The victim was riding west on Ortega and attempted to cross Date Palm Drive in the crosswalk, and was hit by a driver heading south on Date Palm. Yet somehow, police say both the driver and the victim ran the red light.
The victim, identified only as a 48-year old Cathedral City resident, died at the scene, while the driver was taken to a hospital with minor facial injuries.
No explanation was given for why the victim’s age and city of residence was given, but their sex was somehow a secret.
Police also didn’t explain how the driver and the bike rider both could have entered the intersection against the light, despite traveling in different directions.
Twenty-eight-year old Neomi Velado was sentenced to nine years behind bars after she was convicted of felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and hit-and-run causing death.
She was busy texting her boyfriend when she slammed into Montalvo’s bicycle back in 2020, after reportedly drinking and smoking weed; it was her fourth distracted driving crash, which alone should have justified a murder charge.
But by fleeing the scene, she gave herself enough time to sober up before her mom convinced her to turn herself in — but only after she had replaced her windshield to hide evidence of the crime, and driven to work the next day.
And was photographed partying with her boyfriend in Las Vegas shortly afterwards. Apparently, taking the life of an innocent man didn’t do much to dampen her spirits.
Montalvo’s mother is appealing to Governor Newsom to halt the early release. She is also supporting Senate Bill 907, which would add gross vehicular manslaughter and vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated to the state’s list of violent felonies, which would allow sentences to be reduced by just 15%.
The fact that they aren’t already considered violent felonies would be impossible to believe if this wasn’t California, where even the most egregious motor vehicle collisions are still just considered “oopsies.”
The bill would also require a Watson notice anytime a DUI is knocked down to hit-and-run, allowing drivers to be charged with 2nd degree murder if they kill anyone while driving under the influence again.
Although they should also require a Watson notice after a first-time distracted driving conviction, so the driver could face a murder count if they kill someone while driving distracted again.
Let alone a fourth time.
Instead, we once again allowed a demonstrably dangerous driver to remain on the streets until it was too late.
And even then, shamefully let her go with a relative slap on the wrist.
LADOT is conducting yet another survey, this time to consider changes to the Sunset/Cesar Chavez corridor.
Sunset/Chavez Safety and Mobility Project
We want to hear from you! Take our survey for a chance to win a $50 gift card!
The City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is kicking off a new planning effort to improve safety and mobility along Sunset Blvd and Cesar Chavez Ave, between Fountain Ave and Alameda St. This major corridor connects neighborhoods across the city to key destinations such as Dodger Stadium, LA State Historic Park, Chinatown, Olvera Street, Union Station, and Downtown LA – Today there are critical gaps in the transportation network and ongoing safety concerns for people walking, biking, and taking public transit along the corridor.
At this stage, LADOT is focused on understanding the full range of issues people experience along Sunset Blvd and Cesar Chavez Ave. We are especially interested in hearing from community members about safety concerns, access challenges, and ideas for how the street could function better for everyone. LADOT wants your input to better understand the full range of issues experienced along Sunset Blvd and Cesar Chavez Ave to ensure the project reflects the community’s needs. Please take our survey to share your experience along the corridor and let us know how the corridor can be improved for all road users.
The survey is available until Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in English, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese.
Survey participants will be entered into an opportunity drawing for a chance to win a $50 gift card.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Um, okay. A columnist for the London Telegraphcalls for all of us “selfish” bike riders to be forced to wear license plates, arguing that drivers are ‘”terrified” by “egomaniac” bicyclists with “absolutist green agenda.”‘ Maybe we should just rivet a license onto our bike shorts. Or jeans. Or whatever the hell you ride in.
The head of a Denver design firm makes the case for why the city’s protected bikeways provide a year-round return on investment. When I lived in Denver back in the Dark Ages, I could ride my bike across most of the city without ever riding in the street. And did year round, unless it snowed. In which case I used the same paths to ski to work.
People For Bikes marks Black History Month, without mentioning it, by celebrating the North Omaha Trail, saying it connects communities while centering its culture, in the birthplace of Malcom X.
Florida cops conducted a full-blown police chase, complete with helicopter, and eventually took the miscreant into custody — a 14-year old kid on an ebike.
