He was taken to a local hospital, then transferred to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 7:50 pm.
The San Bernardino Sun fills in some of the missing details, reporting that Brownstein was riding north on E Street when he was struck from behind by a vehicle driven by a 70-year old woman, who remained at the scene.
She was not suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The Sun also reports that Brownstein was riding a motorized bicycle, though it doesn’t clarify whether he was on an ebike or a gas powered bike.
A street view shows an undivided roadway with two lanes in each direction, with no shoulder or parking lane, forcing bicyclists to ride in the traffic lane.
This is the 58th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 12th in San Bernardino County. That compares with seven in the county for all of last year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Michael Brian Brownstein and all his loved ones.
Mike Wilkinson forwards a reminder to always ride safely.
About 10:30 Thursday morning my wife saw the aftermath of a crash involving a bicyclist near Alameda and Alondra in Compton. Such a scene would be hard for most people to stomach, but it was especially tough for her, because we are both avid riders.
The bike was broken in half, which may indicate the force of the collision, but what really got to my wife was the rider’s screams as the first responders tried to help him. The whole scene is going to haunt her for a while.
Despite her shock, she felt it was important to note that most riders she sees in this area ride terribly. They run stop lights, ride on the wrong side of the road, cross from one side to the other in the middle of the block and worse. That makes it hard for even careful drivers like her to avoid collisions. It’s a reminder that following the rules of the road at least means that you are more likely to be where drivers expect you to be.
Be careful out there!
It’s important to note that there is nothing to suggest that the victim in this crash broke the law or rode recklessly in any way.
But it’s valid to say that our safety as bicyclists depends on riding in such a way that drivers know what to expect. Which means riding with traffic, observing traffic signals, and signaling turns. Even if they don’t.
In other words, ride like your life depends on it.
The Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition, SoCal Families for Safe Streets, Day One, Streets are For Everyone, and Los Angeles Walks will hold a late afternoon ceremony at Pasadena city hall on Sunday.
It’s often said that if you can’t fix it with duct tape, it ain’t broken.
Which is amply demonstrated by this video, where people in the Dutch city of Nijmegen fixed a dangerous intersection on a bike path with a simple application of the aforementioned adhesive.
Speaking of Mar Vista, a dermatologist and Mar Vista Community Council member says Vision Zero is a great idea, but the Venice Blvd road diet was rammed down their throats and won’t save a single life. Because everyone knows that dermatologists are experts in traffic safety, unlike the people who actually get paid to do it. Never mind that it was the result of a two-year, community-driven process, and wasn’t rammed up or down any part of anyone’s anatomy.
One thousand bikes were found in a hand-built dirt bunker after a homeless camp was evicted from the Santa Ana River. If you had a bike stolen anywhere in the Fountain Valley area, now would be a good time to check in with the OC Sheriff’s Department.
Can he give it back? A 19-year old Michigan man rode his bike to work every day, regardless of the weather, so his coworkers pitched in to buy him a car for his birthday.
New York officials knew the bike path where eight people were killed recently was vulnerable to a terrorist attack, but did nothing to prevent it. Just like LA officials know the risk of a similar attack on Hollywood Blvd, but haven’t done anything about it.
And if you’re dismantling a pair of bikes in an alley, while in possession of burglary tools — and already on probation for grand theft — you might want to have an explanation ready in case the cops show up.
It’s a pretty light news day. Which means you should be able to read all of today’s post, and still get out to enjoy a ride in this beautiful LA weather.
Today’s photo shows the WeHo Pedals bikeshare dock outside Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where I’ve been spending way too much time lately.
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Eric Fleetwood forwards this video reminding riders not to take their right-of-way for granted.
Here’s how he describes it,
As I approached the curve to the left, I signaled left to alert the driver of the Mini Cooper, even though I had the right of way and a pulsing amber headlight. Early in the video it became apparent that he was not going to yield (you can see the back of the Yield sign and the graphic on the pavement), I veered to the right side of the road and let him pass by on my left. It appeared that he might be on a cell phone.
Incidentally, many riders down here feel that San Clemente has the worst drivers in South Orange County. I have many experiences with errant drivers, not all of which are on video. From last year: Picture the letter K with the bike route being the backbone of the K. A driver wanting to go from the right arm to the right leg of the K did so by turning left down the wrong side of the main street and then left onto the leg of the K, looking right at me and my Dinotte 400A pulsing 400 lumen amber light.
Los Angeles Walks is joining with the LA Vision Zero Alliance, and SoCal Families for Safe Streets to remember the victims of traffic violence at City Hall this Friday.
Celebrity chef Mario Bartali’s Eataly may have just opened in Century City, but it’s just a fraction of the size of the one opening in Bologna, Italy; so big that Bianchi stocked it with adult tricycles just to get around the 20-acre food complex.
Cycling in the South Bay’s Seth Davidson tries riding in ostensibly bike-friendly Vienna, Austria, and finds it not to his liking. At all. And says that does not bode well for Los Angeles.
There’s a special place in hell for someone who’d try to get away with a hit-and-run by pretending to be a Good Samaritan helping the victim, rather than the heartless driver who ran him down, like this jerk in India.
But you’ll find the same thoughts in the comment section virtually anytime bicycling gets mentioned online.
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Thanks to David Veloz for his generous contribution to help support this site, and bring you SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy every morning my laptop is working.
I hope you’ll forgive my unexcused absences for the past few days.
The good news is, my wife is doing well, and should be back home from the hospital before the week is over.
And my beleaguered laptop is up and running again, leaving me somewhat poorer, but back on the job. Let’s hope it stays that way.
We’ll just assume that nothing important happened while we were gone.
Right?
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LA’s biggest Bike Hub is opening today at Union Station. The new Metro site will offer secure parking for up to 200 bikes for $5 a week, or $60 a year.
Not to mention the needless expense to the city, as the Bureau of Street Services has returned tens of millions of dollars to the city, rather than making desperately needed street repairs, even as the city pays out millions in legal settlements to injured riders.
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It’s been a heartbreaking few days for elderly bike riders.
UCLA students plan to form their own neighborhood council, and split with the “NIMBY and obstructionist” Westwood Neighborhood Council. While the story is about housing, the Westwood NC has also been active in blocking much needed bike lanes in the area.
Sacramento State University is now a silver-level BFU. And no, that does not stand for Big Effing University.
A Marysville woman has been arrested in last week’s hit-and-run that left a bike rider seriously injured; she was taken into custody after calling the police to claim her car was stolen before the crash. An excuse that never seems to work in real life.
It’s a sad day when a dog has better form on an upright bike than I do — even if he does need training wheels. No matter how threatened you feel by drivers, riding with an AR-15 is probably not the answer; neither is claiming you just found it in the street and were taking it to the police station.
I promised last week to catch up on the news we missed when I was too exhausted to write anything following my wife’s surgery.
Only to see my laptop fail yet again yet again over the weekend.
So instead of spending the day at the hospital with my wife, I’ll be at the computer repair shop for what seems like the millionth time this year, hoping that they can once again get it up and running. And keep it that way for a change.
With a little luck — or maybe a lot of luck, the way this has been going — we’ll be back tomorrow to catch up on some of what we’ve missed.
Update: Or maybe not.
No luck yet; keep your fingers crossed that we’ll be back on Wednesday.
The good news is, my wife had her surgery yesterday; everything went well, and she’s resting more or less comfortably.
Hopefully, this will resolve the serious health problems she’s faced for the last several years.
However, the long day has left me physically and emotionally exhausted. Especially after coming home to find this.
So please forgive me for not updating this site today. We should be back on Monday, and I’ll do my best to catch you up on any important news we may have missed.
And thanks for all the kind words and wishes; I may not have a lot of use for Facebook, but it brings a lot of comfort on days like this.
It’s tragic enough when anyone is needlessly killed in a crash.
Worse when it’s a child. Especially one who doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong.
The Long Beach Post reports that a boy in his early teens was killed while riding his bike in the city Thursday afternoon.
According to the paper, the boy was riding with a preteen girl, headed east in the crosswalk on Conant Street at Woodruff Ave at 3:55 pm, when they were both struck by a driver turning left off westbound Conant onto Woodruff Ave.
They were taken to a local hospital, where the boy passed away. The girl remains hospitalized in stable condition with non-life threatening injuries.
