‘Get Off the Street!’ : Confrontations Between Bicyclists and Motorists Are Becoming Common : CITY SMART / How to thrive in the urban environment of Southern California

The guy turning onto Bixel Street from Wilshire Boulevard leaned on his horn and screamed out his window. But Cindi Staiger didn’t flinch.

At least he wasn’t trying to ram her bicycle with his sedan. At least he was hurling nothing more dangerous than invective at the pink-jerseyed cyclist.

Staiger, 43, has experienced far worse on the streets of Los Angeles.

“I’ve had food items and rocks thrown at me,” said the office manager, who commutes by bicycle from Culver City to Downtown Los Angeles.

“I got hit in the helmet by students on a school bus who threw a block of wood. Once somebody threw weights that you wear when you exercise at me. A young man riding by on a moped slapped my rear end; that left a handprint that was still there an hour and a half later.”

A growing number of bicyclists have begun speaking out about increasing hostility they are experiencing in the city. Not that speaking up is always a good idea.

“Once when I yelled to warn a man that he was about to back into me he started chasing me in his van,” Staiger said. “Another time a lady tried to pull into me from a parking place. I reached out and slapped her door to let her know I was there and she chased me two miles. I had to ride through a schoolyard to escape.”

Confrontations are becoming routine, according to bike riders.

“People in cars stick their hands out the window and hit me. Cars come by and try to squeeze you off the road. It’s getting much, much worse,” said Sari Small, a 53-year-old Cal State Northridge administrator who bicycles everywhere because she does not own a car. “Old, young, middle-aged, they come up and blast a horn and yell, ‘Get off the street!’ It’s a daily thing.”

Author Bob Winning has devoted the first 18 pages of his latest book, “Short Bike Rides in and Around Los Angeles,” to navigating safely in the city.

“I’ve been shot by paint pellets, screamed at. Drivers come too close to give you the message that they don’t want you on the road. It’s pretty bad,” said Winning, 60, a former Warner Bros. executive who lives in Canoga Park.

Said Gary Brustin, a Beverly Hills lawyer who specializes in bicycle-related cases: “We’re progressing from where motorists are trying to scare people to death to where they’re actually out trying to kill them.”

It may be a symptom of local stress, according to one bicycling expert.

“I guess sociologically Los Angeles has been through a couple of years of hard times,” said Roger J. Herz, executive director of Bicycle Transportation Action, a New York-based advocacy group.

There are no statistics on confrontations between motorists and bicyclists. Many incidents are never reported to authorities; those that are end up counted as assaults, said California Highway Patrol spokesman Ernie Garcia.

(Ironically, according to CHP records, bicycle mishaps are declining: In 1990, 135 riders were killed and 16,707 riders were injured in the state. Last year, 123 died and 13,301 were hurt.)

Cyclists who are victims of harassment are often unable to get the car’s license number and a description of the driver. Both are needed for police to take action.

Jerry Beber found that out last month after he was sent flying off his bicycle by a motorist on a residential Sherman Oaks street.

Beber said he had swerved slightly toward the center of the street to avoid a dog on the curb. A woman behind him driving a red Mustang convertible honked angrily, then bumped him. He was knocked over the hood of a parked car.

A witness chased the car and got its license number. But police could not arrest the car owner because the witness was unable to identify her as the driver, according to Beber, 59, a pension planner who lives nearby.

Last week Beber asked members of a bicycle advisory committee for the city’s Department of Transportation to press for stricter legislation against aggressive drivers. Panel members were sympathetic. But also pragmatic.

“I don’t think we can do very much,” said committee appointee Mel Leventhal, 66, a bicyclist and retired importer from the Beverlywood area who admitted cyclists are “easy targets.”

Committee member David Wolfberg of West Los Angeles said cyclists’ best hope may be to help create a driver education program to “foster the idea that bicyclists are not only acceptable on our streets, but that it’s an ideal thing.”

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Cyclists concede that many bike riders could also use a little educating.

“I hate to say it, but some bring it on themselves,” said cyclist Ron Peery, 49, a railroad worker who lives in Eagle Rock and serves on the city panel.

“You’ve probably seen bicyclists come to a red light, make a right, then a U-turn and another right and continue on. Motorists see it and say, ‘Wait a minute.’ ”

Kurt Niven, also an Eagle Rock resident, agrees. He’s an engineer who serves as president of a 110-member Department of Water and Power bicycle club. He cringes when he sees other bicyclists run stop signs or berate motorists for careless driving.

“There’s a lot of cyclists out there that if somebody honks at them they’ll give the finger or something,” Niven said. “I’ve seen people try to get in fights with drivers, actually trying to get into cars’ sunroofs to punch at people.”

Mike Gleich, a West Los Angeles school administrator who puts 17,000 miles a year on his bicycle, said a motorist he yelled at for almost hitting him circled the block and then did smash into him. The 49-year-old was thrown into a parked car--whose owner later tried to sue him for damaging the auto.

“I don’t yell back now,” Gleich said.