I’m told there’s a new ghost bike on Venice Blvd in Palms.
Rumor is the victim was killed in a dooring a few weeks ago. The victim’s name, which was confirmed by an anonymous comment over the weekend, was Oscar Lazaro.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the name I had been given for the ebike rider killed by a driver in Arleta on September 13th. The commenter also confirmed that the victim in Arleta was on a legal ebike, not an e-moto, as I had questioned.
Meanwhile, the fundraiser started by Lazaro’s brother has raised over $19,000.
If anyone knows anything about either death, please let me know, either in the comments below, or at the email address on the About page.
That makes them the 55th and 56th SoCal bicycling deaths we know about this year, the 20th in Los Angeles County, and the sixth and seventh in the City of Los Angeles.
But there are probably others in LA we haven’t heard about, since the LAPD and LADOT no longer feel the need to inform us, or anyone else.
Thanks to David for the heads-up.
As for today’s photo, I can’t speak for you, but I’m sick to death of ghost bikes. And the need for them.
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This is who share the road with.
Deadly PCH has claimed yet another life, and once again at the hands of a speeding driver.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 51-year old Ryo Uchimiya was killed when a 16-year old boy slammed his speeding Range Rover into Uchimiya’s parked car early Saturday, as he slept in his car after arriving early for work at the famed Nobu Malibu restaurant.
The Times reports the 21-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that runs through Malibu has averaged roughly four deaths a year as a resulting from traffic violence over the last decade.
The driver reportedly didn’t have a license, according to TMZ.
KNBC-4 has surveillance video of the moments leading up to the crash.
The tragedy is compounded by the news that Malibu will delay a 60-day period of issuing warnings from 21 new speed cams to November, after it had been set to begin last month.
During testing, speed cams in just four locations on PCH recorded over 100,000 speeding violations over a nine-day period last month, from September 16 to September 24.
Which means we can expect needless deaths to continue at least through the end of this year.
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Speaking of people we share the road with, a suspect has been arrested for the fatal shooting of a Culver City bus driver last week.
Fifty-five-year old Jose Zayas was suspected of being intoxicated when he got into an argument with the driver over a missed stop, then made his escape on a bicycle after shooting the driver.
He is being held on $3 million bond. The 42-year old victim has not been publicly identified.
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Is it really surprising that pediatric ebike and e-scooter injuries have jumped in recent years?
A breathless San Francisco news report said that the orthopedic unit at Children Hospital Los Angeles reported a 675% jump in injuries over the past five years, from 16 in 2019 to 124 last year, with e-scooter injuries more common but the percentage and severity of ebike injuries increasing with time.
Researchers also found that the overwhelming majority of patients were male, with a median of 14 years old, and many were “violating age or helmet laws” at the time of their injuries.
However, in the context-free manner we’ve become accustomed to, researchers apparently neglected to note that ebike and e-scooter usage has also skyrocketed over the same period. And that many, if not most, young riders are using what are actually illegal electric motorbikes, which allow far higher speeds than legal ped-assist bikes.
So what you really have is a problem of more kids illegally using illegal e-motos and scooters, underage and without a license.
But sure, let’s just keep up the panic over ebikes, of any and all types.
Thanks to John for the tip.
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Apparently, Streets For All founder Michael Schneider has a book coming out next March, something I learned yesterday from a brief review on the Middle Eastern website Aran News.
“Car Sick” is an engaging account of how a car-obsessed Los Angeles tech entrepreneur became an advocate for safer streets whose primary mode of transportation is his bicycle. It paints a lively picture of what it’s like to navigate LA’s sprawling metropolis on a bike—including catching a flight from LAX with kids and luggage—while giving readers the confidence they need to feel comfortable biking in urban settings themselves.
Michael Schneider explains why city streets are not safe for anyone who’s not in a car and how to stay safe on streets that weren’t designed for bikes.
You can pre-order Car Sick: Cycling to Freedom in a Gridlocked World for a mere, um, $99.95 for the hardcover copy; fortunately, the paperback version costs $78 less.
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Streetsblog has come out against Prop 45, which is billed as a reform to overly restrictive CEQA laws, but which the nonprofit transportation news organization says “would roll out the red carpet for just the type of projects that we created CEQA to prevent and mitigate in the first place.”
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A three-year old girl narrates a video — in Japanese, Swedish, English, and “Dogs” — of her parents taking her and a pair of golden retrievers riding on their pink and blue ebikes with matching sidecars,
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Sometimes, it’s the person on two wheels behaving badly.
A 37-year old Aussie man was arrested after crashing his ebike into a 16-year old girl while riding drunk and stoned; the girl was critically injured, while the ebike rider had an alcohol level more than two and a half times the legal limit, and tested positive for coke and meth. The woman he was apparently riding with just kept going.
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Local
Streetsblog reports nine of the city’s 15 council districts saw no repaving work at all last year, as the city shifted to working on smaller streets to avoid complying with Measure HLA and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
This is who we share the road with, part three. Forty-one-year old registered nurse Nicole Linton faces multiple life sentences after she was convicted of six felony counts of second-degree murder for a fiery 130-mph Windsor Hills crash in 2022.
KTLA-5 will sponsor a team for the Bike MS: Bay to Bay 2026 in conjunction with Rock n’ Road Cyclery on October 17 and 18.
State
Calbike is looking for a full-time policy associate on a remote-work basis.
This is who we share the road with, part four. A 75-year old Santa Ana woman has been arrested for animal cruelty and animal abandonment after she was accused of intentionally running over and killing a puppy last month. A witness said Hahn Nguyen placed dog food in the street, then ran over the puppy, named Blackey, when it scurried over to eat it; she then stopped on top of the dog for about 15 seconds before driving off.
Motorcycle magazine Ride Apart asks the question most of the media has avoided, wondering why the Orange County DA’s office shelled out the big bucks to buy back legal ped-assist bicycles, which don’t cause any problems, along with the illegal e-motos that do.
San Diego’s NBC station looks at the battle over a bike lane on Encinitas’ Santa Fe Drive, which seems to have ended with a new state law making it difficult, if not impossible, to remove for at least five years.
Concern is growing for a 63-year old Temecula man who disappeared after going mountain biking 11 days ago.
Sad news from Sacramento, where a man was killed riding his bike on Thursday.
National
James Taylor — no, not that one — is bringing furry joy to his fellow Seattleites in the form of his 115 pound, bucket bike-riding Bernese Mountain Dog, Pickle.
A Wisconsin woman has set out to ride all 44 of the state’s bike trails, a total of 1,700 miles.
There’s not a pit deep enough for the 37-year old Illinois man who just drove off after hitting a little kid riding a bicycle, leaving the 11-year old little boy lying critically injured in the roadway.
The Michigan man who designed prosthetic legs using bicycle parts says he’s giving the design away, and has no intention of profiting from his invention so amputees around the world can benefit from it.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A 90-year old North Carolina man just completed his 36th consecutive 150-mile ride to raise funds to fight MS.
Louisiana bicyclists rode to remember Mickey Shunick, a 22-year old college student who was kidnapped and murdered by a registered sex offender while riding her bike home after visiting a friend in 22.
International
The worldwide bicycle industry is short 45,000 bike mechanics right now, and will need another 105,000 within six years — a job that should be AI proof for the foreseeable future.
Bike riders in Ontario, Canada were left shaken after a 34-year old man was killed riding his bicycle on a roadway with a 50 mph speed limit; one man said he couldn’t understand how it could happen on a day with clear visibility unless the driver just wasn’t paying attention. Apparently, cellphones and distracted driving must be new up there.
A London writer says legal ebikes are a game changer, but they’re getting caught in the backlash against illegal e-motos.
French soccer superstar Mbappé is one of us, posting video of rehabbing his knee by riding a bicycle, despite Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho’s “non-negotiable” rule forbidding team members from riding bikes. And yes, he was wearing a helmet.
Raleigh is marking the former UK company’s 125th anniversary with a new, but very old school, steel-frame bicycle combining British heritage with Japanese parts and design.
Competitive Cycling
Remco Evenepoel may have lost out on the world championship, but he was able to claim the European championship on Sunday, outsprinting — or out-throwing — Italy’s Giulio Ciccone in a photo finish.
Former Team USA track cyclist Christina Birch has been named a NASA mission pilot as she prepares for her first spaceflight next year.
Cycling Weekly examines an Eddy Merckx team bike from 1972, the year the Cannibal won the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double, Milan-San Remo, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Il Lombardia, La Flèche Wallonne, the Trofeo Baracchi and set the hour record in Mexico City — but the frame is too small to be the great one’s own bike.
Britain’s DAS-Hutchinson women’s Continental team is just the latest cycling team to bite the dust.
Colombian climbing great Nairo Quintana called it a career after Saturday’s one-day Giro dell’Emilia.
Finally…
Nothing like a tandem unicycle to define real teamwork. Try to avoid breakneck mountain bike stunts in the weeks before your wedding.
And repeat after me — when you’re riding high and packing coke on your bike, don’t ride salmon and put a damn light on it.
The bike, that is, not the coke.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
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