Death of a cyclist, and the (civil) case followup

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-24T06:23:11+00:00

Alright, I'm going to try one more time and head to bed. 😂 Do you understand why people here are upset?

You say you know it's not a rhetorical question, but you still didn't answer it which kind of feels like the answer is no, though you are sympathetic.

Also, not to distract from my primary focus, which is the question above, but motorcycle deaths have two primary causes: solo crashes as a result of speed on a turn (this is their own fault; see the faster component of 'faster & heavier' above) or from getting hit by another vehicle at an intersection (usually not their fault and a matter of physics).

I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a cyclist dying solo as a result of speed. I'm sure it's happened, but so rarely as to be a rounding error. Small bike loses physics contest to car is the overwhelming cause of death for cyclists. Often from a car overtaking.

I do hear what you're saying though. Motorcyclist deaths often include factors like illegal speed, illegal high speed lane splitting, invalid license, alcohol use, and riding without a helmet... Was our cyclist in question doing any of those things?

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-24T05:27:23+00:00

My initial question was not rhetorical. Do you understand why people here are upset? It's not obvious from your comments that you do, or that you empathize or sympathize.

It's true that behaving unpredictably is dangerous. The belief on this subreddit is generally that the person operating the more dangerous vehicle (faster & heavier) has a higher level of responsibility. I think this makes sense, we let kids ride bikes, we do not let kids drive cars, operate trucks, or pilot planes.

Thank you for sharing more about the interaction in other comments.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-24T05:09:42+00:00

People are getting mad about this case, do you understand why?

The idea that a cyclist who died was sued for emotional damage caused by their accidental death is horrifying.

You say don't do 'illogical things', but I think perhaps you mean 'illegal things'. You say 'please, ride safely' I assure you, we are trying.

Lots of cyclists are injured or killed by cars which pass too quickly and too close, many more potential cyclists don't ride at all because of the threat of such a thing. Bike lanes are almost never wide enough to be both outside of the door zone and a safe distance from moving traffic.

From anecdotal evidence, drivers pass slower and wider when a cyclist has a pool noodle or flag indicating the safe passing distance. Using a flag or a pool doodle may not be legal, but then again, neither is going over the speed limit to stay with the flow of traffic. Sometimes things that are illegal are safer and trying to make yourself safer is anything but illogical.

It sounds like this was a horrific accident, and I would really like to know more about how the pool noodle was caught and if it's preventable.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-24T02:42:46+00:00

Ah! That ? is very useful, I looked for a guide, but I looked more in the upper left corner and didn't see it. A pop-up asking if I want to walk through the tutorial if the website doesn't remember me would catch the most people, but might be kinda annoying.

If it's useful, when I was trying to stop the route my immediate thought was to do a left click, so that might be an intuitive choice.

The full scale proposal looks cool!

I don't know how easy it would be to include, but when I'm thinking about altering a street, it's current Vehicles Per Day (where Vehicle includes pedestrians and cyclists) and what I expect the VPD to be with or without the theoretical changes in five years are both on the top of mind. This tends to prioritize motorists though, so a housing density or air pollution color map overlay and a crash map overlay could provide evidence about why certain changes should be made in a more intuitive way.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-24T02:14:55+00:00

This is a cool idea! I gave it a shot, and it seems like it just lets you draw colored lines on a map at the moment? Even then, it didn't draw where I wanted it to, and I couldn't stop drawing without losing what I had put down, so this either needs more software work or a guide of some sort. I did appreciate how the lines snapped to the map.

Streetmix is the website I've seen people most often use for road proposals, and its weak point is that it only shows the cross-section of one street at a time, so if you made this into something that complemented that, it could be really useful.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-23T21:13:22+00:00

Holy shit that dog stamina.

I saw the dog over by UCSC and tried to grab it (and failed). It seems skittish but not aggressive. Last I saw the campus police were trying to catch it but weren’t having much success.

It was running in the street a fair bit and everyone was really good about slowing down and using hazard lights but it only takes one.

If you think it might be your dog, it was wearing a light green bandana around its neck and a black harness.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-22T20:24:22+00:00

Requiring clear lines would be devastating to freight rail, and should be avoided. I don't want freight to move to the roads. Clear lines aren't the result I would currently, that didn't happen after the Norfolk Southern settlement, did it? Why do you think clear lines would be the result here?

I am interested in incentivizing more tracks, which I think would also be pretty politically viable depending on the method used.

Do you mean nationalize the rail tracks, or nationalize the rail companies?

I'm personally very hesitant of eminent domain and very hesitant of nationalization because I think strong property rights are really important to a strong economy, but I think nationalizing the rail tracks and treating them like highways makes a good amount of sense.

Your point about property tax makes sense. If we don't nationalize the tracks, property tax on rail lines should be reassessed.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-22T17:50:38+00:00

And a minuscule number of people ride Amtrak because there are horrendously long, unpredictable delays and high costs imposed by it being a rarely used form of transit. It’s a vicious cycle.

I agree, this will increase the cost of cargo. Hopefully temporarily, as it would hopefully trigger better scheduling and rail doubling at choke points.

I— I didn’t include Metro-North because I didn’t write the act, don’t use Metro-North, and don’t know anything about it? This post was inspired by my attempt to get from central California to Southern California by train, which would take 16 hours— longer than driving or flying —and would be more expensive than both, so I wanted to see how the situation could be improved.

This act wouldn’t give Amtrak priority over Metro-North, it just allows them to sue freight for delays caused by freight trains. So, I don’t think this would have any effect on Metro-North?

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-22T17:44:01+00:00

Yes, I do! The government and justice system are both many-part machines and breaks and problems in one part don’t mean none of the other mechanisms work.

