BikinginLA

Day 31 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025. 

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CicLAvia announced the dates for eight open streets events for the coming year, starting with the West Adams meets University Park route on February 23rd.

Highlights include Koreatown meets Hollywood in April, Historic South Central meets Watts in June, a return to the popular Culver City meets Venice route in August, and a comeback to last year’s Melrose CicLAvia in December.

We’ll also see CicLAminis — shorter routes better suited to walking than bicycling — in Pico Union and San Pedro in May and September, respectively.

Along with the annual return of the ever-popular Heart of LA in October, just in time for another Dodgers playoff run.

Just saying.

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Maybe it’s no surprise that driverless vehicles are safer than the kind with an actual human behind the wheel.

But that doesn’t mean you should let down your guard around them.

According to the Los Angeles Times,

Based on data collected by Waymo, their driverless vehicles had 81% fewer airbag deployment crashes, 78% fewer injury-causing crashes and 62% fewer police-reported crashes than traditional vehicles driving the same distance. Waymo vehicles rely on cameras, sensors and a type of laser radar called lidar to operate autonomously…

A Waymo taxi collided with a cyclist in San Francisco last year and another vehicle crashed into a pole in Phoenix in May. Customers have reported various glitches on social media, including one Reddit user who posted a video of a Waymo driving the wrong direction into oncoming traffic.

And that’s not counting the guy who filmed himself locked inside a Waymo cab as it drove in circles for five minutes, before it finally straightened out and took him to his destination. Let alone the well-documented problems with Tesla and Cruise.

So maybe, just maybe you might be safer sharing the road with a motor vehicle if there’s no one behind the wheel.

But don’t count on it just yet.

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Local  

Nonprofit organization All Kids Bike is helping build the next generation of bicyclists by teaching Long Beach kindergarten students how to ride a bike.

 

State

She gets it. A San Diego high school student says she’s learned how dangerous bicycling can be, despite growing up riding bikes with her adventure cycling father, and as an ambassador with the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, she’s working to ensure her fellow students stay safe on their ebikes.

Bay Area mountain bikers finally got the okay to ride 6.6 miles of trails on 2,579-foot Mount Tamalpais overlooking San Francisco after six years of community outreach and lobbying, only to be stopped in their singletracks by a court order.

 

National

Forbes examines the Bike League’s latest list of Bicycle Friendly Communities.

Police in Boulder, Colorado have finally arrested a suspect in the death of a 19-year old woman, 200 days after her body was found stuffed into a bike trailer and left on the street in the hot summer sun, delaying identification of the victim.

Strong Towns podcast The Bottom-Up Revolution talks with a San Antonio, Texas mom and bike advocate about her path to advocacy and her work improving the city’s bike infrastructure; the city unanimously approved a 25-year bike plan yesterday that could cost up to $8 billion to completely build out. But as we’ve learned the hard way in LA, it’s one thing to approve an ambitious bike plan, but another to actually fund it and approve the work.

A Minneapolis bicyclist explains what you can to keep your bike from being stolen. And yes, he recommends registering your bike.

An Indianapolis paper offers a photo essay of the city’s bike messengers at work despite the frigid temperatures.

This is the cost of doing nothing. An Ohio mayor brings back the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee after it was left unstaffed for several years, in response to the death of a nine-year old boy killed by a driver while riding his bicycle. Although just maybe the kid might still be here if they hadn’t disbanded the damn thing for so long. 

New York got a reminder of the dangers of substandard ebike batteries when the impound yard where they’ve been storing seized and returned ebikes caught fire, covering parts of Red Hook and Brooklyn with toxic smoke; it was the third ebike battery fire at the compound in as many years.

Jamie Foxx is one of us, as the 57-year old actor flashed a smile at the paparazzi as he rode an ebike in Miami.

 

International

Cycling Weekly considers how to cope with seemingly inevitable headwinds. Especially on those days when it seems like there’s a headwind in every direction. 

I want to be like her when I grow up. A Toronto paper examines the stouthearted bike riders who brave the city’s frozen streets on two wheels, including a 78-year old retired school teacher and Viking biker.

This is the cost of traffic violence. An English bike shop owner and advocate was honored as a bicycling organization’s regional campaigner of the year — nine months after he was killed by a driver while riding his bike.

The UK cancels plans to allow bikemakers to double the power of ebikes, after an understandable pushback from the public.

Het gets it, too. Ireland’s former Green Party leader and Transport Minister says there’s “compelling” evidence that building more bike lanes will make the country’s roads less dangerous — especially in the cities, where most of the serious injuries occur.

A Kiwi man confronted a retired, uninsured driver at her home to demand payment for over twelve grand in repair costs to his custom-made bicycle, after she pulled into his path during a group ride, flipping him 180 degrees through the air — and posted video of the confrontation online.

Singletracks highlights five “stunning” gravel trails around Queensland, New Zealand for your next trip Down Under-adjacent.

 

Competitive Cycling

Danish pro cyclist Johan Price-Pejtersen got his national time trial title back, seven months after the country’s governing body stripped it for the crime of riding on a bike path next to the roadway.

Qatar announced a new “groundbreaking” initiative to transform women’s cycling in the Persian Gulf country, with a goal of fast-tracking the next generation of women cyclists to success at the 2030 Asian Games.

 

Finally…

That feeling when the new record for endurance cycling is still 52,000 miles short of the actual record. Your next foldie could be a fashion-forward designer Brompton.

And seriously, just stop saying this, uh, stuff, already.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.