International
Travel site Islands takes a look at Montreal, after Copenhagenize named it the most bike friendly city in North America. Which oddly, is not an island. But still.
You’ve got to be kidding. In a story that’s equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating, a 58-year Korean man walked without a day behind bars for using a choke chain to drag his dog to death behinds his ebike, while leaving a half-mile streak of bloodstains from the dog’s bleeding paws. Maybe someone should put the judge in a choke chain and make him run barefoot behind an ebike for an hour on an 82° night.
He was booked on $50,000 bond on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, hit-and-run involving death and reckless driving.
If there was any justice, he would be charged with murder for making the conscious decision to leave Carreon to die in the street while he sped away.
Although if past is prologue, the DA’s office probably just bargain this down to reckless driving, and send Bryant on his way with a few months in jail and a slap on the back.
Let’s just hope prosecutors can at least trace his actions prior to the crash to determine if he was under the influence, or if some other factor caused him to flee.
And it also lowers the risk of developing intestinal cancer by an estimated 20 percent.
There’s no mention of whether it has the same effect on other forms of cancer. But researchers intend to look into how exercise would interact with more traditional forms of cancer treatment like chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
California will start requiring Waymo to report all crashes to the DMV, which is currently allowed to just keep those things to themself, even though the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration, aka NHTSA, requires reporting every incident — like the dooring that injured a San Francisco bike rider, or the crash that killed a popular Bay Area cat.
A San Jose man walked away from a career with tech startups in his 40s to open a bike shop; now he offers free bicycles and repairs for homeless people, saying he’s “seen magical, magical things happen” with a bicycle for someone in need.
Yesterday we mentioned that two sixteen-year old Texas boys were struck by drivers while riding with a companion in cities 45 miles apart; today we learned that the boy who died was riding with his 10-year old sister, who remains hospitalized. The other boy remains in critical condition with life-threatening injuries.
A Texas man was sentenced to 15 years behind bars after his dogs attacked and killed a 46-year old man who had the misfortune of riding his bike past the man’s property; animal control had picked up dogs from his property 18 times prior to the attack, and he was banned from adopting dogs from the local animal shelter.
Bicycling injuries are reaching an all-time high in London, with rental ebikes accounting for a fifth of serious injuries. Which sounds really bad, until you consider that one-fifth of 1,200 is just 240.
Last night, I tried to have a rational discussion with someone on Twitter/X who disagreed with me.
And was quickly reminded why that’s a bad idea.
Admittedly, I eventually lost my cool. Well, only if you consider telling someone to “eat shit” before blocking them losing your cool.
I don’t take kindly to someone trying to tell me who and what I am, and what I believe, without knowing anything about me other than some point the disagree with.
Or maybe they just find my whole existence disagreeable.
But the gist of the conversation, with someone who described himself as an active bicyclist, was A) Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam, B) bike lanes allegedly slow traffic and hurt business, and C) this has always been a car-centric city and always will be.
Which is fine. He’s entitled to his opinion, just as I am to mine.
And he’s right, Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam. Neither is Paris or Copenhagen. Only Amsterdam is Amsterdam, just like only LA is LA.
But that doesn’t mean a city can’t change.
Amsterdam wasn’t always what it is today. In the 60s, it was a car choked, traffic clogged mess, until people got tired of the endless toll of traffic deaths, and began the “Stop de Kindermoord” movement.
That is, stop murdering children with motor vehicles.
That was the beginning of a total reimagining of the city that made it one of the most walkable, bikeable cities in the world today, where driving is usually the last choice when other options aren’t practical.
The same is true with Copenhagen, at roughly the same time and for the same reasons.
Yet despite the assumptions of those who so casually throw out “this isn’t Amsterdam” as if it’s a trump card, those cities are far from unique. In just the last decade, we’ve seen Paris reinvent itself to be far more walkable and bikeable, utilizing the concept of the 15 Minute City.
And in just the last few years, we’ve seen London transform to the point that bikes often outnumber cars in the city center.
Even my Colorado hometown took a similar journey.
When I was a kid, there were no bike lanes. The first bike path, along the river through town, was built while I was away.
But as the city grew from 10,000 people when I was in grade school, to 25,000 in high school, to nearly 170,000 people today, it continued to sprawl and be built around cars, with the inevitable traffic and congestion, until the people there said “enough.”
Today it is a Platinum Level Bicycle Friendly Community, according to the League of American Bicyclists.
In other words, it changed, because the people who live there wanted it to. Boulder, about 45 minutes to the south, took a similar path.
Maybe those cities are outliers. Or maybe the only reason Los Angeles, and other similar cities, aren’t like that is that the people haven’t demanded it.
Yet.
His second argument was based on a basic fallacy.
He made the case that bike lanes that were installed, then removed, in Playa del Rey because they slowed traffic, and there weren’t enough bike riders to justify them.
Which was kind of the point.
They weren’t installed for our benefit. Making the city more bikeable and a little safer was only an added bonus, brief though it may have been.
They were installed as a tool to calm traffic, intended to slow cars and reduce traffic flow because of the unacceptable level of traffic collisions and deaths in the Playa community.
And while it’s possible that they may have initially hurt local businesses, repeated studies have shown that retail sales and tax receipts usually increase within a year or two after the installation of bike lanes — and the people who initially fought the lanes often later fight to keep them.
That didn’t happen in Playa, simply because they were never given the chance.
The final argument is also based on a fallacy.
Anyone who lived here in the ’30s or ’40s wouldn’t recognize the car-centric city we have devolved into. Los Angeles once had the best transit system in the country, with every neighborhood efficiently served by the Red and Yellow Cars.
Those were the trolley systems that once ran down the middle of every major roadway. But they were removed to make way for cars, resulting in the overly wide boulevards we have today.
Before that, the city’s roads were built and paved to accommodate bicycles, prior to the mass production of motor vehicles.
And before that, it was a city of dusty roads and trails for horses and wagons.
So the city has already reinvented how it gets around multiple times. And we can do it again if a majority of Angelenos want it.
Then again, the two-third majority who voted for Measure HLA would seem to suggest they do.
I won’t get into the whole thing now — or probably ever — except to say that it, too, is based on a couple of basic fallacies, which like a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, sends the whole damn thing off in the wrong direction.
The concept of traffic violence was never intended to suggest that there is anything intentional about it. Simply put, traffic violence reflects the fact that crashes are violent events, which can inflict violent trauma to its victims.
And like other forms of violence, the causes can be addressed, and the effects minimized.
As for the idea that traffic violence, or traffic deaths, are an epidemic, that isn’t meant to suggest it has suddenly become so. Violent crashes and traffic deaths have been epidemic ever since the motor vehicle was invented.
Traffic deaths have always been too high. Calling them an epidemic now is merely a recognition of the problem.
It’s kind of like if measles had always been around, and no one ever bothered to do anything about it. Then one day, someone pointed a finger and called the problem an epidemic that could be treated.
One last point.
The writer of this piece suggests that the solution to safer streets isn’t separating bikes and pedestrians from motor vehicles, but for everyone to focus on sharing the road safely and efficiently.
I used to believe that, too.
I have often said that if everyone obeys the law, and share the road in a safe manner, that crashes are unlikely, if not impossible.
But that fails to account for human nature.
People will inevitably make mistakes, and do whatever is most convenient for them in the moment, largely because they’ve always gotten away with it before. And will continue to get away with it, until they don’t.
Which is the whole rationale for Vision Zero, based on the idea that human beings make mistakes, and roads should be designed so those human mistakes don’t become tragedies.
If you disagree with that, that’s fine. We should be able to disagree without being disagreeable, and find a consensus that works for the majority of people, while protecting the rights of the minority.
That’s how democracy works.
So disagree, vehemently if you must.
But try to keep the insults to a minimum. And I will, too.
Photo by Joni Yung.
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Megan forwards the Meyer’s Brothers podcast, in which Danish actor, producer and screenwriter — and the Game of Thrones Jaime Lannister — Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reveals not only that he’s one of us, but that bicycling is his favorite form of transportation.
Hawaii is joining the long list of states cracking down on ebikes, with one resident telling lawmakers it’s become a Wild West,” with little kids “zipping out around a corner on the sidewalk with some high-speed motorized vehicle.”
In a doubly tragic case of Texas symmetry, two 16-year old bicyclists were struck by drivers while each was riding with a companion; one suffered life-threatening injuries, while the other sadly didn’t make it. In the second case, both rides were struck by the driver, while in the other, the victim was hit so hard his GPS showed him flying off his bike at nearly 78 mph after the impact.
In yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a 37-year old Louisiana man faces a number of charges after critically injuring a 63-year old bike rider who had stopped to fix his chain — including his 4th DUI. In any rational world, he would have been off the road after his second. If not the first.
At last Friday’s council meeting [video – remarks start minute 1:26], Yaroslavsky adjourned the meeting in remembrance of the Westwood crash victims. Yaroslavsky questioned, “Why does it feel like safety improvements take forever even after we know where the risks are?” She noted the current LADOT process for Westwood, pledging to accelerate, “I am calling on LADOT to return with an accelerated timeline for Westwood Boulevard – including immediate quick-build safety measures while longer term work continues.”
“We shouldn’t be waiting years for basic interventions while Angelenos die.”
The Playa del Rey killing also saw some response from its City Councilmember Traci Park. Via her email newsletter, Park stated she had visited the crash site and was working with city departments “to re-assess the area for additional lighting and speed safety improvements.” Park noted that bike improvements there were installed and removed in 2017, and that “it’s time to re-open that conversation.” She listed two bike/safety projects she is working on nearby.
The entire Playa del Rey area needs a lot more than a mere “reassessment” of Pershing Drive, where the crash occurred, as well as Manchester Blvd, which has been a frequent site of traffic violence, and Vista del Mar — aka Deadly del Mar — the site of eight traffic deaths in just the last ten years.
All of this is in the context of the city being beyond broke. Part of the reason is a record number of liability payouts due to people getting hurt on city infrastructure that the city knows is dangerous but hasn’t fixed or won’t fix. Additionally, the city continues to slow walk Measure HLA implementation — the exact kind of implementation that would make streets safer.
As a safe streets advocate, it’s hard not to take it personally when someone dies while walking or biking in the city, because I often walk or bike around the city, often with my kids. Living in a city where a pedestrian is injured every 5 hours and killed every 2 days is deeply painful. To have two horrific crashes claim lives on streets that the city was supposed to make safer — but hasn’t yet, or even worse, backtracked after installing safety improvements — is beyond the pale.
Meanwhile, LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who is running for re-election this year, puts the deaths in their proper context.
This is unacceptable.
In 2015, Vision Zero promised to eliminate ALL traffic deaths by 2025, but the problem has only gotten worse because the City lacks the investment and political will to rethink our streets. We must prioritize human lives over cars.https://t.co/g4XLnfkeq5
— LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia (@lacontroller) February 7, 2026
The country requires a minimum of roughly three feet, and roughly four and a half feet on roads with speed limits over 44 mph. Which might actually keep bicyclists safe if drivers didn’t keep violating it.
Instead, researchers recommended infrastructure improvements like protected bike lanes, traffic calming and more road space, which would do a lot more to improve safety for people on two wheels.
Never mind that the kid got right hooked. Or that it’s almost always the person on two wheels who gets injured, rather than the person surrounded with a couple tons of steel and glass, seat belts and air bags.
Or on second thought, maybe it’s really not that funny at all.
………
Okay, so why is Caltrans refusing to make a lousy three blocks in Santa Monica safer for bike riders?
We're hiring! SFA is looking to bring on a part time contractor to help create short-form videos for YouTube and social media. Please apply by February 13th
German soldiers with rifles confiscate bicycles in front of the Royal Palace on Dam Square, Amsterdam, early April 1945(see ALT-text for more info)📷Ad Windig
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Although you could make the case that the kids were just “liberating” the 101 Freeway, dangerous and illegal though it may be.
New video shows a bizarre scene on the 101 Freeway in Echo Park, where dozens of people were seen riding bicycles on the freeway on Saturday afternoon.
Hats off to the crew of Albuquerque Fire Engine 11, who not only took a bike rider who fell off his bike to the hospital, but also gave his bike a safe ride home.
My bike-friendly Colorado hometown will join cities across the country in celebrating Winter Bike to Work Day this Friday. Although a certain bike-unfriendly SoCal megalopolis we could name won’t be participating, despite having some of the country’s best winter weather.
A Massachusetts woman has figured out a way to get drivers attention that works a hell of a lot better than hi-viz, riding her bike topless, albeit with pasties, to make the case that women should be allowed to shed their tops just like guys do. All titillation aside — pun intended — there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Period.
A Florida man faces charges for hit-and-run after injuring someone on a bicycle, then abandoning his truck in a creek; he was already on probation vehicle theft, drug possession and failing to appear, and had an active warrant for skipping out on his sentencing for a DUI case. Sounds like a prince.
London’s Cycling Mikey may be the city’s most hated and controversial bicyclist for using his helmet cam to keep drivers honest, and turning them into the cops when they’re not. Although video evidence generally isn’t accepted for traffic violations and misdemeanors in this country.
For the 13th time in 30 days, someone riding a bicycle has been killed in Southern California. And once again, the victim was murdered by a hit-and-run driver.
The victim, identified as 27-year old Colton resident Sinahi Moises Garcia, was pronounced dead at the scene. It’s not clear if Garcia was a man or a woman, though Sinahi is usually a feminine name.
There’s no word on how the crash occurred, or whether Garcia had lights on their bike in the predawn hour. Then again, we have no way of knowing if the driver was using their lights, either.
There’s also no information on where Garcia and the driver were positioned on the three-way intersection, which is controlled only by a stop sign on Key. There appears to be a bike lane on Riverside, which has the kind of wide, straight traffic lanes that encourage speeding, particularly at that hour.
Police do not appear to have a description of the suspect or their vehicle, or which way they fled.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Colton Police Officer A. Jacobson at 909/370-5000, or ajacobson@coltonca.gov. Anonymous tips can be submitted to We-Tip at 1-800/782-7463, or via wetip.com.
This the 13th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and it appears to be the first in San Bernardino County,
Four of the SoCal deaths involved hit-and-run drivers..
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Sinahi Moises Garcia and their loved ones.
Aeromedics were dispatched at 10:44 am, and lowered by helicopter after locating the man near the La Tuna Foot Trail, and immediately began lifesaving efforts. Additional personnel from the Los Angeles and Burbank Fire Departments hiked in and travelled by Jeep to reach the scene.
However, despite their efforts, the victim was declared dead at 11:38.
There’s no word at this time whether victim’s medical condition was caused by a fall or natural causes, or due to some other factor. It’s also possible his death could have been due to natural causes brought on by mountain biking.
He was publicly identified only as a man around 50.
The scene was turned over to law enforcement for further investigation.
This the 12th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and remarkably, already the seventh in Los Angeles County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and her loved ones.
For the 11th time in the past 30 days — okay, 28 — someone has been killed riding a bicycle on the mean streets of Southern California.
And once again, the victim was murdered by a hit-and-run driver.
According to the Long Beach Police Department, a woman riding a bicycle was mowed down by a motorist who ran a stop sign in broad daylight, then just kept running.
Police report the victim was riding south on Redondo when the driver blew through the stop sign on westbound 2nd at a high rate of speed, striking her, then continuing west on 2nd without stopping.
When police arrived, they found the woman, who has not been publicly identified, being tended to by a bystander who had stopped to help. She was taken to a local hospital, where she died.
Authorities are looking for the driver of a 2025 gray Hyundai Sonata; there’s no description of the driver at this time.
Fatal traffic collisions have been a growing problem in Long Beach despite the city promising it would try to eliminate them completely by 2026. Last year, there were 53 deadly crashes in the city. Most people killed were outside a car: walking, biking or riding an e-scooter.
Long Beach’s strategy is to force drivers to slow down, but the city has faced criticism for moving too slowly on some tactics, such as installing automated speed cameras.
Anyone with information is urged to call LBPD Collision Investigation Detail Detective Edwin Paredes at 562/570-7110, or anonymously through LA Crime Stoppers at 1-800/222-TIPS (8477).
This the 11th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the sixth in Los Angeles County; three of those SoCal deaths were caused by hit-and-run drivers.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m just glad this damn week is over.
I mean, it is over, right? Tell me it’s over.
It’s just been one damn thing after another. And as soon as you think you’ve caught your breath, something even worse happens.
But on the plus side, Sunday offers one of the best days to ride a bicycle, with virtually traffic-free streets until the game is over. Or gets out of hand, anyway.
At least the guy on the bike walked away, as did the woman behind the wheel.
So far, police have termed it a tragic accident.
You know, just another oopsie.
Just a kindly old lady who just got confused, lost control of her car, and didn’t mean to cause any harm.
Not one word, at least to this point, discussing whether someone that old should have even been behind to begin with. Never mind that for most people, cognitive abilities decline with age, eyesight weakens, and reaction times slow.
No one is saying she’s not a nice person, and no one can say whether she was at fault for the initial crash with the bicyclist. Or that she doesn’t need a car in this damnably car-centric city.
But it’s hard to believe that a younger driver wouldn’t have been able to come to a stop before plowing into a building a full block away.
We continue to allow elderly people to continue driving, even as their abilities to do so safely decline. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?
Just the normal cost of getting from here to there, I guess.
Thanks to Andy for the heads-up.
………
No surprise here.
A new study on the effect of cycling in older adults published in the PLOS One medical journal shows that bicycling improved cognitive function and mental health in the test subjects, whether they rode regular bicycles or ebikes.
According to the abstract,
For executive function, namely inhibition (the Stroop task) and updating (Letter Updating Task), both cycling groups improved in accuracy after the intervention compared to non-cycling control participants. E-bike participants also improved in processing speed (reaction times in go trials of the Stop-It task) after the intervention compared to non-cycling control participants. Finally, e-bike participants improved in their mental health score after the intervention compared to non-cycling controls as measured by the SF-36. This suggests that there may be an impact of exercising in the environment on executive function and mental health.
In fact, the ebike riders actually showed more improvement than the regular bike riders.
Perhaps because ebikes are easier on older bodies, encouraging people to ride both more, and more often.
We don’t have a problem with cities enforcing some sensible rules and reminding e-bike riders that they have a responsibility to be respectful of pedestrians and those who use traditional bicycles. Still, we worry that in their zeal to regulate, cities are tamping down on the core benefit of these e-bikes: providing people with that wonderful freedom of travel.
Which, at its core, is exactly what ebikes offer. Whether you’re young or old, healthy or otherwise.
It’s not that ebikes are better than regular bikes. They just meet different needs for different people.
And that shouldn’t be taken away just to rein in a relative few out-of-control kids.
………
In better news, Gravel Bike California takes in the gravel and wine experience riding around Temecula.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
The Los Angeles Daily Newsprofiles the owners of Spoke N’ Wheel, the oldest bike shop in the San Fernando Valley, as it nears the half-century mark. Which is only four years older than my ’81 Trek.
Volunteers maintaining the La Jolla Bike Path are calling on the city to post more signs to discourage people from building their own unauthorized bike trails, after discovering a number of such trails carved into the hillside. Because as we all know, posting a sign is almost as effective as a sternly worded letter to the editor in deterring scofflaw behavior.
An opinion columnist for the Seattle Times relates how he took his stolen ebike back from someone who claimed he bought it for 400 bucks, recognizing it as the man rode by and confronting him at a red light.
Well, no shit. The annual Minneapolis Frostbike trade show was cancelled due to ‘current law enforcement activities.’ Apparently, they didn’t want to risk anyone getting inadvertently deported or shot by ICE agents.
No surprise here. Immigrant advocates and older adults decry New Jersey’s draconian new ebike law as discriminatory; the law requires licensing and registration for every ebike, without distinguishing electric motorbikes and dirt bikes from ped-assist commuter bikes.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A 73-year old Georgia man is planning to ride 950 miles to Washington DC to honor fallen service members and support the families they left behind. As we’ve noted before, however, there’s a big difference between planning to do something and actually doing it. So wake me when it’s over.
Jens Voigt says we live in a golden era of cycling, adding “Every now and then you have Pogacar or Einstein being born.” Although I’d take Pog over Einstein on a hilly descent any day.
After writing about Sunday’s fallen bicyclist in Hemet, my internet service went down at precisely 12:07 am as I was in the middle of writing what would have been yesterday’s post.