Neither victim has been publicly identified.
The driver stayed at the scene.
This is the 57th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 25th in Los Angeles County.
It’s also the third bicycling death in Long Beach this year, and at least the 13th since 2011.
Update: According to the Long Beach Report, the two victims were waiting on the sidewalk to cross Woodruff on their bikes, and didn’t enter the crosswalk until the light turned green. The driver turned into them as they were riding across the street.
Anyone with information is urged to call LBPD Collision Investigation Detail Detective Brian Watt at 562/570-7355.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
Today we’re trying something slightly different by moving news about bike racing and pro cycling into its own section at the bottom, which seems to work better for quiet news days like today.
A Moreno Valley bike rider was critically injured in a collision Wednesday afternoon, after allegedly swerving out of the bike lane into the driver’s path. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.
Will Ferrell is one of us, completing what a Washington news station calls an “amazing” “marathon” bike ride with four friends, going 147 miles down the California coast from Monterey to Santa Barbara over several days. Although the station can’t seem to grasp the concept that he might have done it just because he wanted to.
People for Bikes looks at San Francisco’s plans to use traffic diverters to create a neighborhood bikeway, noting that reducing automobile traffic on one street does not necessarily mean an increase in traffic on surrounding streets. LA’s bike plan calls for a network of similar streets, none of which have been built, or seem likely to at this point.
Las Vegas is installing 800 steel bollards to along the Las Vegas strip to protect pedestrians from terrorist attacks, as well as plain, old fashioned careless drivers. Which is exactly what Los Angeles needs to do, but doesn’t seem to have any interest in, along Hollywood Blvd.
Australian authorities are blocking the ports to keep a hit-and-run driver from fleeing the country after she left a 13-year old bike-riding girl to die in the street. There’s something seriously wrong with anyone who would drive off and leave another human behind to die, let alone a child.
San Francisco advocates pen an open letter to the mayor calling for improvements to the city’s Vision Zero program, including making immediate improvements at the site of any death.
London’s former bike czar calls a proposal from the mayor to ban bikes on busy Oxford Street, which currently sees 5,000 riders a day, an unqualified disaster.
Just one day after the unexpected announcement that ofo had introduced dockless bikeshare to Griffith Park, came the equally unexpected announcement that LimeBike had established a beachfront in Councilmember Joe Buscaino’s 15th District.
According to a press release, LimeBike has partnered with Buscaino for a three-month pilot program, calling it the first time a dockless bikeshare company has operated in any of America’s five biggest markets.
Or maybe the second, since it comes a day after ofo’s landing in the City of Angels.
The bikes cost $1 for 30 minutes, or 50 cents for students; entering the code LIMELA after downloading the iOS or Android app will get you 25 free rides until November 20th. The bikes can be picked up anywhere one is available, and left anywhere once you’re finished.
Low income residents can pay just $5 a month for up to 100 rides, with an option for cash rather than credit card.
Let’s hope Angelenos take better care of the bikes than people have in other cities; bikes abandoned in creeks and trees could mean the end of what promises to be a very useful program that could benefit a lot of people.
And help make bicycling more accessible to everyone.
Bicyclingtalks with SoCal’s own Coryn Rivera, saying she has the potential to become America’s best ever bike racer. Which would mean surpassing a certain Texan, who once was great but officially isn’t anymore.
A Medium post says the effort to recall Councilmember Mike Bonin is really an Alt-Right campaign in disguise, and calls recall leader Alexis Edelstein a flesh and blood version of a Russian Facebook bot.
Buy a special North Carolina license plate, and help give a kid a new bike helmet. Although giving the kid a safer place to ride his bike would probably help a lot more.
A Florida paper examines the benefits of bike paths in terms of health, financial investment and crime, noting that rails-to-trails conversions generally have lower crime rates than the abandoned railways they replaced.
And it might surprise many women to learn that riding a bicycle 75 miles is harder than childbirth.
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On a personal note, my wife will be having major surgery this week to correct a condition that has the potential to be life-threatening.
I’ll do my best to keep up with this site every day, but please accept my apologies in advance if I miss a day or two, or have to settle for a shortened post.
And if anyone would like to submit a guest post, now would be a great time to do it.