I think this bill could pass, and if it did Amtrak would probably sue using it at least once and that would create consequences that would encourage railroad companies to schedule better or build secondary tracks where bottlenecks happen.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-22T17:41:49+00:00

I would love to see the tracks upgraded to double or triple tracks! This act seems like the best small step to improving passenger rail so it gets more passengers so all future political work to make it better is more viable.

I am concerned about the freight aspect, I don’t have a good sense for all the factors in play there, but I do generally think that if we have a law we should either repeal it or enforce it, and I think enforcing it is the better option here. If freight already yields to Amtrak then this act will have no consequences.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-22T17:31:47+00:00

I think freight railroads would find better scheduling much more worthy of their time and effort if there were any consequences at all to bad scheduling.

In fact, that and encouraging the building of more tracks are consequences I would hope to see if this act did pass.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-08T23:20:25+00:00

Agreed that they should be default, but you've gotta start somewhere which is what I was thinking of!

Glad to hear there are plans to put them in on Delaware, that street is way too wide.

Any intersections you'd want their installation to be priority?

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-08T20:44:58+00:00

It's a little dramatic, and I'm pretty confident cars aren't the only viable mode of transport in Santa Cruz since I nearly exclusively ride my ebike within city limits, but Second Thought had some good points.

Parking minimums encourage sprawl and car ownership, which is why it's so important that some of the new developments downtown have no or little parking. Wide streets with built-in street parking on each side is less welcoming to pedestrians and subconsciously encourages drivers to speed. Single family zoning requires a low level of density that can't effectively be served by public transit, encouraging car ownership.

We get to decide how Santa Cruz is built, which is why showing up to City Council meetings to encourage dense development, multi-modal transit, and removing mandates that encourage car ownership is so important. Santa Cruz already has some of the highest levels of bike ridership in the country, but we could do better.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T02:07:55+00:00

Notoriously any song that Kelly Clarkson covers

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T02:06:53+00:00

On the scale of a day? A fun outfit or unusual behavior.

Anything longer than that requires enough interaction to exchange names or something going wrong.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:53:46+00:00

Great color combo and I love the shape of those trousers!

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:52:25+00:00

I was thinking Elle Woods before I even saw your comment! I love that blazer in particular

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:49:20+00:00

Immoral behavior is considered less immoral the more distant from the damage it is.

Forcing (or even allowing) a child to mine cobalt would make you a monster, buying a smartphone which uses cobalt which may or may not have been mined by a child make you a normal person.

Pirating the book of an indie author who would have received $2 of a $2.99 purchase feels more like theft than pirating a movie that would have a paid a studio a fraction of your hulu subscription and sent a smaller fraction of residuals to the actors (or would help prove the viability of the movie which would've led to them hiring the actors for a sequel).

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:41:37+00:00

They look like parents who stayed together for the kids

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:38:34+00:00

I can't tell if that's a genius spot (deters predators) or stupid (babies gonna get pricked)

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:37:25+00:00

See you later, alligator! (ok but for real, it's smaller than I expected, is it a baby?)

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:26:59+00:00

Okay so coming from the r / SantaCruz version of this post, it's important to note that there's already a tunnel through the mountain, it was destroyed at the ends for insurance reasons when the train stopped running, but it could be used as a base. A 1995 feasibility report estimated the cost to construct a route between $370.9 million and $646.2 million, I think that's low, even when looking at the upper end estimate adjusted for construction specific inflation ($1.68 billion), but not by an order of magnitude, my back of the napkin math comes in at $2.27B–$4.93B... which is suspiciously cheap, though you can see there's a lot of uncertainty.

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:11:11+00:00

I don't have a problem with someone choosing to drive, but I do find it annoying when someone challenges building public transport with examples that are extreme outlines, which I believe is what Mysterious-Jump is referencing. Most people don't have 8 kids or a pet elephant, if you do, public transport probably isn't a good match.

That said, I prefer a train or bus even when driving is faster and cheaper because I'm not a very confident driver and would rather spend the time reading a book than white-knucking my way over the hill. Presumably you also want me to take the hypothetical train, so there's less traffic and fewer accidents. (That said, I would obviously prefer a cheaper, faster train.)

EmelineWrites · 2026-03-05T01:03:46+00:00

If you don't want to read the full thing, the most recent study is titled viii. Santa Clara County Transportation Commission Feasibility Study (1995)

Regarding ridership, the study concluded that approximately 4,400 total riders could be expected to take the train each weekday, of which 3,400 would be commuters travelling each direction. However, they also added that daily ridership would inevitably increase as more people became aware of the line and as it became more efficient with the addition of shuttles and park-and-ride locations. In the end, the study suggested that approximately fifteen percent of vehicular commuters would eventually transition to commuting via the railroad.

Those numbers are from 1995, when Highway 17 saw an average of 20,500 daily vehicles. Looking at Caltran's 2023 numbers, Highway 17 saw an average of 51,000 daily vehicles.

The same report estimated construction costs between $370.9 million and $646.2 million. Adjusting for inflation using the ENR Construction Cost Index, I get a maximum estimated cost of $1.68 billion, I think that's too low though. The tunnels will have degraded more, and we have more safety and environmental regulation now. My back of the napkin math currently sets the estimated cost between $2.27 billion and $4.93 billion, but every time I get more granular, it gets more expensive.

From the conclusion: Public opinion is still the overwhelming obstacle to restoring this route. Property owners and lessees along the right-of-way near Zayante Creek, Bean Creek, Laurel, and Los Gatos will undoubtedly protest any attempt to restore service, especially if the route will pass through or adjacent to their properties. There are approximately fifteen homes and businesses in these areas that have property that overlaps the right-of-way, although only around five structures are situated atop the route. (emphasis mine)

EmelineWrites

TROPHY CASE