Posted on 08/09/2009 9:21:20 AM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
OGDEN -- Was it a friendly group bicycle ride through downtown Ogden or a confrontational melee that included obstructing traffic, assault, obscenities and alcohol?
Depends on who you talk to.
Numbers vary from 35 to 70, but a large group of cyclists, referred to as Critical Mass, was taking a monthly ride to celebrate cycling and assert their rights to the road on Friday when Ogden police say things got out of hand. Four individuals were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and public intoxication.
Matt Hasenyager, owner of Skyline Cycle and one of the bicyclists, said the group was obeying traffic laws and having fun.
However, police reports indicate some were hostile, disrupted traffic flow, yelled obscenities and made gestures at motorists while intoxicated.
The trouble started at the intersection of 23rd Street and Grant Avenue when a woman motorist stopped at a red light and was suddenly surrounded by bicyclists. When the light turned green, she was unable to pull forward and honked her horn.
Cyclists responded by yelling obscenities and someone threw a cup of soda pop and hit the woman in the face, the police report said. When she pulled forward, her vehicle bumped one of the bicycles, causing minor damage to the fender and wheel. Then she called police.
"They demanded she be arrested for aggravated assault, but it wasn't intentional," said Ogden Lt. Mike Ashment. "The woman didn't want to pursue anything."
The group continued its ride to 24th Street and Lincoln Avenue, where two individuals halted traffic, entered the intersection and began escorting the other riders through even though the light was red, according to the police report. Angry motorists were forced to maneuver around the pair and more gestures were made and obscenities yelled, Ashment said.
The scene was observed by a Utah Highway Patrol trooper and Weber County deputy who were assisting the Ogden City gang unit for the weekend. They arrived and instructed the two cyclists to leave the intersection and talk with them. One complied, but the other pedaled away after the group.
Deputy Trevor Petersen pursued the individual, eventually tackling him off his bike. Petersen's actions surprised the group, which then surrounded him. He ordered them to move away and called for backup, the report said. Eventually more than six officers arrived to help disperse the irate crowd.
Four individuals were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and public intoxication. They are Samuel Mc-Kay, 26; Sara Fulks, 33; Donald Hall, 61; and KC Shirra, 19. A 12-pack of beer was located in Fulks' backpack.
It was a bizarre scene, trooper Chris Turley said.
"I have never encountered something like this. Usually people are very law abiding, but the crowd was very hostile. Many were intoxicated and smelled of alcohol," Turley said. "It was unusual behavior."
Hasenyager was riding with the group and recalls the scene as one of chaos and confusion. He said his friend that was tackled didn't know the deputy wanted him to stop.
"It was hard to know who he (the deputy) was talking to when he said 'Stop sir, stop.' There 30 of us," Hasenyager said. "I don't think the police department as a whole was out of line, but this individual (the deputy) could have handled it in a different fashion. If it had been handled differently, without physical force, I wouldn't be talking about it right now. Maybe tickets could have been written."
According to several Web sites, Critical Mass is a bicycling event typically held on the last Friday of every month in hundreds of cities around the world. The ride was originally founded in 1992 in San Francisco with the idea of drawing attention to how unfriendly the city was to cyclists. Participants have insisted that these events should be viewed as "celebrations" and spontaneous gatherings, and not as protests or organized demonstrations.
Ashment and Lt. Scott Conley both find it odd that the group is out promoting fun and bicycle awareness, yet failing to comply with traffic rules and other laws.
"It doesn't jive," Ashment said.
"Why are they so confrontational with public? Why do they have alcohol in their backpacks? From what I am being told, they were they individuals escalating the situation," Conley said.
Hasenyager didn't see the incident at 23rd and Grant, but said has heard several different versions of what happened. He said it was heartbreaking to see this all happen, but the bottom line, he said, is that Ogden is an outdoor hot spot.
"The best we can do now is move this in a positive direction, learn a valuable lesson and move forward, and be better because of it."
One time, driving in a 11 m/h zone, I had a spandex biker turn a corner, and come up behind me. I was probably doing 13-14m/h.
You know how they follow each other so closely their tires might touch? Well this guy was that close to my bumper. We came to a stop sign to turn left, and he passed me on the right without stopping, nearly getting creamed by a car coming from the left.
We caught up to him, and told him what we thought of his antics. He caught up to us at the next stop light where around 15 of his spandex buddies were waiting. The next thing you know, that are yelling at us, for giving him a hard time.
Share the road? Oh, sure!
As you and your ilk support adult provocateurs, I'll accept registration fees and a picture ID license.
Roads are funded from a wide variety of sources. Many taxes on auto registration and fuel are actually diverted to other things. Cars and trucks wear roads out. Bikes don't.
Roads are funded from tolls and by auto gas taxes. Bicyclist contribute squat. Yes, some of gas taxes go to fund non road expenses. Again, no contribution from bicyclists. Cars wear out the roads? You should look at the stresses that road pavements go through during seasonal temperature changes and the effects of freezing weather.
Great idea. Let's do it by weight. Pay whatever your vehicle weighs.
We already pay taxes by weight. The heavier the vehicle the more gas it uses and gas taxes it pays. You really don't put much thought into your arguments.
They already are. The laws obviously aren't enforced as strictly as against motorists, but do you really want little Timmy getting slapped with a ticket because he coasted through the four way stop between his house and the park? He looked both ways he stopped peddling and braked, but his wheels never actually came to a complete stop. Do you want him tagged? Bone headed cyclists doing things like blowing through red lights are already fully subject to traffic laws, and do get tickets.
Cops don't enforce bike laws because bicyclists are not required to produce a registration of an picture ID. They can tell the cops their name is Donald Duck for all they care and the cops can't do anything about it. As for little Timmy, mommy is not about to let him go riding with anarchists in urban streets.
Governmental approval to ride and own a little bike? Who's the commie?
Where is the right enshrined where you can ride a bike on a public way? There isn't any. It's the same for cars. It's a privilege. The commie is you as you support anarchy!
Yup, sounds familiar.
Oh I don't know...the laws of 50 states and all territories, in addition to the laws of every known country on earth, perhaps?
When you decide to get insulting with lines like "You really don't put much thought into your arguments", and imply some cognitive superiority on your part, you should then be more careful not to leading with your jaw like this?
I'm all for it. Let's extend the gas tax to bikes. I promise from now on to pay the proper tax on all gas used by my bicycle. Satisfied?
And if you don't realize it, trucks are licensed by weight, pretty much everywhere I'd bet. Let's just assign the same standard to 18 lb bicycles that we do to 4 ton vehicles, that are taxed at a high rate due to their weight, because their weight causes road damage far and beyond any thawing and freezing. Ask any road engineer you know how different roads would be if heavy vesicles didn't travel them.
Properly ridden bicycles do no more damage to the road, than bugs landing on the roadway. Biking allows millions of people that don't have means to get to a job across town. The only real damage it does is to the fragile egos and psyches of cranky old coots and pickup driving, hayseed mama's boys, with latent worries about their own sexual preference.
People that behave badly on bikes are subject to the same sanction that people that behave anywhere badly are. But bikes have existed for centuries and have been sharing roadways with cars and trucks since cars and trucks came around. There are very well defined laws that define where bicycles can legally be ridden. Turns out it's just about everywhere other than controlled access roadways, where that fact is clearly marked on every entrance ramp. It's been this way for a about a century, in every place anybody ever heard of. Get used to it.
> First, 90% of Americans of driving age own a car and pay gas tax.
Yup. For which they pay for their automobile’s use of the roads, the road’s maintenance and for new roads being built.
> Do you really think that a group of people with an average per-person income of over $90k who are riding a vehicle that does no damage to the road are a horrible succubus on the average counties road budget?
That’s not the point. Bicycles use the roads, bicycles should pay their share. Using your logic, if you owned a truck and paid truck gas taxes you should be allowed to drive your car tax-free. That doesn’t work!
And why should it matter whether bike riders earn $90,000 per annum or $10,000 per annum? It doesn’t.
Bicycles often require bike lanes, which nobody but bikes are allowed to use. There’s one not far from where I live: it runs from Te Atatu to Auckland along the Northwestern Motorway — a significant stretch of pavement. I doubt as many as 200 bikes use it each day, making it one of the most expensive pieces of pavement in all of New Zealand. For which the bike riders paid not a cent!
Why should my gas tax pay for that bike lane?
Bike riders are all freeloaders who do not pay their fair share of the transportation infrastructure. Bike riders have an expectation of a God-given right to ride for free, which makes them the Welfare Bums of the Hiway.
