I've been thinking about starting a cyclist-oriented "neighborhood watch" type organization because the police don't do much anything about violence against cyclists, much less more "minor" issues like parking in the bike lane. At the very least volunteers could document things like this properly.
Here are some examples of what I'd like to see a neighborhood watch organization do:
Proper investigations of crashes, near crashes, and violence against cyclists. The police generally don't care.
Keeping statistics. Those Twitter accounts are okay, but in my experience the police will often say things like "we had no reported incidents there" when I know that some were reported. I think having an independent database would be valuable.
Tracking down repeat offenders and giving them a talking to, and/or hosting an online wall-of-shame.
Helping cyclists handle bureaucracy, which seems to be designed to discourage people in my experience.
I have the uneasy feeling that police will never look into cyclist accidents very seriously. Way too many cyclists disobeying the rules, weaving through traffic, wandering from sidewalks to street and back again, ignoring signals, and on and on.
Sure I bet we all obey the rules. But there's that overwhelming mass of cyclists that don't, it will be hard to interest police in trying to separate the incidents.
I've looked at the statistics and cyclists don't break the law significantly more than drivers do. Drivers break different laws that are socially acceptable to break, like speeding.
But even the most pessimistic estimate of the probability of cyclists running reds linked to above (79%) isn't that much worse than drivers speeding. And in my experience, it's actually quite rare for a cyclist to blow through a red light without checking for oncoming traffic. Typically when a cyclist runs a red light, it's safe. (Not that you should do it.) I think speeding is much worse from a safety perspective.
That's perhaps the least dangerous of the bicycle maneuvers. Its the dashing from lane to lane, from street to sidewalk and back, into and out of blind spots unexpectedly that makes bicycles a hazard to themselves.
