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The Rants and Raves section of the Pullman/Moscow Craigslist is a cesspool of unbridled, anonymous community hatred. During late September and early October — around the time two people were hit in one week on the Moscow-Pullman Highway crosswalk o’doom — the forum’s discussion turned to bicyclist and pedestrian rudeness in Moscow.
“There are many of you that just keep walking right when you push the button,” wrote “Driver and mother of moscow.”
She’s right — just because you have the right to cross at a crosswalk, you can’t assume a car will stop for you. This is especially true if you’re crossing a street but are not in a crosswalk. It’s super-annoying to stop for someone who wasn’t willing to move his or her legs enough to make it the extra half-block to the signal. And please never cross a street diagonally if there is a car approaching. This only makes me want to mow you down more because it feels like you are taunting me.
Someone identifying him or herself as “S” was especially perturbed:
“I swear I’m going to swerve around all the halted vehicles and t-bone the biker and then sue THEM for failing to follow the law and putting a body-sized dent in my hood,” he wrote. “Do you see me driving my car up the Chipman Trail, rudely weaving in and out of the foot traffic on campus doing 25 mph and then pressing the crosswalk light and stopping traffic so I can haul balls across the road to the delicious fresh, never frozen, beef patties on the other side?”
Some posters had the guts to blame Moscow’s government and culture.
“The super-green faction is simply too strong here, and they would scream bloody murder at what they would perceive as an attempt to curtail their rights,” an anonymous poster wrote. “Again, arrogance and entitlement.”
Another person wrote Moscow has “narrow streets,” “bike lanes that come and go and mixed with ‘sidewalk bike lanes’ (think Mountain View Rd)” and “screwy bike lanes that are actually in the middle of the street (think 6th street near the Alehouse), etc.”
Yes, the bike lanes should be improved and expanded. Nothing makes me more lawsuit-phobic than driving in a line of cars at 35 mph up a narrow, two-lane street with someone on a bike teeter-tottering obliviously between me and parked cars. Due to one close call, I am also afraid of opening my car door and having a bicyclist run into it.
Moscow City Code defines bicycle laws that are often ignored. For example, the code says, “No person operating a bicycle shall carry any package, bundle or article which prevents the operator from using at least one (1) hand in the control and operation of the bicycle.” A cell phone is an “article.” If you use a cell phone while you’re riding a bike, and it’s not hands-free, you are asking to get into an “accident.”
If you are riding a bicycle, you are riding what the city considers to be a vehicle. The code says, “A person shall not operate a bicycle along and upon a sidewalk or across a highway upon and along a crosswalk, where the use of bicycles is prohibited by official traffic control devices.” This means you are not allowed to ride your bike across a crosswalk, including the one at Petersen Drive and the Moscow-Pullman Highway. If you can ride your bike at 20-plus mph, almost knocking me off a sidewalk, you can pedal your lazy ass to the stoplight like all the other licensed vehicles. It’s called a crosswalk, not a “ridewalk.”
What’s really scary is Wednesday was International Walk to School Day. Parents and children in Moscow participated in this. It was like Frogger with litigation.
The Idaho Transportation Department, the University of Idaho and the city of Moscow are working on a plan to extend Stadium Drive to Petersen Drive and install a traffic light at the intersection where the crosswalk currently is, according to the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
That’s great, but what can be done in the meantime? Do Nancy Chaney and Steven Daley-Laursen need to be out there to regulate every day because we can’t control ourselves?
I will give a prize to the person with the most creative “in-the-meantime” solution to the pedestrian/bicyclist/driver war. Create an account, and post your solution in the comments of this article online at www.uiargonaut.com by the time the Web site is updated with Friday’s issue. Include your e-mail address with your comment, and I’ll notify the winner on Friday.
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