The following are recent incidents reported by Boston Police District A-1 for the North End / Waterfront area.
Vandalism
02/19/20 9:45am
A delivery truck driver reports he parked in the bike lane on Commercial St. while delivering a package. Once back in the truck, a male on a bike smacked his side mirror of the truck. An argument ensued and the suspect broke his passenger side window and fled on his bike.
Aggravated Assault
02/14/20 4:35am
Male suspect (boyfriend) arrested after a call came in for a man beating a woman at Richmond and North Streets. Female victim was found lying in the street with injuries to her face and the back of her head. Witnesses reported the couple had been arguing and it escalated into a physical altercation. At this time, the victim got up and jumped onto the front hood of the vehicle as it drove away the wrong way toward Fulton St. The victim fell off the vehicle and received further injuries. Victim transported to MGH with face, head, and hand injuries. Suspect placed under arrest and was charged with AB/DW (motor vehicle), violation of auto laws (motor vehicle accident personal injuries and was operating (unlicensed), operating under the influence (alcohol), assault & battery (209 A).
4:35 Am ? Happy Valentine’s day. Not trying to make light of this incident & of course not knowing all the details but Mayor Walsh/city council keep approving liquor licenses & having establishments keep serving alcohol to make as much & as possible. When someone is God forbid murdered maybe incidents like this will stop. 🙏🏻
Nothing open then. They were likely in an apartment. City’s will have bars….
Now there’s one I slept through. Doesn’t appear either of these two were contributing members to the society. Keeping bars open until early morning during the week shows how politics diverges from the society it’s supposed to serve. Few career politicians have had the experience of having to get up and go to work in the morning and be alert.
So it looks like with the nice weather comes the Lance Armstrongs of the area. One yelled at my kid the other day for not keeping enough of a straight line (he’s 7). To all you entitled bikers out there, I’d think twice before you punch someone’s window out and yell at little kids because they’re getting in the way of your Tour training.
“with the nice weather comes the Lance Armstrongs”
Aggressive cyclists are seasonal, but people parking in a CURB PROTECTED bike lane happens year round.
Personally, I’d prefer to take my chances with an aggressive cyclist rather than ask my kids to swerve into traffic to avoid a delivery truck. Both are an issue though.
One reason we see congestion and dangerous behavior on the cycle track is that we’re cramming several uses into 10 feet of space. We have: Children playing, joggers, commuters, confused tourists walking, in addition to recreational cyclists. At several locations, the sidewalk is so narrow (or blocked: see the ongoing construction at Langone) that pedestrians are forced onto the track too. The space allocated for all of these uses uses is terribly insufficient.
If you were to take a 100ft slice of Commercial Street from building to building and count the number of people actively using that space – especially on the weekends – you would find that people in vehicles make up < 20% of active users. Yet the remaining 80% is crammed into 10% of the space. (Heck, we give 2x the amount of space to people storing personal property than we do the 80% actively using the space!) This is the root of the problem.
One more note, I’m disappointed that the police report makes no mention of the delivery driver receiving a ticket.
These bikers are insane. I once had one come the wrong way down Richmond street with an infant on the bike when I was turning right from commercial. The idiot is lucky I reacted quickly enough to avoid hitting her and harming her infant. The woman then had the gaul to follow me all the way from commercial street to Hanover street to confront me because I swore when I slammed on the brakes. THEY ARE CRAZY!
Richmond street at Commercial has a daycare center, a rehabilitation home, a grocery store, a park, general housing, a dog park, and an elementary school all within a few blocks of it. Similar is true for the entire North End. Expect the unexpected when operating a vehicle in such a densely populated area..
The fact that you had to “slam on your brakes” means you were traveling too fast for the area already. Your admission of SWEARING at someone while operating a multi-ton vehicle in this environment is very concerning and sounds threatening. I hope you’re never the behind the wheel of of a vehicle that strikes a vulnerable road user. But I’m sure this comment will seem prescient if you are.
Slow down.
You’re sounding foolish. A bike going the wrong way down a one way while carrying a baby is where the problem is….period.
Agreed, never the bikers fault with this guy. All I heard through both efforts to scold the rest of us was that it’s the city’s fault, the delivery truck, the car going the right way up the street…never once did I hear that the bikers own even a portion of the blame. Your bias is crystal clear.
Never is it ok under any circumstances to break a window, yell at a kid, or chase someone down (with an infant strapped to the handle bars no less), and scream at them.
Maybe you should ‘slow down’ and listen to yourself.
Adam,
Dogs parks, rehab centers, schools, ETC have nothing to do it with this. The woman was driving the wrong way down a small one way street with an infant in a basket on her bicycle. That’s against the law and very irresponsible. I admitted that I swore, but I did not say that I swore AT someone. I was honestly in complete shock that someone would be so dumb to go the wrong way down a one street with an infant in a basket so I yelled “what the f” in frustration. The threats did not come until after when this sick maniac followed me all the way up to Hanover street, knocked on my window, and when I opened it began berating me for swearing. The woman yelled at me for swearing after doing something so dumb. I’m happy that no one was injured but IF someone was the bicyclist would’ve been 100% at fault for BREAKING THE LAW. People shouldn’t ride the bikes the wrong way down the street when “multi-ton” vehicles are around. Especially not with an infant.
Adam, after reading some of your comments I must say that you seem like a pretty intelligent guy and I have finally figured you out.You purposely come on here and make outlandish comments in an attempt to argue with people! There is no way you can be this obtuse!
I think the disconnect we have is that I never said the behavior of the cyclists wasn’t dangerous. But we need to admin that A) more than one “dangerous” behavior can occur at a time and B) there are vastly different levels of dangerous behavior. I choose to focus on the other, much more dangerous, behavior you described. That is:
Operating a vehicle so recklessly – in an area where children, dogs, and elderly are present – that on a straight road, you were unable to see an obstruction (a woman on a bicycle) directly in front of you until you were so close that you needed to slam on the brakes.
There’s actually a term for this. It’s called “windshield perspective”; and , among other things, it refers to vehicle operators grossly misjudging dangerous behavior. In this case observing that a person on the bicycle is the danger instead of the vehicle itself that poses the danger.
Richmond Street isn’t the Mass Pike. You need to operate with caution. The next time it will be a child chasing after a ball, or an elderly person walking on the street because of the poor sidewalk conditions, or myriad other “things”.
I don’t believe you’re accurately describing all of the events anyway. So perhaps you didn’t actually have to slam on your brakes? Perhaps you just needed to wait ten seconds for the path to be clear. In which case you operated responsibly and nobody was actually ever in danger?
Who said that I was speeding or directly in front of the person? When you see a sick maniac coming towards you on a bicycle with an infant in a basket coming the WRONG WAY down the street you slam on the breaks no matter what. I’m not taking the chance that I even come close to them and have the bicycle mafia come for me! The bike brakes sure wouldn’t have stopped anything.
Not the to mention the example she set for the child chasing me down up the street and screaming at me.
If you aren’t going to beleive him, why bother commenting?
Bicycles have to obey rules of the road as any other vehicle. They don’t have the right go against traffic, go wrong way in a one-way, run stop signs, red lights, roll onto sidewalks, run over pedestrians, etc. The only thing that they are not required is provide safe seats for infants. Applying the breaks and coming to a complete stop was the correct thing to do. It prevented an accident and the likely injury of a child. Even though the driver had the right of way, he acted in a responsible matter. As for the woman on the bike carrying the child, she was totally irresponsible. I would say, she was derelict as a mother.
Anyone who would ride a bike with an infant in the city of Boston is insane. I even seen a guy riding a scooter with a little boy on board.
I think it should be illegal. Some day a poor child is going to get killed because of the negligence of their parents.
You should have found out who she was and reported her to DHS. They might agree with you. Any reasonable person would. Riding a baby on the bike path is one thing, but going out on our potholed streets is the equivalent to inflicting shaken baby syndrome. They can’t all use the idiot British nanny defense.
Don’t forget that she was going the wrong way down a one way. No way I could have found out who she was. She was screaming in my face! I had to get out of there!
Someone like that you might read about in the paper. Her behavior was entirely selfish. Doesn’t seem that she considered the child at all. After all you were the one that prevented injury to that child. I don’t think she even gave a second thought to the danger she put the child in.
I knew it was only a matter of time that someone (Adam) would blame Mr Barbaro for the incident .He has determined that Mr Barbaro was speeding & that he was ” SWEARING” which he admitted.Adam gives this entitled woman who feels that riding a bike the wrong way down a street with an infant is OK giving her a free pass. The bottom line is that you NEVER intentionally put a child in harm’s way. So instead of telling Mr Barbaro to “slow down ” tell this woman to use some common sense & don’t put a child in danger because next time she may not be so lucky.
Adam has a crystal ball, he saw the whole thing.💩
Curious Adam, when delivery trucks double park on Hanover street, do you go up to them and punch their windows out? I’m figuring the answer is ‘no’ since you can’t get away on your bike fast enough…
I’m pretty sure Adam doesn’t even care about the safety of kid strapped to the handle bars. He’s just defending the negligent mom’s right to bike down a one way street.
Comment threads on this site have always had problems staying on topic. While others pontificate whether I could outrun an unoccupied truck on Hanover Street, I’ll take the opportunity to bring attention to and further promote The New Urban Mobility talk being given on 12 March by Craig Kelley at the West End Museum.
It was also promoted on this site here.
I’ll be there. Let’s meet up, listen, learn, and discuss.
Adam, you should practice what you preach. The topic is about a woman on a bike with an infant who rode down a one way street in the wrong direction and having a verbal confrontation with a driver of a car. What does the New Urban Mobility talk ( whatever the hell that is) have to do with the topic?