Go ahead and call it murder.
The police are.
According to KTLA-5, a suspected drunk driver is being held on $2 million bail on suspicion of murder and DUI after police watched him hit a e-scooter rider in a Hollywood crosswalk.
The victim was crossing Sunset Blvd at Vine Street at 3:30 Saturday morning when he was struck by a pickup driven by 26-year old Utah resident Jared Walter Anderson.
Anderson then allegedly backed the truck up, and drove over the victim, who was described only as a man in his 30s.
He fled the scene, but was chased down by an LAPD sergeant who had witnessed the crime.
Anderson was previously convicted of DUI in Utah, which makes him eligible for a murder charge under California law.
Then again, murder could be warranted even without the previous conviction, considering that he drove over his victim after hitting him the first time.
Which raises the question of whether the crash may have been intentional.
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Good news on the bike theft front.
The schmuck who stole a $5,000 bicycle from Costa Mesa’s Cyclist bike shop has been arrested after returning the bike at the urging of relatives.
Paul Verdugo Jr, a 42-year old transient, pled not guilty to charges of grand theft, identity theft and receiving stolen property, the latter two for the false ID he handed a shop worker before riding off with the bike while on a test ride.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes keeps picking up speed.
A Maryland woman was charged with first degree assault for making a U-turn after passing a bike rider, then intentionally attempting to run him down, forcing the man to jump off his bike before she crashed into it.
They always tell you to make eye contact with drivers. But fail to mention that the sidewalk-blocking Florida driver you’re trying to get past may get out of his car and punch you repeatedly.
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It pays to build bike lanes.
No, literally.
A new study shows that if Kansas City fully built out its bike plan, local businesses would benefit to the tune of $500 million in increased sales over the next 20 years.
And more importantly, over 700 lives would be saved.
Which makes you wonder just how many lives, and how much money, Los Angeles is needlessly throwing away by leaving its bike plan gathering dust on the shelf.
Like every other LA bike plan that’s come before it.
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Local
Streetsblog says the push for safety improvements is picking up speed in Silver Lake. And not just on Rowena.
Uber and Lyft are holding off on finalizing their permits to put dockless e-scooters and bikeshare on the streets of Los Angeles over concerns about how their usage data will be used.
The Rose Bowl will open its roads for a 3.1-mile mini-ciclovia after next month’s final stage of the Amgen Tour of California, though you may have to register first.
This is who we share the roads with. A man has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for a street racing crash that killed three people in two other vehicles three years ago. Now if we could just see that kind of justice for people on bicycles for a change.
Great news! The fundraiser for the infant son of fallen bicyclist Frederick “Woon” Frazier now sits at nearly $8,000 — just $2,000 short of the $10,000 goal.
State
They get it. San Diego is installing 330 on-street parking corrals for dockless bicycles and e-scooters in the downtown area. Unlike Los Angeles, which prefers to use precious sidewalk space instead of putting them in the street where they belong.
The San Diego Union-Tribune picks up the story of state wildlife officials blocking access to illegal trails in the Carlsbad Highlands Ecological Reserve, and telling miscreant trespassing bike riders to stay the hell out.
Life is cheap in El Cajon, where a red light-running hit-and-run driver is expected to be sentenced to just four years behind bars for a crash that left a nine-year old boy with permanent injuries — despite driving without a license, and with drug paraphernalia in her car.
Sunnyvale is re-evaluating its commitment to bikeshare after Lime left them in the lurch.
Specialized teams up with a Stanford researcher to figure out how bicycling affects your brain. Aside from making you unusually happy, that is.
A Santa Rosa man was busted for DUI after crashing into two bicyclists while allegedly driving stoned — at 7:30 in the morning, no less; the victims suffered moderate to major injuries.
Sad news from Sacramento, where a bike rider was killed in a crash after allegedly riding through a red light.
National
A writer for the Conversation says crowdfunding money for bicycle infrastructure helps reduce the risk of bikelash. Something tells me Los Angeles bike riders could fully fund the cost of every bike lane and road diet in the mobility plan, and it still wouldn’t satisfy the city’s angry drivers.
Bike Snob writer and self-described avid driver Eben Weiss says sometimes just driving a car is an act of violence, and wonders why drivers can’t see that they’re the worst. I wouldn’t go that far; a lot of good people drive cars. But it does seem to bring out the worst in people.
Uber says riding a bicycle without a helmet is dangerous. But hopes to have us all riding in jet packs in the near future.
Lyft has pulled its ebikes from San Francisco, DC and New York after reports of brake problems on their dockless bikeshare systems, replacing them with regular bikes for the time being.
