Before we start, let me offer a special thank you to Ryan Jones for giving me his CycleOps trainer to help rehab my knee and get back on my bike.
Ryan made his very generous offer after I’d tweeted last week that my physical therapist would let me start using one.
I continue to be blown away by the kindness and generosity that so many people have shown since my surgery.
Now if anyone wants to pick up that hospital tab…
And yes, Im kidding. There are people out there who need your help a lot more than I do.
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For once, the LA District Attorney’s office is taking a traffic death seriously, after an e-scooter user was killed in Hollywood early Saturday morning.
And throwing the book at him, according to KCBS-2.
Jared Walter Anderson, 26, is facing a murder charge in addition to one felony count each for vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, hit-and-run driving resulting in death to another person with allegations of causing great bodily injury and fleeing a pursuing peace officer’s motor vehicle causing death, according to the LA County District Attorney’s Office.
Which sounds good, until you consider they’ll probably bargain it down and let him walk on careless driving, if prior history is any indication.
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A new video shows just how disastrous the planned Temple Street road diet would have been if Councilmembers Mitch O’Farrell and Gil Cedillo hadn’t cancelled it.
Wait.
You mean it doesn’t?
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It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from Brendan Lyons.
The executive director of Look! Save a Life writes in a op-ed for an Arizona paper that it’s time to stop driving under the influence of electronics.
Lyons founded the nonprofit group after his dream of becoming a firefighter was shattered by a distracted driver while riding his bike.
But let’s extend his call to include all those WiFi-enabled devices that carmakers are building into dashboards in an apparent effort to keep drivers distracted all the time to reduce the excess population.
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Now this is what I call a beautiful bike.
This 1935 Dayton Safety Streamliner sold for nearly $9,500 at a recent auction, despite a pre-sale estimate topping out at five grand.
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In case, like me, you’ve ever wondered how extreme tall bike riders get on and off their bikes.
While moving, no less.
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Local
Former Duarte school board member Edwin Ferguson passed away in his sleep last week at 93; he and his wife were both “avid” bike riders, taking his last bike tour through Croatia when he was 83.
A Long Beach man told police he suffered a superficial wound to his lower torso when he was shot while riding his bike in the Zaferia neighborhood Monday evening, though police could find no evidence of the crime when they searched the area.
State
Calbike is co-sponsoring SB127, which would require Caltrans to follow its own Complete Streets policy on every repaving, maintenance, and rehab project on state highways, which often double as surface streets in urban areas.
The Daily Hive recommends 11 stunning stops along PCH between San Francisco and San Diego for your next ride along the coast. After all, it would be such a waste to drive on a trip like that.
A homeless man in San Francisco was lucky to dodge a manslaughter charge for beating another homeless man with an axe handle in a dispute over a bicycle, after autopsy tests showed his victim actually died from a meth overdose.
San Francisco will keep a closer eye on bikeshare companies after defective brakes were found on Uber’s Jump ebikes, as well as the Lyft-owned Ford GoBike ebikes that were pulled from the streets earlier this week. Jump quietly fixed their brakes, but some riders were still injured.
The attorney for an alleged killer driver says a Sebastopol woman died when she crashed into her boyfriend as they were riding together — which ignores the black scuff mark on her jersey that appears to match the tread of the driver’s tire. He’s charged with vehicular manslaughter for causing the crash, whether or not he actually hit her.
National
A writer for an electric vehicle website calls for a national license to ride ebikes, e-motor scooters and e-motorcycles capable of traveling up to 45 mph. A much better idea is to just treat ebikes like bicycles, while capping speeds at a more reasonable level.
Speaking of ebikes, Bicycling’s Selene Yeager says older riders may get a surprising brain boost from riding ped-assist electrics.
A Washington couple gives away 500 free bike helmets for kids every year in honor of their granddaughter, who died seven years ago after falling off her bike without one.
For once, it really was an accident. An Oklahoma girl is recovering after suffering critical injuries when the bike she was riding broke underneath her as she was speeding downhill; her family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with expenses.
A Missouri cop sort of gets it, saying sharing the roadway works best if we all treat others with respect. Then follows it up by reminding bike riders that cars are bigger than we are, as if anyone traveling by two wheels or two feet could ever forget that.
Chicago approves a $50 million plan to expand its docked bikeshare throughout the city.
Bicycling takes a look at a little bike ride in the Big Apple — the 40-mile, 32,000 rider Five Boro Bike Tour.
New Orleans bike riders approve of a new bollard-protected bike lane on an overpass bridge — even if the rider in the photo is going the wrong way. Meanwhile, a New Orleans councilmember says bike riders need to learn the rules of the road. Unlike, say, motorists, who always obey the letter of the law and never pose a risk to anyone.
Alabama is considering half of the Idaho Stop Law. But instead of allowing bike riders to treat stop signs as yields, as other states have done, it would let bicyclists and motorcyclists treat red lights like stop signs.
Life is cheap in Florida, where a driver walked without a day in jail for killing a man on his bike, despite the obvious violation of the state’s three-foot passing law. But at least he’ll lose his license for a whole year.
International
Writing for Forbes, Carleton Reid says experts agree that painted white lines are not cyclist-protecting force fields; Bikehugger’s Lloyd Alter calls painted bike lanes car magnets.
Be glad you don’t live in British Columbia, where it’s illegal to pass traffic on the right, even when it comes to a full stop. And yes, they expect you to stop next to the cars and wait, even if your path is clear.
A Scottish writer gets on a bike for the first time in 20 years to visit a new Rembrandt exhibit at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, calling the artist the world’s first Instagrammer.
No surprise here, as Austria joined Germany in reporting record ebike sales, which now make up a third of the country’s bicycle market.
Competitive Cycling
We have a new hour record holder, as Victor Campenaerts topped Bradley Wiggins’ four-year old record by riding 55.089 kilometers — 34.23 miles — in 60 minutes.
Ayesha McGowan, who is working to become the first black women’s pro cyclist, accuses the announcers at the Sea Otter Classic of making racist and sexist comments.
Finally…
If you’re going to break into a home to watch TV while the family that lives there is still home, try not to leave your bike outside. Probably not the best idea to attack the paramedics who come to your aid after crashing your bike while riding drunk.
And if you get caught with meth in your purse while driving, just tell the cops they’re “healing crystals.”
No, really.
After learning the identity of the announcer whom she was falsely accusing of having made a racist inference, Ayesha McGowan tweeted, “Since the announcer is African American, he cannot be racist…” Unbelievable.