Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
As of this writing, we’re up to 1,011 signatures, so let’s keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us!
⚠️UPDATE for TUES (3/12) AM⚠️ Expect Delays and Seek Other Routes on Route 1 (PCH) in #Malibu (1 lane open w/alternating traffic) and full closure on Route 27 south of #Topanga due to rain-related slides. Avoid area. Check https://t.co/O37QesJHpw for updates. Watch for Workers! pic.twitter.com/O5pNFMWoDc
As we mentioned yesterday, hats off to Tish and Greg Laemmle, owners of the Laemmle Theater chain, for once again leading a group bike ride from West LA to Sunday’s Oscar ceremony, as the following photos attest.
I can imagine few things more badass or sending a stronger message than walking the red carpet holding a bike helmet.
Tish and Greg Laemmle preparing to ride to the Oscars
The assembled entourage posing in front of the Laemmle on Santa Monica Blvd
And in a reminder that there’s always a troll around, a participant on the ride responds to a commenter’s faux concern about scofflaw riders.
we obeyed traffic lights. if part of the group had to stop for a red, the group ahead of them pulled over and waited. we rode in bike lanes and only took the lane if there was no bike lane; usually the road was marked with sharrows markings which told cars to share the road.
The East Side Riders Bike Club will now be hosting Bicycle Safety and Education Classes, aka BEAST, as Keller Park every Saturday; participants will get a free bike helmet.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Cincinnati public radio station says bicyclists wonder if a Covington KY road diet, and new bike lanes on a bridge things, will make things better or worse, but can only seem to find people who think it will get better. But they do find the city’s mayor, arguing that the city’s streets are too narrow for bike lanes, and you just can’t take people’s parking away, because cars matter more than people’s safety, evidently.
There’s a special place in hell for the two men who stopped to “help” a seriously injured mountain biker in York, England, and made off with his bike, instead.
Santa Monica police will conduct yet another Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Operation this Thursday and Friday, targeting anyone who commits a traffic violation that could endanger either group, regardless of who commits it. As usual, ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limit line, so you’re not the one who gets written up and fined.
Sad news from San Jose, where a woman died a week after she was struck by a motorcyclist while riding her bicycle across the street. The story notes that she was riding “outside of any marked crosswalks,” even though there’s no requirement for bicyclists to ride in one.
Residents of Valdosta, Georgia are understandably horrified when the driver of a city-owned semi was caught on security cam right-hooking a 56-year old man riding a bicycle, who had pulled up next to the truck at a red light just as the light was changing; the victim remains in stable but critical condition. Naturally, one commenter said “Bicyclists should know traffic laws,” even though the victim didn’t appear to break any.
Bicycling says wet cobbles couldn’t slow Lorena Wiebes down at the Ronde van Drenthe. Although this one doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else yet, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you.
Writing about Monday’s performative press conference to announce a lousy $4.2 million in safety work for the 21 miles of PCH that snakes along the Pacific Coast — which works out to just $200,000 a mile — they almost immediately called the announcement into question.
While there is a process each project will have to undergo, “this is not a ‘business as usual’ approach,” Omishakin said as cars whizzed past.
After several deadly pedestrian crashes that roiled Malibu and sparked calls for change, business as usual won’t be enough, transportation activists said. Damian Kevitt, founder of Streets Are for Everyone, told The Times the “design of PCH through Malibu is simply and clearly deadly.”
“It needs to be a transformed from a highway where people can do 60 to 80 to even 100 mph through residential [areas] and businesses, with families and cyclists, unprotected, just a couple feet away,” Kevitt said.
Hopefully, Caltrans can demonstrate a little more urgency than the $34.6 million project currently underway to sync red lights along the highway, presumably to make speeding drivers stop for red while the typically non-existent non-speeding drivers on the highway will see greens.
The project was approved seven years ago, but because the highway is under California Department of Transportation jurisdiction, it had to be reviewed by the state.
“The Caltrans review process, while undoubtedly necessary for ensuring regulatory compliance and safety standards, proved to be more cumbersome than anticipated,” said Matt Myerhoff, Malibu’s public information officer.
Gee, you think?
Although red lights are typically synced to smooth traffic flow, rather than control speeds.
Meanwhile, Caltrans pledged to study PCH to determine if it can be designated as a safety corridor, in which fines for speeding can be doubled.
But f the mounting death toll on the highway isn’t prima facie proof of the problem, I don’t know what yet another study will accomplish. Then again, you could quadruple the fines, and it won’t matter if the drivers don’t get caught.
Which points to the sheer stupidity of California’s speed cam pilot program only being allowed in Los Angeles, Glendale and Long Beach, along with three NorCal cities, while completely ignoring the state’s deadliest corridors.
But still.
Members of Seetoo’s Fix PCH Action Team, including Kevitt, say the seven years it took Caltrans to allow Malibu to begin the signal synchronization project “doesn’t indicate that Caltrans is prioritizing safety at all.”
Collecting and studying the data could mean “years and years more delay before they even decide if they can slow down this highway that is known to be deadly,” Kevitt said.
Chris Wizner, another action team member, told The Times he wondered how many more deaths it would take for Caltrans to slow down PCH.
That’s easy.
The formula has always been N+1.
It will take one more death than we’ve already suffered, no matter how many there have already been.
………
A Santa Barbara cop takes a turn at demonstrating he knows nothing about riding in a peloton, without saying it, as a group of Santa Barbara bicyclists got delayed tickets in the mail for following one another too closely, after one rider went down and took several other riders down with him.
Insult to injury rant: Group ride Santa Barbara to Ventura & back Nov. 21, a cyclist in the peloton front crashed & took down several of us. EMTs came & took me for a brain scan. I'm fine. Cop pretended to help me as he asked my name etc.
Insult to injury rant: Group ride Santa Barbara to Ventura & back Nov. 21, a cyclist in the peloton front crashed & took down several of us. EMTs came & took me for a brain scan. I’m fine. Cop pretended to help me as he asked my name etc.
I just got a ticket for “following too close”. In a peloton. Seriously. $235 or contest it in court.
I’m tempted on principle. Would love to confront this cop & ask why he didn’t give me the ticket then & there (others also got tickets in the mail). He probably knows we would have pitched a fit.
Disgraceful. I’m lying there on the ground in paid, bloody & nauseous & this MF cop is writing me up for a traffic violation. No wonder people don’t trust the police. “Protect & Serve”. Bullshit.
Okay, maybe I know why this one slipped under the radar.
Regardless, the UPU asked children to write on the following topic:
“Imagine you are a super hero and your mission is to make all roads around the world safer for children. Write a letter to someone explaining which super powers you would need to achieve your mission.”
The winner, a 13-year old girl from Kenya, requests a simple super power — the ability to write posters that will make drivers slow down, because children are the most helpless road users.
Amen.
………
Thanks to Megan Lynch for forwarding the following video, which includes these key points:
Soul-crushing car traffic makes the Yosemite experience very frustrating
That frustration gets unloaded on retail workers there
You should definitely ride a bike in Yosemite
But don’t leave anything on your bike because even in Yosemite thieves will strip it to the frame
No bias here. A New York councilmember calls for mandatory licensing and registration of ebikes, rhetorically asking “How many actual ebikes do you see stopping at a red light or observing traffic laws?” Just wait until someone tells him about cars and their drivers, which are already registered and licensed, and regularly break traffic laws anyway.
A local San Francisco website says sales data doesn’t back up claims from merchants along Valencia Street that the new centerline bike lane has killed their business, showing just a 6% drop in retail sales during construction of the bike lanes. Although to be fair, a 6% drop can mean the difference between profit and loss for some businesses, but it’s a far cry from what they claimed.
More on the bizarre ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court that says cities aren’t liable for injuries to bike riders due to bad pavement because streets without bike lanes aren’t intended for bicycles.
Inmates in a New Hampshire county jail are learning to repair bicycles, working towards their master bike technician certification while serving their time. Which should provide a nice incentive to commit another crime if they get released before earning their certification.
A Long Island woman faces a host of charges, including 2nd degree assault and disabling an Interlock device, for speeding through a parking lot where a triathlon was being held and slamming into a competitor riding his bike, leaving the victim with a traumatic brain injury and cervical spine fracture.
International
Toronto’s paramedic’s union said a controversial protected bike lane cost an ambulance crew 30 seconds getting through an intersection because drivers couldn’t get out of their way. Maybe someone should tell them those little car-tickler plastic posts are designed to bend, so you can drive right over them.
While the risk of high-profile vehicles is well documented, a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows even flat-front, medium–height vehicles present a higher risk of pedestrian fatalities compared with similarly-sized cars with low or sloped front ends.
And guess what the current automotive style trend is.
According to the study, vehicles measuring just 30 to 40 inches from the street to the top of the hood posed a 25% greater risk of pedestrian deaths. And presumably, the same or greater risk to people on bicycles.
The new study reveals, though, that even cars that Americans think of as “medium sized” aren’t necessarily safe, either. Nearly 35 percent of U.S. vehicles are now designed with a blunt — and significantly more deadly — front end, the study authors said, citing a recent re-design of the Ford Mustang…
“Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about four inches wider, 10 inches longer, eight inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier,” the Insurance Institute added. “Many vehicles are more than 40 inches tall at the leading edge of the hood.”
And they wonder why traffic deaths have been going up every year.
