Score one for the Bicyclists.

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Our own Randy is out there fighting the good fight. We’ve been chronicling this story as it develops here on DC.

City of Flagstaff Transit vs. Cyclist
City of Flagstaff vs – Cyclist Part 2
Cyclists That Can: Randy and the Three Foot Law
The “three foot rule” made the evening news in Phoenix

The AZ Daily Sun had another front page story about this yesterday, on March 18.

A Flagstaff cyclist who is in a dispute with Mountain Line over whether he was given 3 feet of space required by law when a bus passed him appears to have won the battle.

Attorneys at the Flagstaff City Attorney’s office have determined that a bus driver for the Northern Arizona Intergovernmental Public Transportation Authority was speeding and did not allow for the 3-foot law, according to a March 4 decision. The city attorney’s office is also recommending to Flagstaff police to ticket the driver of the bus.

“I think definitely it’s a good step in the right direction,” said cyclist Randy Mason.

Read the rest: Bicyclist 2, bus driver 0.

Good on ya, Randy. And props to the AZ Daily Sun for their reporting on this issue.

I thought this part was interesting.

After the incident, Mason posted the video on a blog, and when people reading the blog began to contact city officials, police officials initiated a formal complaint on Mason’s behalf. Once the investigation was complete, police submitted the case to the city attorney for review.

I probably shouldn’t bother with this, but it’s chapping my hide. When the AZ Daily Sun says “on a blog,” they mean Druncyclist.com. That vid was here and on facebook. Facebook is friggin harmless – if they meant facebook, they would have typed facebook. So, why not just say Drunkcyclist.com? We’re safe for work these days, aside from a few dozen f-bombs in most of my all of our posts. C’mon man, throw me a bone here. We’re pushing bicycle advocacy hard around here. All I’m asking is that you keep us in the loop.

Having written that out, I already regret it. The point of bicycle advocacy is not self gratification or website promotion. And, my complaint sounds far too much like both.

Bicycle advocacy is about changing things for the better. And the lesson I take from this is that the emails, phone calls and making your voice heard really does make a difference. We pushed the ball forward on this one, and we should be proud of that.

On a blog, indeed.

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About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

13 Replies to “Score one for the Bicyclists.”

  1. bj – i’m with you. i guess the az sun is too conservative to type out “drunk cyclist”. bummer. but i am glad that they followed up, word is out, and the driver of the bus will be ticketed. good deal.

    driver’s here in cinci seem to be worse than ever. today we got screamed at to “go ride someplace else” by a fat ass redneck bitch in a minivan. on an open country road with no other cars in site.

  2. Excellent work, Randy.

    And Jonny, I’m pretty sure what the Daily Sun was doing was avoiding having the message becoming diluted or waylaid by a possibly controversial blog title. I can’t fault them for that, they are staying on-message. Do they mention other blogs (with politically-correct titles) by name?

  3. To anyone who has nothing to do with cycling culture read an article with a cycling site listed called “Drunk Cyclist” would likely inspire an even stronger dislike.

  4. Funny, they mention the response from the NAIPTA is on a website called “Bikes, Buses and Blogs.”

    1. So they can name that “website” but not DC?
    2. I tired to find that “website,” but it doesn’t exist. There is a PDF of a memo with that as the subject line from the director of the NAIPTA. That’s some good reporting Arizona Sun, you keep it up.

  5. I am eliterated, but it appears as though a bus is trying to run over the guy that sabotaged the MBAA race in flagstaff? Shit that is awesome.

  6. Pingback: Tucson Bike Lawyer » Blog Archive » Flagstaff Bike Advocate hits one out of the park

  7. Dudes, this is awesome. You actually got the cops and the city attorney to say the law means what it says in plain English, you have to pass with 3 (or 5) feet of clearance when you pass a bicycle, regardless of which lane it is in.

  8. Randy is a scum bag. the only thing i noticed from that mountain line video was randy looking scared. B.G.R. stands for Big Gay Retard. I like the three foot rule but to have the MBAA race vandal advocating for cyclists makes me sick