BikinginLA

LA’s hit-and-run plague just keeps on going.

The LAPD is looking for a shirtless driver who ran off on foot after crashing into a woman riding an e-scooter in DTLA.

The victim was riding against traffic when she was struck, which means the driver probably wouldn’t have faced any consequences if he’d just stuck around.

Instead, he abandoned his car and fled on the sidewalk, for reasons known only to him at this point. It could be that he was drunk or stoned, the car was stolen, or possibly he was in the country illegally and feared deportation.

Or any one of a number of other possible explanations.

Meanwhile, the victim was hospitalized with a head wound, which means there is an automatic $25,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the suspect.

Hit-and-Run Collision With Injuries (Downtown, Los Angeles) 📲 Live on @CitizenAppLA https://t.co/q0kaPDFED8

— LAPDCTD (@LAPDCTD24) October 27, 2021

pic.twitter.com/BnwtW9u3U4

— LAPDCTD (@LAPDCTD24) October 28, 2021

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Police ordered a group of 200 to 300 mostly teenage bike riders to disperse Sunday afternoon after they were accused of stealing $300 to $400 worth of alcohol and other items from a Signal Hill Food 4 Less.

The teens were taking part in an organized rideout captured in a pair of videos.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to embed them for some reason, so you’ll have to click through to YouTube to see them. 

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Maybe this will finally get the message across.

Of course, first you need a decent protected bike lane to print it on.

Let's get this painted everywhere!!
via @copenhagenizers @CycleHamilton @CycleBurlington @EnvHamilton @tomflood1 @HamiltonRambler ! pic.twitter.com/YyD88YoFjX

— @jdavey (@jdavey_2) October 26, 2021

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A writer for Pink Bike attempts to ride every mountain bike trail at British Columbia’s Sun Peaks Bike Park in a single weekend.

Although the bike park may have some competition from a new one in Arkansas next year.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

An English woman is questioning whether it’s worth it to keep riding her bike after a passenger in a passing car attempted to push her off her bicycle.

A Singapore driver was fined the equivalent of over $2,000 for punching a woman riding a bicycle with her three-year old son, after she slapped his car when he nearly ran them over by forcing his way into the lane she was in.

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.

A Louisiana man was busted after he robbed a business at gunpoint, then made a failed attempt at a bicycle getaway.

Police in Mad City, Wisconsin are investigating after a woman on a group ride was punched in the face by an angry man on a bike, who was apparently enraged to find the group on the trail, even though they politely moved right to give him room to pass.

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Local

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton offers suggestions on how to improve the new Hollywood Metro Bike bikeshare, including more safe spaces to ride them and stop hiding the docks in unobtrusive locations.

The worldwide plague of armed bike theft reared its ugly head in Culver City, where a man on a bicycle accused another man of riding a bike that belonged to his friend, then threatened to shoot him if he didn’t give up his bike and walk away.

A man in his 30s was fatally shot while either riding or walking his bicycle in Long Beach, in what police suspect was a gang shooting.

Artist Sandra de la Loza will lead an art workshop and Dias de Los Muertos bike caravan on Saturday, November 6th (scroll down).

Floyd Mayweather is one of us, as the 44-year old boxing great took to his bicycle on the Venice bike path Tuesday evening.

 

State

San Diego announced a $2.5 million program to fix streets in the Rancho Bernardo neighborhood that were damaged by 2007’s Witch Creek Fire, where rutted pavement and potholes posed a particular danger to bike riders and pedestrians.

Now that’s more like it. Santa Cruz is offering rebates up to $400 and zero-interest loans for downtown workers who buy ebikes, as part of a program to encourage alternative modes of transportation to the area.

The director of Berkeley’s transportation department was lucky to escape with a sprained wrist when he was struck head-on by an SUV driver; Farid Javandel was stopped at a stop sign on his bike when the left-turning driver cut the corner and crashed into him.

 

National

Forbes picks their favorite bicycle child seats.

Somehow we missed this one last week, as a new induced demand calculator will help determine just how much traffic will increase when roadways are expanded.

Portland, Oregon is installing painted bicycle crossings at non-signalized intersections, backed by a university study showing the crosswalk-style crossing encourage more drivers to yield to bikes.

An Arizona driver who ran a red light and slammed into a Flagstaff bike parade last March, killing one woman and injuring several other people, now faces multiple felony charges for kiddie porn after police discovered thousands of images on his phone when they got a search warrant to determine whether he was distracted at the time of the crash.

The Waller County, Texas DA promises he’ll make a decision by November 8th whether to charge the coal-rolling teenage driver who ran down six bicyclists who were training for a triathlon last month.

This is the cost of traffic violence. A Minnesota man whose license had been revoked faces a charge of criminal vehicular homicide after killing a 73-year old Catholic priest who was riding his bike on the shoulder of a highway; the 26-year old driver has 10 previous convictions for driving with a revoked license in just the last three and a half years. Just one more example of keeping a dangerous driver on the roads until it’s too late. He should have been jailed and his car confiscated after the second offense. 

More proof that bike lanes work, as the latest round of data from New York’s Department of Transportation shows painted bike lanes reduce the risk of injury to bike riders by nearly a third, while increasing ridership an average of 50%; protected bike lanes reduced injuries as much as 60%.

Talk about a rough year. A celebrity chef has filed suit against the NYPD alleging he was brutally beaten for violating a curfew when he attempted to deliver a pizza for a bicycle delivery service, after losing his restaurant when he caught Covid-19.

A suspect has been taken into custody after a body was discovered in the New Jersey headquarters of Jamis Bikes; no word yet on who was killed or how it happened.

No bias here. After a Louisiana bike rider was injured in a collision, police bent over backward to blame the victim, while the story fails to mention that the pickup that hit him even had a driver.

 

International

No surprise here, as data from around the world shows that bikeshare usage goes up with warmer temperatures until it gets too hot, and wet weather discourages people from riding. In other news, water is wet, the pope is Catholic, and bears defecate in wooded areas.

Vancouver cops are looking for a brazen bike thief who raided an apartment building bike locker by using suction cups to remove the glass door, then used bolt cutters to make off with several high-end bikes.

A 16-year old climate activist is riding a cargo bike 570 miles from her English home to Glasgow for the COP26 conference, to call attention to the climate emergency.

A Welsh man complains about the overly lenient sentence given the driver who killed his bike-riding father, saying she belongs in jail, rather than walking with a suspended sentence after she played the universal Get Out Of Jail Free card by claiming the sun was in her eyes.

A new Tokyo study proposes an algorithm to rebalance bikeshare docks more efficiently, preventing the problem of too many bikes at some docks and not enough at others.

 

Competitive Cycling

American cyclist Marianne Martin will be formally inducted into the US Bicycling Hall of Fame next week, 37 years after she won the inaugural, short lived women’s Tour de France; the race will return next year in an abbreviated eight stage format.

Cyclist profiles German ultra cyclist Ulrich ‘Uba’ Bartholmoes, who won the first two ultra cycling races he entered two years ago, and has kept winning ever since.

VeloNews talks with the owner of the Israel Start-Up Nation cycling team about the daring cloak-and-dagger rescue operation he set in motion to help Afghan cyclists escape the country.

 

Maybe antagonizing bike riders isn’t the best way to get their business. If you think you’ve may have an outstanding warrant and could be carrying weed on your bike, put a damn light on it — and try not to crash into a briar patch.

And it’s probably not the best idea to install a bikeshare station where bikes are banned.

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.