As long as federal regulations continue to allow the seemingly endless motor vehicle size creep — and allow car makers to literally design their vehicles to kill anyone not safely ensconced in a couple tons of glass and steel — that’s not going to change.
But sharing responsibility with their alleged killer are the officials who have done little or nothing to correct the single deadliest surface street in LA County.
Here’s how SAFE put it in their press release.
Any single loss of a loved one and community member due to a preventable traffic collision is tragic. The loss of four in one incident is horrific, but these preventable collisions are made worse by the fact that the short stretch of PCH that travels through residential and business areas of Malibu has been known for decades as a dangerous road with vehicles regularly doing 60-80 MPH and sometimes well over 100.
Since 2010 there have been 58 fatalities (including the four young women just killed) and about 2500 individuals injured. The single largest factor in these crashes is reckless speeding. (Source LA County Sheriff’s Dept and TIMS) For decades the community of Malibu, including various family members of those who have been killed and city officials, has asked Caltrans (the government agency responsible for PCH) to slow down PCH and re-engineer it. Little has been done.
In 2015 the California Office of Traffic Safety commissioned a study of PCH through Pacific Palisades and Malibu called the PCH Pedestrian Safety Project. In that report, there were 130 improvements recommended for the section of PCH in Malibu, including reducing the speed limit of PCH through the most densely populated areas. In the eight years since that report, Caltrans has implemented 6 of the recommendations (the City of Malibu has implemented additional recommendations with Caltrans approval) and none of the most effective recommendations have been accomplished. There is still a 45 MPH speed limit – too fast for the road conditions through Malibu. Drivers still often drive 60+ MPH through this built-up, high-pedestrian area, because there are few stop lights, and traffic calming measures are lacking.
“It’s been eight years since the 2015 safety recommendations were issued. Caltrans has done virtually nothing since then to reduce unsafe driving on PCH in Malibu. EIGHT YEARS! What else has Caltrans been doing over that time that is more important than stopping people being killed at this rate on such a short stretch of road?” – Barry Stewart (Father of Peyton Stewart, killed along with her three friends by a speeding driver on PCH.)
The question is how many more people will have to die before someone, anyone, finally does something to fix the problem.
Because the modest tinkering around the edges that passes for safety improvements on LA’s killer highway clearly haven’t done anything to save lives.
And if the deaths of four innocent young women isn’t enough to convince state, county and local officials to do something, I don’t know what will.
Maybe someday, carmakers will finally try to design their vehicles to make fewer victims to remember, and traffic engineers and elected officials will build roads that don’t contribute to the problem.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Nope, no bias here. A former Baltimore city council president decried a recent road diet and bike lanes, saying “There are elitist, fanatical people who believe they want to improve the world by getting rid of cars and the way they do it is by narrowing every street that they can, even if it has a negative effect on the city.” Never mind that lane reductions and bike lanes have been repeatedly shown to improve safety for everyone, and often improve traffic flow while increasing sales for local businesses. But sure, just keep hating on people working to make positive changes on our streets. Schmuck.
No bias here, either. After police ignored a sideswipe hit-and-run by a motor scooter rider that knocked a London man famed for bicycling with his cat off his bike, telling him only that he should wear a helmet, the victim has received thousands of abusive messages on social media — going so far as telling him to kill himself — and been reported to the SPCA for animal abuse.
Alhambra’s newly revealed active transportation plan calls for more than 50 miles of new bike lanes, as well as several new pedestrian priority zones. Let’s just hope they follow through. Because, as we’ve learned the hard way here in Los Angeles, a mobility plan is only as good as the city’s commitment to it.
Santa Monica cops will be conducting another bicycle and pedestrian safety operation today, ticketing anyone committing a traffic violation that could put bike riders or pedestrians at risk. So if you haven’t left for your ride yet, ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limits, so you’re not the one who gets ticketed.
State
Streetsblog’sMelanie Curry examines the new Calbike survey showing most respondents are afraid to walk or bike on roadways controlled by Caltrans, four years after Governor Newsom vetoed a bill that would have mandated Complete Streets because, in his words, “Caltrans was already doing that.” Apparently not.
San Francisco state Assemblymember Phil Ting writes about securing more than $2 million for bicycling programs in the city, including $1.2 million for safety improvements to Arguello Blvd between Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, where champion cyclist Ethan Boyes was killed earlier this year. Maybe someday, a Los Angeles-area legislator will secure funding to fix the site where someone, anyone, was killed on our streets.
National
Seattle is nearing completion on a $40 million curb-protected bike lane connecting the Capitol Hill neighborhood with downtown, although design compromises — like rerouting it onto a sidewalk and around light post to avoid inconveniencing drivers — could reduce its effectiveness.
