- Dan Christensen
Today on the people–who–hate–bikes beat, a TriMet bus driver is placed on administrative leave for posting a call to kill a bicyclist on his blog. This isn’t Al M, mind you (he’s not allowed to podcast from the driver’s seat anymore). This time it’s Dan Christensen, who was named one of WWeek‘s “Best People” of the year for acquiring almost as many Twitter followers as Sam Adams.
The story on BikePortland has more details, but basically, it appears that Christensen had a close call with a cyclist on the non-bike-lane part of SE Hawthorne between SE 20th and 40th. He was apparently shaken up after the incident, and posted a photo of the cyclist (taken by a bus rider) with the headline, “PORTLAND! KILL THIS BICYCLIST.”
Thank you for putting your trust in my training and my willingness to throw people around my bus by violently breaking. However as a holder of your life I think now after long hours of contemplation I shall exercise the death option.
TriMet placed Christensen on leave immediately after finding out about the post, which has since been taken down. The agency also notified the police and the district attorney’s office.
Christ, a guy can’t vent a little? You’ve never exaggerated anything on the internet for humorous effect?
I want my “I Am Dan Christensen” t-shirt.
I’m a cyclist, and a driver, too. Yesterday around 6, I was driving down SE 20th between Belmont and Hawthorne, where the cyclists have apparently decided that they want to create a bike lane, except in the frequent case of cars parked by the curb, at which point they’ll simply dart into the constant flow of traffic. When I went to park on 20th, near Hawthorne, a classic “look at this fucking hipster” on a BMX bike flew by me between my car and the parked car to my right, just before I would have nosed into the spot in front of the parked car (I did plenty of signaling). If I hadn’t have been extra aware of him, he could have easily been seriously hurt, or worse.
When someone rides that carelessly and dangerously, I feel bad for them if something happens that isn’t, to the letter of the law, completely their fault, but there’s definitely a part of me that thinks that person kinda got what they deserved. Then, because someone did something careless and dangerous and got hurt, I’d have to live forever with the guilt of it.
What I’m saying is that I understand the frustration with SOME idiot cyclists sometimes. I’m guessing it’s similar to the feelings parents have when teenagers do idiotically risky things.
It seems to me that people riding vulnerable vehicles should ride with a little more caution.
Maybe what I meant to say was that bicyclists (and motorcyclists) should be more cautious about putting themselves in harms’ way. I have had several close calls with bicyclists not obeying traffic laws, and if I would have hit them I would feel bad, but at the same time I would not feel guilty about hurting them.
Hi, I’m a semi-truck driver. One time a bus driver failed to yield to me. It’s a long story, much longer than Commenty’s. However instead of killing him, I let him keep both his arms and only removed his legs so that he could learn a goddamn lesson. Don’t mess up. Don’t even leave your house until you are prepared to bow down before my Peterbuilt. All you haters suck my duallys.
Given the choice of encountering, out on the road, either:
1) the idiot risking his own life with his maniac bike-riding, or
2) the idiot shaking with murderous rage while driving a really big bus
I’ll take #1.
It sounds like the guy on the bike was maybe somehow risking more than his own safety but it’s not clear how.
Regardless, bottom line: the guy on the bike is far less able to actually kill someone. Whereas we’ve seen quite recently that even a bus driver with the best of intentions can quite easily squish people to death.
And this particular bus driver is expressing murderous intent.
Wait, it’s just hyperbole, for comic effect? Well then, I feel so much-
“First off I have to stop here and breath deep to let the rage subside….”
“See even after months just thinking of that day makes my heart race and my face flush with rage.”
“However as a holder of your life I think now after long hours of contemplation I shall exercise the death option.”
-better?
Hmm…
Nope, I’m still worried about this. Even more so than I am about some biker with his head up his ass.
It is interesting to me that the penalty for this guy seems to be the same as for Sandy Day whose complete lack of attention to what she was doing, combined with several violations of traffic code and trimet policy resulted in the death of two people. Good to know that they consider after the fact road rage to be equivalent to actual murder.
Riding your bike on Hawthorn is stupid. Lincoln is a designated bike route and it’s just a couple of blocks away. It’s safer. It’s more considerate to the motorists we have to share the road with. Lincoln is also less noisy and fumy than Hawthorn. Of course, no one can see you act like a dick on Lincoln.You’ll have to find a busier street for that.
Yes, cyclists do stupid things. But how stupid is posting death threats on a web site where the author is clearly posting under his own name and as a bus driver with TriMet? If you’ve read the full blog posting, it’s clear this man is over stressed, and should not be driving a multi-ton vehicle with passengers right now. He writes how he is incoherent, shaking and flushed with rage weeks, even months, after the original incident. You want him in traffic? Let him take a bit of a break, and go back to writing charming, harmless posts from the safety of home.
No shortage of psychotic fatasses driving for Tri-Met these days. Its like the transit union insists on parity in numbers with dick cyclists.
I bike. I read his post this morning and knew it would get him fired immediately. I also know exactly the stretch of Hawthorne he was talking about and the amount of bikers using it as a bike road has been increasing a lot recently. I don’t think his post was appropriate by any means.
On the same topic I think this may speak to a larger issue. Maybe some roads should be off limits to bikers? Hawthorne at 5:00 pm is as congested as the freeway. It’s not safe for anyone on a bike but there is constantly some biker weaving in and out of traffic. There isn’t enough room to go past a bike safely so there is a line of cars backed up behind the bike with cars darting to the left to get around the bike.
So am I the bad guy as a biker to say it’s probably best if bikes aren’t allowed on major streets like Hawthorne during certain busy hours of the day? The bike streets are there for a pretty damn good reason. Minimal car traffic, less stopping, etc…
@montaqua @BlackedOut: Totally agree. Bikes should really avoid Hawthorne between 12th and 39th for all the reasons mentioned above, at least if you’re headed east. Go one or two blocks over! You’re not going to clog up traffic on an already harrowing stretch of road and, bonus, the hill’s not as steep.
@Blacked Out – That’s a a really good idea.
Dan went to great lengths in his post to point out that it wasn’t being written for comic effect (his whole “breathe in…out…in…out” thing after each paragraph, which he explicitly said was super serious and not exaggerated; and… well, basically what “anylandingisagoodlanding” said above). The post was NOT interesting or entertaining to read. He had like 800 words of repetitious introduction. And I was expecting him to then actually give a detailed account of the incident. But he didn’t! He skipped past that, and went straight into the wackjob deepend.
Posting it was a super stupid move.
There’s already roads that cars are allowed on and bikes aren’t. They’re called “freeways”.
More seriously (well, I had to get my Friday quotient of snark out of the way first):
If you really want to get bikes off Hawthorne and other arterials, the bike boulevards need to be quicker and easier to bike along than those main roads, not just safer. And that means getting rid of stop signs everywhere except where you cross a major car-oriented street. On Lincoln, that means the only stop signs / lights would be at 39th and 50th. everything else needs to be a yield sign at very most. Including Ladds Circle. NE Tillamook is even worse for stop signs…
Make it quicker to bike up Lincoln than Hawthorne (which shouldn’t be hard to do given how many lights there are on Hawthorne), and even the selfish asshole cyclists will use it; everyone’s a winner.
I bicycle year round. In fact, it is my main mode of transport. I cringe when the weather gets nicer as all the looney cyclists come out of the woodwork.
If anyone cares, I’m cheerfully retracting my defense of the guy, which was just based on the quote in the blog post. I haven’t read the original post in question, but based on what everyone says, it skews more crazy and “I’m not joking at all” than what I thought.
I still think bikers should avoid rush hour traffic and/or major roads whenever they can, and I’d definitely support adding a “Bikers: Yield” sign below 4-way stop signs for cars on bike boulevards.
@Blackedout: I avoid major streets normally, but if I’m in a section of town that I don’t know well and in a hurry, I’m going to take the major streets. The problem is that the bicycle routes aren’t always signed, if I go looking for one I often times get lost or just end up finding streets that don’t go through. I know the major streets from when I drove on them and from when I was a kid and my parents drove on them, and I know they go through, and I know that they will work, so I’ll take them…
I’d hate to see a law passed banning bicycles for certain places, it is just is a barrier to more people taking up bicycling if people have to relearn how to navigate the same time they are trying to figure out everything else. I think the big thing that is needed is better signage to tell people where the bicycle routes are, (at the same time installing more diverters to keep the cars off of them.)
And unfortunately, too often they are faster: I live in N Portland and know of tons of back streets, but if I need to get from my house to the St Johns Twin in 10 minutes, the only way to do that is to take Lombard. It is wide, I doesn’t hold up cars by taking it, and the adrenaline makes me ride faster anyways. In any case, most businesses are on those major streets, even if I know where I’m going and and the bicycle route is faster, I still often times need to ride on a major street for a block or two…
That said, nothing excuses bad riding, driving, or death threats.
PTSD + lawyer + Union = TriMET will pay Dan Christensen mega bucks.