You rang? lol
Seriously, lycra works, that’s why I wear it. It’s hot in Texas, and lyrca wicks the moisture away and helps keep me dry. I once rode a very short ride, 20 miles or so, in a loose fitting t-shirt because I’d forgotten my jersey. It quickly became waterlogged and rubbed me raw. Never again.
Most cyclists are courteous when it comes to motorists. I’ll bunny hop the curb to get out of a motorists way. I drive a car too, and I don’t like being behind slow drivers, let alone bicyclists. I’d bet money that I’ve never delayed a motorist more than 20 seconds in all of my years of riding.
What ticks most cyclists off is the ignorance, which you can see plenty of here. I have a right to be on the road. It’s the law, period. If insurance and licensing were required, I’d pay it, but it’s not, end of story. The truth is that insurance would be a joke on any actuary table. I’ll bet you could total up all the property damage from all the bicycle related accidents in Texas this year, and it wouldn’t even come close to a decent fender-bender between two mid-priced cars.
Hear it all the time. My response is simple: I don't have to, because the law is the law, and it plainly says (in Texas at least) that I have a right to the road. If the law were to be changed, I'd pay it just as I already pay it for my other vehicles. No big deal really.
I actually got in a fist fight once, because I snickered and said, “You wouldn’t understand, because you’re obviously allergic to exercise.” to a 250 pound woman who was lecturing me on the “manliness” of bicycling. Her husband took offense to my comment and it was on. He wasn’t in any better shape than she was, nuff said, happy ending.
False. I have to follow the same rules of the road on my bicycle as I would on my motorcycle, including maintaining minimum speeds. There is no minimum speed on roads with limits less than 40mph.
I stop at stop signs and traffic lights. Most cyclists I know do so as well.
We have them here too. We also have some great mountain bike trails. I pack my bike up and drive to the trail often. However, I also own a commuter bike, a non-recreational utility bike that I ride to and from work. That's a 110 miles a week that not only does my heart good, but saves me a bundle on gas too.
> Her husband took offense to my comment and it was on. He wasn’t in any better shape than she was, nuff said, happy ending.
Lesson without words. It is unwise to pick fights with lycra-wearing bike riders unless one builds into the combat assessment the likelihood of one’s opponent being reasonably fit. He wouldn’t be riding that contraption if he wasn’t.
Served him right.
Hell, it’s why I don’t pick fights. I’m smart enough to know that the sonofabitch I’m picking on might surprise me and beat the holy crap out of me. I’ve been in enough fights to know that the outcome is never certain.
I’ll buy that. It’s too bad the eggheads ruin things for everybody.
Don't know about that. My concern as a walker in county parks is about the connection of cycling apparel and being a moron.
Should have "bumped" 'em a little harder. Intoxicated, militant idiots on bicycles give cycling a bad name.
I don't "hate a segment of the road going public". I ride a bike too, and generally support the "share the road" stuff, including "bike lanes" in traffic and so on. I taught my daughter to ride, and we have biked together quite a bit in recent years.
But we do so with a sense of personal safety and courtesy.
What I don't like are cyclists who ramp up the righteous indignation about cars, and think that it's their right to get in my way just because they don't have an engine on their vehicle. I live where there is a huge cycling population, and most have no common sense at all about courtesy or safety. They get all huffy if you suggest that maybe they ought to not be competing in the main (auto) lanes and weaving all over between cars just "because they can". It's asking for injury, and of course it's always the car-driver's fault...
I presume you, as a FReeper, are in the "safety-conscious" and "courteous" minority, so please don't take the above complaint personally, as it's not meant that way. ;-)
I had the same experience in a small local restaurant when there was a bike race in the next town over from mine. About 20 cyclists came in and acted like they owned the place. They completely destroyed the bathroom, they were pissy with the restaurant staff, and they were looking down their nose at those of us not wearing spandex. There’s definitely an element of arrogance, and it’s generally directed toward people who have >6% body fat. I hate to make sweeping generalizations but it’s hard not to when I’ve never had a positive experience with any cyclist out there.
A co-worker of mine had to stand vigil in his yard for an entire afternoon to run off cyclists that kept stopping to piss on his bushes on side of his house. He’s a cool cucumber, I probably would’ve been hauled off to jail after breaking out the BB gun.
As for the bikers on this forum that are all in a self-righteous tiff because people are insulting their sport: GET OVER IT. I enjoy local hockey and I don’t freak out when I hear people say that hockey is the stupidest game on the planet. Everybody’s gotta do their own thing.
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