Bicycling says your next custom-made frame could come out of an Airstream trailer.
She kinda gets it. A Tucson columnist says let’s keep each other alive on the streets, but admits to being distracted behind the wheel.
A San Antonio TX nonprofit paper — not that many papers make a profit these days — calls for a bike advocacy group in the city.
Six years after bicyclists were first allowed on Colorado’s Pikes Peak, the guy who runs the roadway says it’s been a pleasant surprise, and even the drivers have been courteous. Although I’d like to hear that last part from the guys on bikes, thank you.
The Boston Globe says ten years from now, bicyclists in Cambridge MA may take the city’s protected bike lane network for granted, after the city passed a first-in-the-nation ordinance requiring protected lanes in any new roadwork in the bike plan.
An upstate New York letter writer complains about the county tearing up his lawn to widen the roadway and install a “bike path to nowhere,” telling riders they can just use the rail trails; a commenter calls it the “worst anti-bicycle twaddle” he’s seen in some time.
A Virginia woman learns the hard way you can’t tow your kids in a bike trailer behind your 40 mph moped.
As promised, Atlanta bike riders bring traffic to a crawl by slow rolling during the morning commute. But how many of those drivers actually got to work or school after crawling in traffic, and decided that the people on bikes had a point? Probably somewhere south of zero.
Tiger Woods says his big comeback at the Masters golf tournament was like riding a new bicycle. But without all the angry drivers and bike lane-fighting NIMBYs and traffic safety deniers.
International
Road.cc offers a guide to tandems.
Apparently, the Royal Canadian Mounties have invented bicycle registration.
Country singer Keith Urban is one of us, using a two-hour bike ride around London to clear his head and discover Irish singer Foy Vance.
More proof that bicyclists face the same problems everywhere, as a Glasgow bike rider angrily accuses cops of being lazy and risking his safety by parking in a bike lane near the police headquarters.
Benedict Cumberbatch learned the hard way not to mess with an angry bicyclist, getting slapped in the face by a man Cumberbatch knocked off his bike with his Lamborghini SUV on the Isle of Wight last year — and just a year after he rescued a bike rider from a London mugging.
Surprisingly, after what may be our first-ever news report from the Isle of Wight, we have another, as a bike-riding letter writer suffering from a severe case of windshield bias says bike riders should be forced to use cycle tracks, both for their own safety and so they don’t interrupt the flow of vehicle traffic. And inconvenience people like him.
The Irish Times says rampant bike theft in Dublin is putting people off bicycling. Same could be said of any major city, including Los Angeles; people who have their bikes stolen often decide it’s just not worth it. Which is why fighting bike theft has to be a priority in getting drivers out of their cars.
A Dutch woman explains how she biked her way around the world for 18 months on the equivalent of just $6,500.
Horrible story from India, where a young woman on a motor scooter was killed when she passed too close to a shepherd who was riding his bicycle with a scythe on his shoulder, slicing her throat as she rode by.
An Aussie stockbroker talks bicycling — including the admonition to just have fun, on the good days and the bad.
A Canberra, Australia paper wants to know why bike riders keep dying on the area’s country roads; a driver recounts barely missing endurance cyclist Mike Hall just 12 miles and a few hours before he was killed by another motorist.
A determined Vietnamese boy hopped on a rusted bicycle with no brakes and rode 62 miles of a 200 mile journey to Hanoi to see his sick baby brother, using the soles of his sandals to brake the bike down going downhill; a kind stranger drove him to the next town and arranged transportation the rest of the way.
Road rage doesn’t pay in Singapore, as a bike rider who tangled with a truck driver is fined the equivalent of around $2,000.
Competitive Cycling
Belgian pro Philippe Gilbert won his fourth monument on the cobbles of Sunday’s Paris Roubaix, topping Germany’s Nils Politt in a cat-and-mouse battle at the end.
Belgium’s Wout Van Aert, one of the pre-race favorites, struggled to make it to the finish line after a crash and multiple mechanical problems.
Road.cc considers eleven ways the pros prepare for the rough roads of Paris Roubaix. Apparently, repeatedly smashing their testicles with a wooden mallet to get used to the cobbles isn’t one of them.
Dozens of mountain bikers are racing 400 miles from San Diego to Idyllwild to benefit the San Diego Mountain Bike Association.
Finally…
If you’re a convicted felon illegally carrying a gun and burglary tools on your bike, don’t leer into cars while wearing latex gloves. When you’re carrying meth and a hidden handgun while walking a freshly spray-painted bike, try to not to let the paint rub off on your hands.
And if someone punches you in the face, steals your speakers and rides off on your bike, he’s probably not really your friend.
