They drive among us.
Maybe you somehow managed to miss the multitude of new stories over the weekend about the allegedly stoned driver who managed to plant his car on the second floor of a dental shop in Santa Ana.
No, really.
According to reports, the driver, who hasn’t been publicly identified, hit a center median with enough force to launch his car into the air, across three lanes of traffic, and embed it into the wall of the shop while still gaining altitude.
The inevitable question of how fast he had to be traveling to launch his car with such force is only partially answered by security camera footage.
As well as the view from an oncoming bus that was nearly taken out by the airborne ballistic automobile.
https://twitter.com/abc7greg/status/953069364525191168
Lets hope he loses his license.
Permanently.
And it’s not just LA.
A Denver motorist literally drove into a Catholic church, finally stopping inside the vestibule with shards of stained glass scattered around.
But at least that one seems to have stuck to the ground.
Top photo from Orange County Fire Authority. Thanks to Erik Griswold and Wes Salmon for the heads-up.
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Pot, meet kettle.
It’s long been common knowledge, among drivers at least, that people who ride bicycles are a bunch of reckless scofflaws who pay no attention to the law.
And anyone who has argued to the contrary, by pointing to studies showing most bike riders actually do stop for red lights and stop signs, or that countless drivers treat speed limits and stop signs as mere suggestions, is usually shouted down.
Often by people on both sides.
Never mind that even the most reckless bike rider is primarily a danger to him or herself, while a reckless driver is a danger to everyone around them.
That should have changed a few years ago, when a study from the University of Colorado showed that drivers and bike riders broke the law at nearly the same rate — 8% to 9% for drivers, and 7% to 8% for bicyclists.
As well as a follow-up study that showed when drivers broke the law, they did it for convenience, while people on bikes did it out of concern for their own safety.
Except that the both studies were greeted with crickets by the mainstream media.
Let alone the motoring public.
Now another study has shown virtually the same thing.
Writing for Outside, Peter Flax has taken a look at the recent Florida study that showed drivers broke the law at a slightly higher rate than the bike riders participating in the study.
In the end, the results indicated that cyclists were compliant with the law 88 percent of the time during the day and 87 percent of the time after dark. The same study determined that drivers who interacted with the study subjects complied with the law 85 percent of the time. In other words, drivers were slightly naughtier than the cyclists—even without measuring speeding or distracted driving.
In a conversation with three of the researchers who conducted the study, I asked if they had any insight into why the findings vary so significantly from public perceptions about scofflaw cyclist behavior. “Many drivers simply don’t know the rules that concern people on bikes,” says Cong Chen. “About how much space to give cyclists, for instance, or when riders should get the right of way.”
The study also offers suggestions on how to improve safety.
In any case, based on the study findings, the researchers offered a number of recommendations to help mitigate the frighteningly high rate of close calls. For infrastructure improvements, they suggested wider and protected bike lanes; reflective green markings on bike lanes; improved lighting on roadways that see significant bicycle traffic; and so-called “through lanes,” which reduce conflicts between bicyclists and turning vehicles at intersections by letting riders be safely positioned before cars turn. “Based on what we saw and measured, we recommend measures that promote separating more than sharing,” says Kourtellis. “We think creating buffers between cars and bikes is smart.”
But once again, don’t bother trying to find any mention of the study in the mainstream media.
Evidently, dispelling a widely held misperception too often used to demonize people on bicycles just isn’t news.
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Speaking of demonizing bicyclists, one Aussie rider caught skitching — holding onto a moving vehicle to hitch a ride — is used to attack everyone who rides a bike for wanting “extra rights” on the road.
Never mind that most bicyclists haven’t done that, and never will.
And the only extra right we want is the right to ride a bike, and get home in one piece.
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Local
LADOT laid down the new Hollywood-approved green paint on the protected bike lanes on Venice Blvd in Mar Vista over the weekend.
Speaking of Mar Vista, Bikerowave is hosting a bike swap on Sunday the 28th; coffee and donuts will be available if you get there early enough.
Los Angeles County’s outgoing Health Services director says he didn’t expect to fall in love with LA after moving here from San Francisco, but riding his bike to work from Hancock Park to DTLA certainly didn’t hurt. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
Repaving started this past weekend on 6th Street between La Brea and Fairfax to prepare it for the half-measure safety improvements pushed through by Councilmember David Ryu, against the wishes of local residents who were fighting for a road diet. Any hope that the road diet might go through died following the fiasco in Playa del Rey, where recently installed road diets were yanked out after an outcry from motorists.
The latest Bike Talk podcast features John Russo and Karla Mendelson of Keep LA Moving, who successfully fought to have the Playa del Rey road diets removed, and want to halt any future lane reductions in the city.
Walk Eagle Rock shows that it’s possible to do more with less space on narrow streets.
The long discussed new section of the Arroyo Seco Bike Trail through South Pasadena is scheduled to open late next month.
The LA Times examines Chinese counterfeiting of small San Marino bikewear maker Team Dream.
Claremont is moving closer to a $16 million makeover of Foothill Blvd, including median divided bike lanes.