Advocates in my bike-friendly Colorado hometown are working to turn the site of the former college football stadium where I used to smuggle rum inside my tuba on game days into a massive 60 to 80 acre world class bike park. I mean, the statute of limitations for that is over, right?
That’s more like it. A 27-year old Michigan man will spend between 3.6 and 15 years behind bars, less four days for time served, for the drunken hit-and-run that killed a 30-year old man riding a bicycle; he was nearly three times the legal alcohol limit when he fled the scene, dragging the victim nearly a mile and a half under his van.
$70,000 worth of bicycles belonging to competitors in September’s triathlon World Championship race in Pontevedra, Spain are being held hostage by a subcontractor for the shipping company, which insists they are owed $300,000 in unpaid invoices. However, the roughly 180 people whose bikes they’re holding aren’t the ones who allegedly stiffed them.
While state and local officials can and should take immediate action to make the road safer, such as putting in more traffic lights and getting permission to install automated speed enforcement cameras, it’s also time to rethink the configuration of PCH through Malibu. It’s a state highway that runs through the middle of the community. The road now caters to commuters and pass-through traffic. It could be redesigned to function as a local road with more sidewalks, traffic signals, bike lanes and crosswalks that force motorists to slow down and drive as though they’re in a city — because they are.
A road redesign won’t be easy. Sections of PCH through Malibu are squeezed between mountains and the ocean, leaving little room to add sidewalks or protected bike lanes without removing a traffic lane or parking or buying expensive property for widening. And it certainly wouldn’t be without controversy, given how many people rely on PCH for different needs. It’s a commuting route, a residential neighborhood, a business district and a destination for beachgoers.
It’s definitely worth reading the whole thing.
Because Los Angeles County’s killer highway is going to keep taking innocent lives until we make some major changes.
……..
Jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of 35-year old Kaitlin Armstrong, who faces up to 99 years behind bars for fatally shooting rising gravel champ Anna Moriah “Mo” Wilson in Austin, Texas last year.
Armstrong was arrested in Costa Rica after she allegedly fled the country to avoid prosecution, living under an assumed name as a yoga instructor, dying her formerly red hair, and reportedly having plastic surgery to change her appearance.
Prosecutors accuse Armstrong of killing Wilson for being the other woman in a perceived love triangle for the affections of pro cyclist Colin Strickland.
Armstrong added to the media’s fascination with the case by attempting to escape when she was taken to a doctor’s appointment last month, and trying in vain to climb a fence despite being handcuffed.
Dr. Grace Peng provides a powerful thread on the absurd limits placed on bike-riding kids in the South Bay.
Click on the posts to read the full thread on Twitter/X.
Arterial roads are graded for trucks, so they have gentler grades suitable for acoustic bikes. But kids are shunted off them to steeper side streets. As TowWhee explains, kids aren't out of shape. They have a lower strength to weight ratio to their bikes. https://t.co/bD8JcMnRYfpic.twitter.com/lSAIyUyVx6
A road-raging British bike rider admitted punching a driver in a dispute over a close pass last month, arguing that he was clipped by the driver’s mirror. Violence is never the answer, no matter how justified it may seem in the moment.
The California Transportation Commission is holding a public meeting at 1 pm today, both online and in-person, to gather input on the state’s Interregional Transportation Improvement Program, which includes more bike and train projects, as well as flushing more money down the induced-demand toilet for highway projects; they’ll hold another meeting November 8th.
A 41-year old woman suffered a broken pelvis when a driver struck her bike in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood; police blamed the victim, saying she was riding with no lights and wearing dark clothing. Because evidently, cars down there don’t have lights that could illuminate someone directly in front of them.
A Texas city installs pretty artistic bike racks, including one that looks like a giant children’s toy. Because everyone knows the best bike racks are the ones no one uses because they don’t look like bike racks.
This is who we share the road with. A New York drunk driver allegedly caused a multi-car crash that injured eight people Sunday, after previously serving six years for the hit-and-run crash that killed a woman riding a bicycle. Just one more example of officials allowing a deadly driver back on the road, as well as argument for why hit-and-run drivers should lose their licenses permanently.
It’s only a pity that the people who have gone out of their way to keep this killer highway dangerous and deadly won’t face charges with him.
It was nearly a decade ago that I began representing the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, now BikeLA, on the PCH Task Force.
The task force was created by the state legislators who then represented the Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica and Ventura County areas to address safety and other concerns on the highway, with input from the various stakeholders.
The LACBC took an interest because PCH is such a popular route for bicyclists of all kinds. And claimed so many as victims.
In fact, it is the single most deadly roadway for bike riders in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
The LACBC joined with other representatives to demand safety improvements to the highway, ranging from road diets and protected bike lanes, to eliminating roadside parking and reducing speed limits.
In almost every case, we were told what we were asking for was impossible. We were told the road, Malibu’s 22-mile long main street, was necessary to funnel commuters from Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley in and out of the LA area.
The overly wide traffic lanes, high speed limits that were nearly universally exceeded, slip lane right turns and roadside parking were all necessary to prevent excessive traffic congestion, or so we were told.
Never mind they also encouraged speeding drivers weaving in and out of slower traffic 22 hours a day. And put bike riders at needless risk of right hooks and dooring.
Caltrans, which has responsibility for the roadway, could have taken steps to dramatically improve safety years ago.
They didn’t.
Malibu, Los Angeles and Santa Monica could have demanded changes that would have saved lives.
They didn’t.
Sure, minor changes were made. A painted bike lane here, widening the shoulder there. But the killer highway remained, and remains, a deadly speedway for most of the day and night.
Now four young women, who did nothing to put their lives in danger, are dead — victims of an alleged speeding driver, and the officials, engineers and bureaucrats who enabled him.
The young man behind the wheel is likely to be middle-aged before he gets out of prison, unless an overly lenient judge takes pity on him.
It’s just a pity that the others who have worked so hard to keep PCH so deadly won’t be there with him.
What a fucking waste.
A 2013 publication highlights the joys of biking sans helmets on SoCal’s deadliest highway.
Yet once again, they fail to put any of it in context.
Injuries can be expected to rise with increasing rates of any activity. If more people started playing Frisbee golf, we’d see rising rates of arm and impact injuries as a result.
What matters is whether those injuries are rising faster than the increase in ridership, or becoming more serious than a baseline of bicycling injuries.
Unless and until we have that context, reports like this are nothing more than a concerning, but anecdotal, data point.
……..
Frequent contributor Megan Lynch forwards news that UC Davis journalism students, not the professional press, are digging into what’s been done since a student was killed by a university employee while riding her bike.
I was lucky enough to be logged on to Mastodon at the time the MuckRock bot sent this through. Otherwise I’d never have known someone was finally making a CPRA request on this. Sadly, it was not made by UC Davis student journalists, but students in a journalism class at University of Nevada, Reno.
You may remember that (19-year old sophomore)Tris Yasay was killed by a yet-unnamed UC Davis employee driving a UC Davis sanitation truck on May 25, 2022. First responders were all UC Davis employees as well (UCDPD and UCDFD). Local press didn’t ask many questions and the few that the Davis Enterprise followed up on was because I got after the reporter about it. It still wasn’t what was needed. UC Davis was successful in burying the questions.
So far as I know, UC Davis has not done any campaign to re-train its own drivers or at least it has not publicized one. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the claim was that the driver could not see the cyclist in the side view mirror. In which case, the position and efficacy of these mirrors needs to be examined. Because cyclists are a regular feature of the UC Davis campus and if the side view does not accurately reflect what’s going on, drivers should be trained to crane their heads around and look for themselves BEFORE turning. “Blind” spots should be minimized on the vehicle.
But haven’t read about any of that happening.
I’m interested to see what the student journalist finds and if the MuckRock interface will let everyone see it when UC Davis responds. They also requested the City of Davis Bicycle Action Plan.
……..
Our Deutschland correspondent Ralph Durham forwards a newsletter from the ADFC, aka General German Bicycle Club, on the subject of licensing bicycles, and why that’s a bad idea.
Bicycling offers a requiem and post-mortem for the popular Surly Cross Check, which has been discontinued by the bikemaker. This one doesn’t seem to be available from other sources, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you.
The wife and daughter of fallen former Bell, California police chief Andreas “Andy” Probst first realized he was injured when they got an alert of a fall from his Apple Watch, then heard police sirens and helicopters just blocks from their Las Vegas home; two teens face murder charges for intentionally running down Probst in a stolen car, apparently just for the hell of it.
Once again, a cop has killed someone riding a bicycle, this time in Marion County, Florida, where a 22-year old sheriff’s deputy ran down a 63-year old man early Wednesday; investigators quickly blamed the victim for riding on a dark roadway without a helmet or reflective clothing, or using lights on his bike. Because apparently, patrol cars in Florida don’t have headlights that could have illuminated someone riding a bike.
October 28, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Possible serious injury crash in Malibu, LADOT and BSS work together at last, and battered Finneas is one of us
The section from Heathercliff to Bonsall was shut down after the driver of a vehicle transport carrier hit someone riding a bicycle yesterday afternoon.
Closing the entire roadway in both directions for a crash investigation suggests the victim may have suffered serious, potentially life-threatening injuries; police usually don’t close the road entirely unless there’s a death or possibly fatal injuries.
Let’s hope that’s wrong in this case and they’re okay, whoever it is.
If you can call a flimsy plastic bollard protection.
New bike lanes on San Vicente Blvd are ready thanks to the hard work of @LADOTofficial, @BSSLosAngeles, @Midcitywest, & @PICONC2. The BLAST program, a new City project, will develop new bike lanes with street resurfacing––making it easier & faster to expand our bike lane network. pic.twitter.com/GtguUqKEtY
The program marks a new effort to coordinate operations of the Bureau of Street Services with LADOT, which both bike and government advocates have been demanding for years, if not decades.
It appears to mimic Healthy Streets LA by implementing bikeway projects as streets are resurfaced, though it lacks the initiative’s enforcement mechanism to require implementation after resurfacing.
It also doesn’t necessarily follow the city’s mobility plan, let alone the 2010 bike plan.
LADOT provided this plan for the BLAST project for Windward Circle in Venice – impressive! Two-way protected bikeways, painted curb extensions and more! pic.twitter.com/l6da11aN6w
Streetsblog also notes that these projects will happen after termed-out LA Mayor Eric Garcetti leaves office at the end of this year, after overseeing a dramatic drop in implementing bike lanes.
Though the next 24 bikeway projects sound like they will be great, note also that Garcetti presided over a precipitous decline in new and upgraded bikeway mileage pic.twitter.com/xe2sKZAO7E
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Berkeley letter writer trots out the usual town versus gown conflict, complaining that a new bike lane supported by university students will kill local businesses, to the detriment of longtime residents. Never mind that studies show bike lanes are good for business, even if they require removing parking spaces. And chances are, the university was there long before she lived there, and will be there long after she’s gone.
This Bentley driver in Kensington — I'm shocked. Basically if you disobey his imaginary rules of the road, he will punish you. The horn behind me was the first sign. A Bentley convertible retails at about £200k so I thought he might be a little more gracious to lesser mortals. pic.twitter.com/h6pe8m7qKG
San Jose reached a 25-year high for pedestrian deaths, with 29 people killed walking the city’s streets; no word on how many of the 54 people overall killed in traffic collisions were riding bikes.
An Oakland website asks candidates for mayor how they would improve street safety, after 11 people were killed on city streets this summer; one councilmember is calling for increased police enforcement — despite his own DUI arrest — and turned down funds for a seven-mile bikeway.
An Oklahoma man was sentenced to ten years behind bars for the shooting death of a man riding a bicycle; he was driving the car when the victim was shot by another man, who was sentenced to life last week.
Misdemeanor charges have been filed against a white Milwaukee man who was caught on video grabbing a young Black man by the neck after accusing him of stealing his friend’s bikes; the 25-year old victim reportedly has the mental capacity of a five-year old. Although it appears the man may have been right about the stolen bikes.
There’s a special place in hell for anyone who could flee the scene after killing a 13-year old Ohio kid riding his bike; a suspect is on trial for hit-and-run and vehicular homicide, as well as possessing coke when he was arrested the next day.
Miami is lowering the speed limit on the city’s deadly Rickenbacker Causeway to improve safety for bike riders, after several fatal crashes in recent years. Although lowering the limit just 5 mph, from 45 mph to 40 mph, may not make as big a difference as they might hope. Particularly when so many drivers ignore it anyway.
Traffic signals were upgraded at the intersection in 2014 to improve safety; clearly, it didn’t work.
Unfortunately, there’s no further information at this time. No word on which way the victim and his killer where going, or how the crash occurred.
This is at least the seventh bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the third that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
It’s also the fourth person killed riding a bike on PCH in Malibu in just the last none months. Just more evidence of a serious traffic safety problem in the beachfront city.
Correction: I originally misidentified the cross street as Black Rock, rather than Big Rock, for reasons that will forever escape me. Thanks to Andrew Goldstein for the heads-up.
December 21, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Breaking News: Bike rider killed in PCH collision near Big Rock Drive in Malibu; 3rd PCH bicycling death this year
It looks like LA County’s killer highway has claimed yet another victim.
Video from the scene appears to place the crash on the westbound side of the roadway, where riders are forced to either share the lane with impatient drivers, or use the poor quality shoulder, which varies in width and is frequently blocked by debris and parked cars.
Malibu State Senator Henry Stern had this to say after driving by the aftermath of the crash.
A coat. A book. A toothbrush. A can of beans split open. A few other cans that weren’t. He has a name. He was once a baby boy to a mom and dad. Every life, even those among us who sleep in the dust and have no one, is of equal and immeasurable value.
Just take a few minutes to practice an attitude of gratitude, and find something to give thanks for. Even if it’s just making it through another year in these trying times.
And if you can take a break from stuffing yourself with stuffing, find some time to get out for a bike ride. Take it from me, there are few better days to ride, as long as you make it back before all those drivers high on tryptophan start crawling back home.
Then come back on Friday, when we’ll officially kick off the 7th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive, and I shamelessly beg for your hard-earned money to help keep this site coming your way every day.
We’ll be back on Monday with more Morning Links to catch up on anything we missed. And of course, we’ll be here over the weekend if there’s any breaking news.
And yes, that’s the royal “we,” unless you count our intern and spokesdog up there on the left.
Now stay safe, and enjoy the ride. I want to see you back here next week.
And that’s on top of the usual benefits like reducing traffic congestion and improving air quality.
Investment in cycleways was one of the best ways of creating jobs through infrastructure spend, more than any other infrastructure project aside from energy efficiency in buildings, reported the TUC’s 2020 study. Thirty-three jobs are created for every $1.4 million invested in walking or cycling infrastructure over a two-year period, found the TUC.
The Bicycle Association’s 32-page report claims that increasing cycling’s modal share to 14% is “realizable” because net-zero ambitions will require a shift from private motor car use to other means, including cycling.
There’s absolutely no reason to believe the same wouldn’t hold true in Los Angeles, or most other major cities. And it should be easier to realize that kind of increase in Los Angeles, with its temperate climate and mostly flat terrain.
All that’s missing is the political will and financial investment to make it happen.
So what the hell are we waiting for?
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This is the cost of traffic violence.
If it’s true about that which does not kill you, one LA bicyclist is going to be pretty damn strong once she gets back on her feet.
Then again, it sounds like she already is.
A reader named Mitchell reached out to me yesterday to ask if I’d heard about Peta Takai, a master’s road and gravel cyclist who was critically injured in a collision while riding on PCH last September.
Apparently, she was riding near La Costa Beach in Malibu when a kid driving the family Range Rover made an illegal U-turn and slammed into her.
As she notes, she has a very long road ahead of her to get her life back, let alone get back on her bike some day.
A crowdfunding page has raised $28,100, easily topping the low $20,000 goal. But given the extent of her injuries, and the months, if not years, of rehab that will be required, that’s likely just a fraction of what she’s going to need.
So if you’ve got a few extra bucks, send them her way. And tell your friends to do the same.
And maybe remember her on Giving Tuesday next week.
Thanks to Mitchell for the heads-up, and hats off to Giant Santa Monica, which I’m told helped raise funds for her.
And you can make that crowdfunding total $28,120 now.
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Maybe we’ll see some decent bike parking at the Arboretum soon.
Fingers crossed.
Thank you for your comments, and patience. Apologies for the inadequate amenities for bikers. Improvements coming soon, so thanks for bearing with us!
San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge is about to get a 15 mph speed limit for bike riders, with fines ranging from $238 to $490 for anyone caught speeding. The question is whether the limit will be enforceable against riders without a cycling computer or speedometer, who would have no way of knowing they’re exceeding it — especially since there is no statutory requirement to have one on your bike.
Smaller communities are getting creative to promote ebike use, including Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, which uses a pair of freestanding solar-powered bikeshare docks to recharge the bikes. They also have a pretty damn good trout stream, too.
In a truly awful piece, a writer in San Diego’s Ocean Beach neighborhood complains that bike advocates are lying about this years rash of bicycling deaths to foist an anti-car agenda on the car-driving public.
He has the shameless audacity to go through each death one by one, pointing out how the victims were, or could have been, at fault, but from his windshield-biased perspective.
Never mind that he’s relying on newspaper accounts for his information, which as we’ve seen, too often don’t contain the salient facts and leave far too many blanks to fill.
And all too often, are based on police reports, which can, and usually do, reflect the officer’s windshield bias, and a basic lack of training when it comes to bike laws.
I had intended to open today’s post with a lengthy rant dissecting his arguments. But soon discovered that Peter Flax had beaten me to the punch.
The central premise of Page’s story is that bike advocates and city leader in San Diego have dishonestly tried to leverage the spate of riders being killed there to get more bike lanes built — “to further the cycling agenda” as he puts it. In his argument, the connection between people dying and the need for better riding infrastructure is mostly fictious and totally overblown. And then to prove his hypothesis, Page does some light googling and sets out to demonstrate that nearly all the cycling deaths that have occurred in San Diego were likely the riders’ own fault. It’s an eye-opening exercise in victim blaming.
Above all, the story is inhumane and recklessly presumptive. Imagine thinking that you could spend an hour on Google, read a handful of day-one news stories, and then feel equipped to pronounce that strangers in your community have been killed because of their own errors or bad judgment. Imagine being an editor or publisher and thinking you want to publish that kind of a hot take on your site.
Then Flax did something remarkable.
He reached out to the man who penned that awful piece, and held a non-judgmental online discussion — nonjudgmental on his side, anyway — on why he wrote it.
In your story, you state quite firmly that five of these deaths were the fault of the cyclists, and that several made “poor choices” and several more died in circumstances where blame cannot be assigned. This adds up to nearly all the deaths in San Diego. Can you see how many people felt like you were engaged in victim blaming?
I did not blame any victims. I recounted that the news stories on five of these clearly showed the cyclist was at fault, that was not me making a decision based on the facts. The facts in five more do not say who was at fault, not a conclusion I came to. I have responded to several comments asking for a specific instance of victim blaming in my article. Nothing.
It’s not victim blaming these folks are upset about. They are upset because I had the temerity to challenge the cycling narrative to the public by debunking their claim about what these 12 deaths meant. My target was dishonesty.
Unfortunately, the conversation accomplished exactly what you’d expect, with the author unbudging in his unbridled victim blaming, and accusations of some subversive cyclist agenda.
But you have to give Flax credit.
That could not have been an easy conversation to have. And he went out of his way to understand the other man, and to be fair.
But this kind of attitude is, sadly, all too common.
One where we are seen, not as ordinary people simply trying to stay safe on the streets, but as wild-eyed activists pushing a radical anti-car agenda to force the unwilling car-driving public onto bicycles.
When the truth is, we’re just trying to get from here to there in one piece.
And too often, failing.
Photo from the bike path in Santa Monica, which will have to stand in for Ocean Beach.
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Malibu’s continually rescheduled discussion of a plan to widen the shoulder on a two-mile section of PCH, instead of building bike lanes, which will presumably put bike riders in the door zone — unless maybe they won’t — is back on the agenda for tomorrow night.
Ask the City of Malibu to add safe, protected bike lanes to PCH
There is a special Planning Commission Meeting (RESCHEDULED) in Malibu this Wednesday at 630pm where they are going to discuss approving a plan to widen the shoulder on 2 miles of Pacific Coast Highway between Webb Way and Puerto Canyon Road to add MORE parking.
Their proposal really only benefits cars and puts people on bikes in the “door zone.” We need them to do better – it’s time for Caltrans and Malibu to add protected bike lanes to PCH.
Maybe the ‘Bu is just hoping we’ll all stop paying attention if they postpone it enough times.
Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.
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The author of this tweet sent it to my attention to point out a dangerous condition on the bike lanes on Venice Blvd.
Safety Alert! Several RV's on Venice Blvd have pop-outs protruding several feet into bicycle lanes. Very dangerous for everyone as pedestrians often have to use bike paths due to encampments blocking sidewalks in @mikeboninla's district. @LAPDPacificpic.twitter.com/AR2pjJqAzW
— Boninville (Wild Skid Row West) (@VeniceCitizen) September 5, 2021
To be honest, it’s hard for me to get too worked up about this simply because it’s been going on for so long.
Whether’s it’s RVs, illegally parked semis and construction trucks, or some other obstacle, the Venice bike lanes are frequently blocked in one place or another from one end to another, and have been for years.
Enforcement doesn’t seem to do any good. Ticketing or towing drivers for parking illegally only seems to work in the moment, until they come back a day or two later.
If not the same day.
The only solution I can see is to install protected bike lanes from Downtown to the coast. And preferably designed so drivers won’t just park in it anyway, like the LAPD and delivery drivers already do in DTLA.
Which should have been done already.
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Sunset4All held a successful celebration of LA’s first public/private partnership to transform one of the city’s most dangerous streets.
This is who we share the road with. A 22-year old Los Angeles man is dead following a road rage confrontation after a minor fender bender. He chased the other driver when she left the scene, then was thrown to the street after somehow ending up on her hood during a second confrontation.
Streets For All is hosting another virtual happy hour a week from tomorrow, with special guest LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds. Which makes it the perfect opportunity to ask why the bike plan is still just “aspirational,” and why Vision Zero and the city’s Green New Deal seem to have been pushed so far onto the back burner they’re in danger of falling off entirely.
Reno bike advocates are up in arms after the city calls for a $100,000 study to reroute a planned bike lane, because the casinos complained that they don’t want one in front of their businesses. Apparently failing to grasp that bike riders are used to gambling, since we have to do it on a daily basis.
Kansas police insist they’ve got the right man now, after arresting a motorist for shooting and killing a man, apparently to steal his bicycle, after they’d both visited the same business; another man was cleared of the crime after being arrested earlier, but was still being held on outstanding warrants.
Speaking of Singapore, a woman had a far too close call when she fell off her bike and nearly landed in the path of a large truck. Although all the commenters seemed to care about is that the group of bicyclists she was with wasn’t supposed to be on that highway to begin with.
Colombian Miguel Angel Lopez apologized for giving up and quitting in the middle of the penultimate Vuelta stage, after falling off a possible podium finish when he was dropped in an attack, slipping from third to sixth before abandoning.