BikinginLA

Let’s start with a bit of heartbreaking news, after someone stole the ghost bike recently installed for a pregnant mother in Playa del Rey.

According to Streets Are For Everyone Executive Director Damian Kevitt, the bike placed in memory of 35-year old Regan Cole-Graham, a mother of two who was seven months pregnant with her daughter Ophelia, was taken shortly after the ghost bike for Blake Ackerman in West Hollywood was stolen, then recovered a few days later.

Which raises the question of whether someone is purposely removing ghost bikes, or if this is just a strange coincidence.

Only the ghost bike installed for her unborn daughter remains where they were placed.

If anyone finds it, contact SAFE with the information.

Cole-Graham and her daughter were killed by an elderly driver on Pershing Drive, where a road diet installed in 2017 was removed months later after backlash from angry motorists, mostly pass-through commuters from Manhattan Beach.

And yes, there’s not a pit in hell deep enough for any lowlife scumbucket who would intentionally steal a ghost bike, as if that’s somehow different than desecrating any other memorial.

Especially this one.

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This is the cost of traffic violence.

An innocent victim paid the ultimate price for a driver’s actions yesterday evening, when an errant motorist somehow slammed her SUV into a Manhattan Beach laundromat.

A woman inside was just washing her clothes when the SUV came flying in through the door of the business around 6 pm, fatally pinning her against one of the machines.

A witness reported the driver appeared to be an elderly woman, who tried explaining her actions by telling police her foot got caught on the pedal. If true, it adds even more fuel to the burning argument over how old is too old to drive a car.

Either way, it’s more proof that motor vehicles pose a deadly risk to everyone, on or off the roadway.

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California State Senator Catherine Blakespear will host a 90-minute webinar this evening to discuss solutions to ebike safety, in conjunction with CalBike, PeopleForBikes, Streets For All and Streets Are For Everyone.

Blakespear is the sponsor of SB 1167, a much-needed bill that would clarify the definition of ebikes, and crack down on illegal electric motorbikes being misrepresented as legal ebikes.

Someone let me know how it goes, because I’ll be on a much-needed mental health break today, going to my happy place where cars don’t exist, and the deer and the antelope play.

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

A local councilor has called for vital improvements to a cycle track between Lancaster and Morecambe, England, calling the busy route “terrifying.” Even though it looks as good or better than most similar pathways in the US.

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

You’ve got to be kidding. Orange County Sheriff’s deputies were called when two teenagers decided to terrorize shoppers in a Foothill Ranch Walmart by riding their ebikes — actually electric motorbikes — up and down the aisles. One more reason why California needs to clarify the definition of ebikes to distinguish them from e-motos and dirt bikes.

A group of Singapore bicyclists were termed “too arrogant to use the lane provided for them,” despite politely riding single file and hugging the fog line — never mind that the bike lane, just the shoulder of the damn roadway — was likely littered with debris, or that there were a series of warning signs next to the bike lane just down the road. Because arrogance is the only possible explanation when people on bicycles do things that drivers don’t understand.

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Local 

No news is good news, right?

 

State

A Senior Chief in the US Navy is retiring after decades in the service, but taking the long way home by riding his bike alongside his dad from Portland, Oregon, to San Diego to raise funds and awareness for veteran mental health services.

Escondido police ticketed 53 drivers during a bike and pedestrian safety operation on Monday, along with ticketing five people riding bicycles; three drivers were arrested on drug and weapons charges, as well as an outstanding warrant for driving with a suspended license.

Eight people have been killed riding their bicycles in San Luis Obispo County over the past five years.

A kindhearted Delano cop bought a new bicycle for a woman out of his own pocket after her bike was stolen, and the suspected thief said it had been discarded and couldn’t be recovered.

Sad news from San Jose, where a man riding a bicycle was killed by a hit-and-run driver yesterday morning; the driver was arrested after crashing the stolen car into a lamppost a quarter mile away.