At which point, I wisely gave up and went to bed, after Spectrum finally stopped insisting there was no outage in my area, and admitted they wouldn’t be back online until 5 am, at best.
She is easily the fastest corgi I know. But whether that energy can be directed towards running in a straight line remains to be seen.
And yes, I’m told the betting windows will be open. Although where they’ll find a jockey that small, I have no idea.
Feel free to open a crowdfunding page to fund matching team uniforms, along with a limo to deliver her to Arcadia in the style to which she’d like to become accustomed.
Or a decent bucket bike, anyway.
This is from last year’s Summer Corgi Nationals.
Now, we’ve got a lot to catch up on, so let’s get to it.
According to the research, drivers get hand signals when you point directly left or right in the direction you’re turning. But bending your left arm up to signify a right turn, or holding it down to indicate braking, not so much.
They’re also clueless when it comes to road positioning or body language to indicate your intentions on the road.
However, while the study doesn’t mention it, my personal research indicates drivers still understand the gesture most commonly used by bicyclists to signify displeasure.
No bias here. A Utah legislator is calling for Salt Lake City to “mitigate” the impacts of any traffic calming work, including “mitigating” lane removals by removing bus and bike lanes and restoring lanes for motor vehicles. Without digging out my old dust-covered Funk & Wagnalls, I’m not sure that’s what “mitigate” means, exactly.
Iowa bicyclists are decrying a so-called bicycle safety bill in the state legislature, which would ban bikes or any other personal conveyance from streets with speed limits above 25 mph, as well as all sidewalks; advocates call it the most anti-bicycling bill in the state’s history.
Horrible news from India, where a 40-year old man was chased down by two men and beaten to death in a petty road rage dispute, which started when the victim’s bicycle brushed a motorcycle owned by one of his attackers; police arrested men the next day, who claimed they were just drunk and the victim owed them money. Oh, well okay, then.
But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Streetsblog’sJoe Linton offers a roundup of bike lane news, including approval of the Better Overland protected bike lane project, as well as protected bike lanes coming to Glendale’s La Crescenta Ave and Colorado Ave in Santa Monica.
LADOT has another survey about the Los Angeles River path, this time looking for connections to a new segment of the LARiverWay in the east San Fernando Valley. Here’s a thought. If they’re trying to build one continuous bikeway along the entire LA River, how about just picking one name for the whole damn thing and sticking with it?
Not everyone loves the shade of “Hollywood” green used to make the West Hollywood bike lanes more visible to drivers, while remaining sufficiently inoffensive to filmmakers. Personally, I’d say it’s more of a puke green, but I appreciate the effort.
Hats off to the Culver City Unified School District, which is redesigning the parking lot between Farragut Elementary and the Culver City Middle School and Culver City High School campus complex to improve bike parking, and build protected bike lanes leading to it.
State
Fullerton is the latest OC city to crack down on reckless ebike riders, including an extra-low 5 mph speed limit on city sidewalks. I’m not sure I could ride that slow on my road bike without falling over, let alone on an ebike.
A Florida bike club is in mourning after a 67-year old club member was killed when he was struck by a truck driver towing a trailer; others in the club said that no one was safer on a bike, or followed the rules more than he did. Which is a tragic reminder that you can do everything right, but your safety still depends on the people you share the road with.
International
Momentum asks if it’s ever too cold to bike to work. If you ask most Angelenos, that’s any time the temperature drops into the 60s. Or 70s if it’s overcast.
A writer for Canadian Cycling Magazine gets on his soapbox, and makes the case for why shouting “on your left!” is the worst thing a bike rider can do, aside from buzzing someone’s shoulder afterward, arguing that we should all just use our bells. Because evidently, every road and racing bike comes fully equipped with a bike bell, as any rider in the pro peloton could undoubtedly tell you.
In a bizarre story, Polish adventurer Adam Boreiko was found dead in his Russian hotel room while attempting to ride the 570 miles from Yakutsk to Oymyakon in Siberia — the coldest spot outside Antarctica, at the coldest time of year; he’d already covered 250 miles, and appeared to be in perfect health when he stopped for the night, but was found dead the next morning. Has anyone checked him for polonium? Just asking.
