Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Robert Schiro - a.k.a. Bob Schiro of Los Gatos is a plague on society

Several Years ago, Robert Schiro of Los Gatos hit cyclist Ashley Nelson and left her to die on the side of the road.

Here is a newspaper clip of his sentencing

Well, old Bob got out of the pokey, and raised the ante. Here is a post from Ashley as seen on the Noon Ride Facebook Page

Got ready to go for a run this am, then got am email about the man who caused my brain injury by hitting me with his BMW then running. He was sentenced to prison but got out. This is how the email went.... As it was most likely inevitable…Bob Shiro made an appearance in the village recently…causing quite a stir, which involved a wrecked car, lots of sheriffs and an arrest. He tried to go into the Plumed Horse and was asked to leave, he did have a few drinks at Casa de Cobre and then was told to wait while they called a taxi for him as they did not want him driving since he was so drunk. He left anyway…tried to get into a car that was not his (a small sedan) finally realized he was actually driving a Cadillac Escalade SUV (you can see how easy it would be to mistake the two right?!?) and got his keys to work in the SUV. He then started to drive away but hit the car in the parking space in front of him (another SUV which belonged to the owner of the 5 th Avenue second hand shop) but he couldn’t figure out what reverse gear was and decided just to floor the Cadillac in drive and force the other car forward enough to get out of his parking space. All the while people in the restaurants and the valets were yelling and screaming at him to stop and chasing after him. They got his license plate number, gave it to the sheriff, that they called when he started to drive off and they got involved. Alice, who is part owner of Casa was asked by the Sheriff’s to come along with them to identify him, as they knew from the license plate who it was. They know where he lives of course, so they drove Alice up to his house on the hill where the scene got even more interesting. Bob, making it home by some miracle without killing someone, could not figure out how to open the electric gate at his driveway, so what does he do, yes of course he floors the car and runs down the security gate at his house, thus causing a lot of damage to both the gate and his car. So much so that the air bags deploy and all his tires are punctured. So quite a scene to say the least. But of course Bob is not going to go easy is he…he tries to say his girlfriend (the Russian gold digger) was driving but even she is having none of that. The Sheriff of course know he was driving, they have a witness, Alice who states categorically that yes Bob is the one who got drunk and drove off after hitting the parked car, etc. The Sheriff told Alice that they have been watching Bob and waiting for a chance to arrest him again to get him off the streets as they know he is a danger to himself and others. I hope this gave them the ammo they needed to do just that.

A tale of two drivers.

The scene - riding North on Grove Street, Healdsburg, Ca. Speed limit, 35 MPH. One lane in each direction, with a row of sparsely used parking on each side.

The parking on Grove presents a nasty issue for cyclists - in the presence of unaware drivers. Generally the road presents itself to drivers as a super wide arterial - because the unoccupied parking makes the lane appear almost double wide. So surely the cyclist should be way over to the right, alongside the curb and out of the way of traffic. The problem with this is when you now approach a parked car, the cyclist has nowhere to go. Technically, you should ride as if there were a full line of cars parked on the road, just as if they were parked there, riding just to the left of the door zone. In practice, if there are no cars parked, I might just ride in the parking area in order to allow drivers unimpeded passing. I consider this being courteous in the lack of a safety hazard.

But if there is an occasional car parked alongside the road, it's important to establish lane positioning early, so that you don't end up approaching the parked car from behind while a driver begins their pass. An aware driver would sense that you will need to move laterally to the left to pass the parked car (with enough room to avoid the door zone) and slow to allow you your pass. In practice, most drivers don't see the upcoming merge that you will be making, and in many cases don't even see that you are there. So you need to establish position early such that the driver sees you.

Of course, just because the driver sees you occupying the travel lane, does not imply they will understand *why* you are "In the middle of the road!" instead of over there in that "perfectly good shoulder" which is not a shoulder, it's a row of parking spaces (a surprisingly large amount of drivers would call this row of parking spaces "the bike lane"). As such, some subset of drivers will get angry at you for being in the road instead of over to the right, oblivious to the fact that "over to the right" is blocked by a parked car.

On a recent trip down Grove, I saw two parked cars roughly 100 feet ahead, did a shoulder check, saw the lane was clear, signaled my intention to merge into the lane, established position, and roughly the point where I was passing the two parked cars, the driver behind me signaled their displeasure by laying on their horn, then making a rapid acceleration to pass in the oncoming travel lane. Anger issues and discourtesy.

On a later trip however, I encountered a very aware, excellent driver. Further down Grove the parking disappears to add a middle lane to allow for turns in either direction off of Grove. Here, I ride on the shoulder but in this case I needed to merge into the middle of the lane and then further left into the turn lane in order to turn left into my health club. I made a shoulder check and saw a car approaching from behind and decided to wait. I looked back again and the driver had slowed - this was a very situation aware driver. The driver noted me do my shoulder check and realized that I was probably preparing to make a left, and slowed to allow me to make my merge across. I signalled, merged, then gave the thumbe up to the driver, who returned the thumbs up as they passed on the right.

Situational awareness and courtesy. Not dead.