Long Beach surpasses its mobility goals for last year, with over 1.1 million bike riders and pedestrians passing a counter near the pier.
State
The co-founder of PayPal is one of us.
A Santa Ana cyclist was injured in an apparent gang shooting.
Tehachapi opens a new class 1 bike path along Tehachapi Blvd.
You never know what you might find while riding your bike. Like a boa constrictor with a broken jaw on the side of a Bay Area highway. The good news is, the snake has fully recovered.
The bike-friendly new Oakland bridge will be at least two years late and $6 million over budget.
Sad news from Paradise, where a bike rider was killed when she was rear-ended by one driver, then knocked into the path of another.
National
An ebike pioneer argues that an ebike charged using fossil fuels is actually greener than a regular bicycle when you consider the extra food needed to fuel the rider. Because everyone loads up on food before they ride to the corner market, right?
Meanwhile, TreeHugger says there’s an ebike revolution coming, and bikes and ebikes will eat cars.
An Oregon town posts a sign telling drivers not to text and drive, in honor of a 16-year old boy who was killed by a texting driver while riding his bike. Which will undoubtedly cause every driver to put down their phones. If they even bother to read it.
A Montana newspaper looks at the benefit bike tourism can have on small towns.
An Austin TX paper asks if an ordinary guy can ride 10,000 miles in two years. Considering that’s less than 100 miles a week, sure.
Kay Perry may be one of us, but she still takes Dallas to task over abandoned dockless bikeshare bikes.
The Chicago Tribune supports bringing bikeshare to the city’s transit deserts.
Bike registration rears its ugly head in Vermont, where a new bill would impose a $28 annual fee to ride a bicycle on public streets. Which is fine if your goal is to discourage bicycling, and keep people from taking ever down those unused bikes hanging in the garage.
An Op-Ed in the Philadelphia Enquirer considers how to make the city a safer place to ride a bike.
International
If you can’t ride your bike on a Manitoba highway because of the ice, get out your hockey skates. Thanks to Norm Bradwell for the link.
A Toronto Op-Ed says lowering speed limits throughout the city would save lives.
The Guardian offers a photo essay of a custom framebuilder in the UK.
Just a year after finishing a seven year, 43,000 mile around-the-world bike tour, an English man is planning to set a new record by riding across Europe in less than 20 days.
A Scottish woman is looking for homes for two stray dogs she rescued in Brazil while riding around the world.
A British father shares gruesome photos of his son after the boy crashed face-first into a brick wall, saying it’s a reminder to always wear a helmet. Which might have actually helped, but only if he’d worn it over his face.
An Aussie woman says she deserves a reduced sentence because the bike rider she left bleeding on the side of the road while driving high on ice didn’t die, but merely suffered permanent, life changing injuries.
You’ve got to be kidding. An Australian driver was fined for throwing a cup filled with ice that hit a bicyclist in the head. By the EPA. For littering.
An Aussie cyclist walks with probation for bike rage tirade against a distracted driver who cut him off in traffic, after arguing that “fuck” is not obscene.
Seriously, don’t be this guy. A bicyclist in Australia cuts directly in front of a driver, then flips the motorist off for good measure.
After an Australian man loses his driver’s license for six months, he discovers he feels better, weighs less and actually likes riding a bike. Even if he doesn’t take responsibility for those speeding tickets.
A New Zealand bicyclist is shocked to discover an 18-inch wide bike lane that’s narrower than her handlebars.
A bike shop in Yangon, Myanmar leads a weekly nighttime bike ride in the city, where bicycles are banned by tradition, if not law.
A distracted ebike rider in Singapore got a $2,000 fine for colliding with a bicyclist when his mobile phone rang.
A Chinese man rode nearly 10,000 miles from Benin back to his hometown to raise funds to help install solar power stations and water wells in the African country.
Competitive Cycling
The legendary Katie Compton won her 14th consecutive national cyclocross championship, while the recently unretired Meredith Miller took the singlespeed title.
Tragic news from the Netherlands, where BMX star Jelle Van Gorkom is in a coma after a training accident, with no word on when he might awaken.
The Guardian looks at the tenuous finances of lower tier pro cycling teams.
Cycling Weekly talks with recently retired British track cyclist Becky James about the importance of finding a balance between work, training and family life.
South African cyclist Louis Meintjes learned the hard way to put on sunscreen under his mesh jersey. I once ended up with the Canari logo tanned onto my back after wearing my favorite jersey a little too often.
A self-trained Kenyan cyclist will compete in the grueling Red Bull Trans-Siberian Extreme race, despite having a bullet lodged in his stomach from a shooting that killed his father when he was 15.
A Kiwi cyclist wins New Zealand’s U-23 cycling championship just one year after taking up the sport.
Finally…
Nothing like using a fat bike to make a really fat snow bike. Apparently, bottling a bicyclist is a thing.
And if you’re going to ride stoned, leave the illegal prescription meds, butterfly knife and counterfeit bills at home.
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Thanks to John H for his generous donation to help support this site.