 

National

The New York Times lists five great North American cities for bicycling, including four in the US, and one in Canada. None of which is Los Angeles, of course. 

People Magazine picks up the story of a 30-year old Seattle elementary school teacher who was killed by the driver of a garbage truck while riding his bike last week; a crowdfunding campaign has raised nearly $29,000 of the $35,000 goal.

A new ebike law went into effect in Washington State today limiting the use of ebikes by kids between 12 and 16, and designating any ebike capable of traveling over 20 mph as an electric motorbike.

Disgusting news from Arizona, where a 47-year old man was arrested for the hit-and-run death of a 25-year old woman riding a bicycle; the victim was also struck by two other drivers, not one of whom stopped.

A Colorado man explains why he rode a mountain bike up every one of the states legally rideable mountains over 14,000 feet elevation, just four years after getting sober from drinking himself “into oblivion.”

A newish bridge in Corpus Christy, Texas has been named the state’s scariest bridge for bicyclists, despite a ten-foot wide shared bike and pedestrian lane. Or maybe because of it.

This is how you get change. Hundreds of Chicago bicyclists took part in a “life-affirming” bike ride and die-in in memory of a city Complete Streets planner who was killed in a dooring while riding in a painted bike lane. I’ve never seen that many LA bike riders turn out for any protest or memorial except Critical Mass. 

In the end, only a dozen or so bike riders joined with survivors of the Kalamazoo massacre to mark the 10th anniversary of the stoned-driving crash that killed five people on a weekly bike ride, and seriously injured four others, and finish the ride they weren’t able to.

Heartbreaking news from Virginia, where a 23-year old man was sentenced to life in prison for the drive-by shooting that killed an eight-year old girl as she was riding her bike outside her aunt’s home; a second suspect was sentenced to 25 years behind bars after pleading guilty, while a third man will go on trial next month.

 

International

He gets it. An editor for Cycling Weekly says he is very aware of his vulnerability when he rides a bicycle, like virtually every other bike rider, and doesn’t need to be pulled over by the cops for a reminder, when it’s the people in the big, dangerous machines who should be told how vulnerable we are.

London officials are accused of covering up a dramatic rise in bicycling fatalities and serious injuries, which outstripped the rise in bicycling rates, focusing on a decline in fatalities instead.

A British father and son completed a 400-day, 18,000-mile bike trip around the world, setting Guinness World Records in the process for the fastest bicycle circumnavigation of the world by a father and son, the longest bicycle journey by a father and son, and the most countries visited in a continuous bicycle journey by a father and son.

A UK pub owner waved off 108 bike riders, ranging from seven to 81-years old, for the pub’s 28th annual fundraising ride supporting a cancer foundation, a youth-engagement nonprofit, and a Cambodian anti-poverty fund.

A hit-and-run driver was arrested for running down a boy riding a bicycle in Kuala Lumpur; he was driving a sibling’s car with a valid driver’s license, despite literally being card-carrying mentally disabled.

More heartbreaking news from Australia, where a 47-year old man is awaiting sentencing for killing a nine-year old boy who was riding an ebike with his father, driving into the bike lane they were in while traveling over twice the speed limit, and with a BAC more than three times the legal alcohol limit; his mother turned off the boy’s life support while his father was still in a coma.

 

Competitive Cycling

LA officials revealed details about the road cycling and paracycling courses for the ’28 Olympics, which will start on the Venice boardwalk and finish at the Griffith Observatory, while the road cycling time trial and paracycling events will start at the LA Zoo, and also finish at the Observatory. Although it will be pretty hard to top the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre climb from the ’24 Paris Olympics.

 

Finally…

Trying to make Electric Overland a thing, which sounds disturbingly like Electric Ladyland. Chances are, you weren’t riding a bike across the country when you were nine.

And no, there is nothing ironic about using new jersey barriers on a New York bike lane.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin.