The Washington State Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a Thurston County judge’s ruling giving Gendler, injured in a 2007 mishap when his bike wheel wedged in a too-wide gap on Montlake Bridge steel grating, access to information on previous bicycle accidents there.

Gendler, 58, who in a separate suit won an $8 million settlement from the state over the accident, sought the records to show that the state had known of the danger since 1999, when it was created during a seismic retrofit of the bridge. Even before the retrofit was finished, a cyclist suffered a similar — although not as injurious — accident in the same gap.

The state argued it was prevented from turning over accident records by federal law financing gathering and analysis of accident data but barring the information from being used in lawsuits against the state.

The Appeals Court disagreed:

The WSP [Washington State Patrol] claims that federal law, 23 U.S.C. § 409 (2005), prohibits it from disclosing the records to Michael Gendler unless he agrees not to use the information in litigation against the State. Because RCW [state law] 46.52.060 imposes a duty on the WSP to create and provide such public records, and because the federal privilege applies only to the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) not the WSP, we affirm. We also award Gendler his attorney fees and costs for this appeal.

As attorney Mike Schechter puts it in the Local Open Government blog, the ruling means “that the State Patrol cannot hide behind a memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) with the State Department of Transportation (“WSDOT”) and WSDOT’s federal privilege under 23 U.S.C. §409, barring use of collision data in lawsuits.”

Beyond Gendler’s case, the ruling has ramifications for any citizen seeking to show that faulty construction or maintenance of roadways contributed to an accident. In that sense, Gendler’s victory is a win for us all.

As Schechter further notes:

The federal privilege is intended to allow WSDOT to compile and analyze accident data to better implement highway safety measures funded by the federal government without concern that such analysis would be used to support lawsuits against the State.

While we understand the thinking behind such a provision — the state’s “analysis,” after all, could certainly be faulty or biased — we are pleased that the court drew its distinction. Raw data, collected with taxpayer funds by public agencies, should be available to the citizens who footed the bill in the first place. And on principle in a democracy, government information should be transparent in all forms.

Another reason to give thanks on this holiday of 2010.

Almost got taken out last week riding home. I was riding westbound on Ravenna at Roosevelt when a 20-something girl staring down at her lap obviously busily texting away was gaily running the light southbound on Roosevelt roaring straight toward me — when she decided to glance up from her important task for a moment to see the blood-red light…and me right in front of her in the intersection.

Smoking, squealing tires, and nearly turned sideways by the time she stopped.

In return for providing me the opportunity to truly think I was a goner and watch my life flash before me, I got a shoulder shrug and a smile.

Needless to say I was somewhat less than amused and let her know it.  I’m not kidding when I say I thought it was time to be running through my pre-flight check list.

Cell phones and drivers… bad juju.

— Still Alive and Kicking Holes in the Darkness

Apparently no one knows. The cyclist awoke, eventually, from her accident with no memory of the incident. She’s now recovering, and police continue to “investigate,” if that’s the right term. It has been four months, after all.

If the police are investigating, it’s a safe bet she didn’t just hit a pothole. OTOH what kind of “investigation” takes four months without even being able to say a second party was involved? This is an odd one, and we can only hope that police reticence derives from some legal bind rather than recalcitrance or laziness. After all, once they declare another party is involved, it is a lot of additional paperwork.

Cases like this cry out for a Bicycle Advocacy Division within city administration. It will be another Obama-like challenge for the new mayor, but turning the police department’s head around re bicycle investigations hopefully will be a top priority.

Original West Seattle Blog report.

SeattleLikesBikes report.

Discussion on Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Club board.

Our take continues to be that this kind of action represents a hate crime against cyclists. BikePortland follows up with a perspective on the Toronto incident we reported earlier.

BikingBis: Traffic fatalities dropped in 2008 — unless you happened to be on two wheels. Deaths rose 2.1 percent, and injuries spiked much more: 21 percent.

Not all of these involved hate against cyclists, of course. But many can be shown to reflect a second-class citizenship, akin to the bias and ignorance at the heart of racism, sexism, sexuality-based prejudice and other stereotyping, which fosters anti-cycling behavior and, in some tragic cases, incubates eventual extremism.

Until we address the unique psychological phenomenon that stigmatizes cyclists as “the other” in traffic as well as in traffic planning, the role of the bicycle in our culture will continue to be hazardous as well as marginalized.