BikinginLA

Just 217 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.

So stop what you’re doing and sign this petition to demand Mayor Bass hold a public meeting to listen to the dangers we all face on the mean streets of LA.

Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.

We’ve inched up to 1,151 signatures, so don’t stop now! I’ll forward the petition to the mayor’s office later this week, so urge anyone who hasn’t already to sign it now! 

Image by Michael Gaida from Pixabay.

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Former UCLA and NBA great Bill Walton was one of us.

Walton, who reinvented himself as a top NBA broadcaster and analyst after injuries forced him to retire, was known as much for his love of bicycling and the Grateful Dead, as for his skill on the court.

He was often seen riding his custom, oversized Dead-decorated bike around the streets of San Diego, as well as riding to boost the former Tour of California.

In fact, he was honored with a life-sized statue depicting him with his bicycle at San Diego’s Mission Bay.

He died of cancer on Monday. He was 72.

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Today’s common theme is the peril posed by people — mostly young people — on electric bicycles.

Multiple reports accused teenagers on ebikes of “terrorizing” South Bay communities, as residents call for ticketing, or even jailing, kids who raise havoc by riding aggressively. Although once again, they appear to be riding electric motorbikes rather than bicycles. And if they really want to talk about terror, they should try getting threatened by the people in the big, dangerous machines. 

New Yorkers were happy to have “essential workers” on ebikes deliver their food during the pandemic, but now some think they’ve turned the city into a nightmare.

An Australian council posted “comically large” signs calling on teenaged ebike riders to know the law regarding ebikes, and use their bells to let other know they’re passing.

An Aussie paper writes that a neighborhood is being plagued by kids on fat ebikes with oversized tires. But somehow illustrates the story with a very non-electric fat-tired mountain bike. 

But a writer for a La Jolla paper argues that teenagers on ebikes may think they don’t have to obey stop signs because many drivers don’t, either.

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Sad news from Whittier, where longtime bicyclist and advocate Samanda Guyan has died.

Known as “Sam, Sam the bicycle ma’am,” Guyan co-founded the Whittier Wheelman with her husband Bob, and wrote a bicycling column for the Whittier Daily News.

She leaves behind four children, seven grandchildren, and many cousins, nieces and nephews

She was 91.

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Bike Talk talks with the author of the new book Killed By An Engineer.

Great book. Just interviewed Wes Marshall on this week’s episode of https://t.co/VtD1myE7mM. Drops Thursday! @biketalkpfk @bikinginla

— Taylor Nichols (@Taylor_Nichols7) May 27, 2024

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It’s now 159 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 35 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

While California’s seemingly moribund program stuck on endless delay, a study of an ebike rebate program in Saanich, British Columbia shows that up to 76% of recipients were first time ebike buyers, depending on the amount of the rebate. And after a full year, they were using their new ebikes three to four days a week, and driving an average of 30 miles a week less than they did before.

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

An off-duty Florida fire chief faces charges for intentionally targeting a man riding a bicycle, after yelling at him to get out of the road; the victim tried riding up onto to raised median to get away as the driver followed in his truck, before repeatedly pushing him and knocking away the phone he was trying to record the assault with.

A British Member of Parliament is accused of displaying “raw prejudice” against bicyclists after sending an angry email rant to a constituent who complained about his contradictory stance calling for a crackdown on bike riders, while ignoring the threat posed by motor vehicles.

A vigilante Aussie driver is charged with murder for deliberately running down a man riding a bicycle over a property dispute stemming from the day before.

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

The LAPD chased a murder suspect who attempted to flee by bicycle, following him on a slow and on a wobbly ride on the 5 Freeway, before eventually making the arrest by bumping him with a patrol car after he exited the freeway and knocking him off his bicycle. Never mind that hitting a suspect with a patrol car should be considered deadly use of force, just as if they had attempted to shoot him to keep him from escaping.

A road-raging young bike rider was accused of breaking an Edinburgh driver’s wing mirror at a red light, after the two exchanged words — and gestures — when the driver honked at the man for using his phone while riding with no hands.

Singapore police busted 25 bicyclists for violating the county’s strict limitation to groups of no more than five if riding single file, or 10 if riding two abreast.

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Local 

A West Hollywood resident posted video of a bike thief using an angle grinder to steal his bike Thursday morning on busy Santa Monica Boulevard.

Streetsblog looks at El Monte’s new Merced Ave Linear Park, the first in a series of multimodal paths connecting to the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area and Rio Hondo.

Seventy-two-year old Michael Keaton is one of us, too, riding to dinner in Santa Monica with his longtime girlfriend. Although someone should tell the Daily Mail that Santa Monica is a separate city, not a neighborhood in Los Angeles.

 

State

A pair of Carmel Valley students took top honors at the state and regional levels of a national STEM competition with their design for a bike helmet that would communicate with an ebike, preventing it from operating unless the helmet was safely in place.

Dozens of San Diego bicyclists rode on Saturday to honor San Diego native Corporal Gregory “Shortie” Millard, who died while deployed to Iraq in 2007

 

National

A car site calls protected intersections an ingenious solution that has the potential to save the lives of bicyclists and pedestrians, while a similar site says the intersections look awful, but actually make sense.

California ranks eighth on a list of American states bike riders want to move to, topped by Washington, Rhode Island, Vermont and Oregon.

A writer for Wired argues your tires are too skinny, suggesting that replacing them with the widest soft-sided tires that will fit your bike will improve your ride, without slowing you down.

A 23-year old Ukrainian refugee pled not guilty to reckless vehicular homicide in the death of 17-year old US National Team cyclist Magnus White in Boulder, Colorado last December, after she appeared to fall asleep behind the wheel.

No bias here. The New York Post’s anti-bike crank calls Philadelphia a model of urban order, without Gotham’s bike lanes creating traffic chaos.

In a heartbreaking story, a Georgia firefighter was on the phone with his wife when she was hit and killed while using the speakerphone on her bicycle; he knew it was her when the 911 call came into the nearby station where he works.

 

International

Bike Radar talks examines the best bike helmets for roadies.

GCN considers how bicycling to work can improve your mental health.

The annual World Naked Bike Ride bares all, or nearly all, in Toronto next week, though LA bike riders aren’t scheduled to strip until June 24th.

A pair of New York artists have installed a whimsical sculpture in Toronto’s David Pecaut Square; titled “He Was on a Ride to a Safer Place,” the interactive sculpture features an anthropomorphic rabbit and dog riding a bicycle built for four, captained by a rhinoceros, with an empty seat for a passenger int he back.

He gets it. When a 69-year old Montreal man won $7 million in the lottery last month, the first thing he wanted to do was by a new bike to replace the one he had stolen a few years earlier.

The London borough of Ealing is accused of “kowtowing to drivers” and failing to keep children safe by preventing drivers from parking in bike lanes, despite investing millions of pounds into new bike lanes and safe routes to school.

British actress Minnie Driver is also one of us, riding a bikeshare bike after shopping in Notting Hill.

Demonstrating the same sense of entitlement they often accuse us of, London drivers threaten to go to court to force the city to reopen a roadway to an exclusive millionaires playground, after it was closed to cars to improve safety for people on bicycles. Although chances are the real reason has a lot more to do with keeping people out of the rich people’s neighborhood than it does with bike safety. 

A former avid London bicyclist ended up giving his away after moving to Birmingham for college, after feeling unsafe and frustrated riding on the city’s streets.

An English man whose wife was killed by a reckless bike-riding teenager insists he’s not giving up on a law that could jail bike riders who kill pedestrians for years, if not life.

A British man will spend a well-deserved 12 years behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run that killed a 44-year old man and a 16-year old boy as they rode their bikes, and will be banned from driving for another 13 years; he got out of his car to look at the victims before driving off and crashing into another car, injuring a woman and her children.

A new book says the UK’s 13,000-mile National Cycling Network is at constant risk of failing into disrepair.

Ferrari F1 driver Charles Leclerc is one of us, too, as he rode his bike to his nearby home after winning the famed Monaco Grand Prix, before partying all night with the principality’s royal family.

National Geographic provides a practical guide to riding the Green Routes of Slovenia.

 

Competitive Cycling

Two-time Tour de France champ Tadej Pogačar waltzed to victory in the Giro by the biggest margin in six decades, winning by 9 minutes, 56 seconds over runner-up Daniel Martinez, while Geraint Thomas finished third at 10:24 behind.

Belgian star Wout van Aert bounced back from a devastating high-speed crash in March’s Dwars door Vlaanderen with a podium finish in the Tour of Norway, positioning him to return to the Tour de France.

A 23-year old neurodivergent woman took park in a three-day British stage race, competing for her semi-professional team despite having dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism.

A Chicago woman set out on Sunday in an attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle.

 

Finally…

That feeling when you get a great deal on a cruiser bike, and the helpful guy who lugs it up the stairs wouldn’t be caught dead on it. Your new rear-view app could rely on the same advanced tech that creates people with three hands and Black Nazi soldiers.

And you haven’t ridden a bike until you’ve ridden at the speed of light.

No, really.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin