Unsung: Caring mother looks out for bicyclists
by Teya Vitu on Dec. 25, 2006, under Local
Jean Gorman stands by a sign for the Memorial Bikeway dedicated to her late son Brad P. Gorman. The bikeway starts at Tanque Verde Road and goes to the Base of Mount Lemmon.
Jean Gorman doesn’t ride bikes – never really has.
But since Sept. 30, 1999, Gorman has been Tucson’s champion for bicycle safety.
Gorman’s behind the Share the Street bumpersticker, the Share the Road pocket guide and a law that increased fines for injuring or killing cyclists. She is cited in the League of American Bicyclists’ listing of Tucson as one of only seven cities to earn the gold award as a Bicycle Friendly Community.
On that September day seven years ago, her son, Brad, was killed while riding his bicycle on the flatland portion of Catalina Highway. A 17-year-old driver veered to the right edge where Brad Gorman was riding. A month later, the teen was fined $66 for unsafe passing.
That outraged Gorman. Even before then, in the days following her 41-year-old realtor son’s death, Gorman quickly became disheartened because police “were trying to blame my son. This started really with hard feelings right off the bat.”
Things moved quickly after her son’s death. Gorman immediately turned to the Tucson-Pima Bicycle Advisory Committee for help.
A month later, an informal downtown rally was held in Brad Gorman’s memory. The bicycling community showed up as did then-state House Rep. Debora Norris, as well as Rich Corbett, senior long-range transportation planner at the Pima Association of Governments.
Norris and former state Sen. Elaine Richardson quickly introduced legislation on passing a bicyclist and five months later, in April 2000, had a new law (ARS 28-735) requiring motorist to give a minimum of 3 feet clearance when passing a bicyclist. That law increased the fine for hitting a bicyclist to up to $500 in cases of injury and up to $1,000 if the cyclist dies.
“A senator asked me, ‘Why are you asking for such a high fine?’ ” Gorman said. “It isn’t. It’s still nothing for killing someone.”
Bill Katzel, a retired federal public health official, nominated Gorman for the Tucson Citizen’s Unsung Hero honor. Katzel took up cycling in 1990 as “an alternative to becoming a couch potato.”
“Jean has been a major contributor to the safety and welfare to hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians,” Katzel said. “I don’t know if you know how difficult it is to get a piece of legislation passed.”
Meanwhile, at PAG, Corbett worked to add 79 miles of bike lanes in the past two years to give Pima County 475 miles of bike lanes and 100 miles of bike routes. This earned the city and county the gold award as a Bicycle Friendly Community (the first countywide gold award). Gorman is on the steering committee to help elevate that to a platinum award – one which the League of American Cities has bestowed on a single city: Davis, Calif.
“She made lots of contributions in terms of thoughts and ideas (for the gold award application),” Corbett said. “Jean has been a considerable presence and still is.”
Gorman immediately became a regular at Bicycle Advisory Committee meetings, and a year later Mayor Bob Walkup appointed her to the committee, where she has remained since 2001.
The committee came up with a Share the Street bumper sticker and the city’s Transportation Department proposed buying 1,000 stickers at a time.
“This is not enough,” Gorman said. “I can go buy them. I started ordering 10,000 at a time.”
Gorman has bought 70,000 bumper sticker for $8,400, and now she and the county are splitting the cost for 15,000 more.
Gorman also paid the $14,000 to print the first 50,000 Share the Road pocket guides for bicyclists and motorists, put out by her committee, PAG and the Transportation Department. The guides, available at all local bike shops and libraries, give common-sense pointers to cyclist and drivers on safely sharing the road.
“I didn’t do all of this by myself,” Gorman said. “I inspire people to do this.”
Gorman has noticed that in recent years drivers have become better at paying attention to cyclists, but she said drivers and cyclists still must do a better job of sharing the road.
Gorman’s not done with improving cyclist safety. She wants to strengthen the state law that emerged from Brad’s death to increase fines and convert the violations from civil to criminal.
“I can’t quit,” Gorman said. “I don’t just want to sit there with blinders.”
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ON THE WEB
To see Tucson’s listing as a Gold Bicycle Friendly Award winner, go to this site:
www.bicyclefriendlycommunity.org/AllBicycleFriendlyCommunities.htm
To see an online version of the Share the Road pocket booklet, go to this site:
