans 20-year proposal for Emeryville site gets flak from activists, but city says go for it. |