Anyone with information is urged to call Fullerton Police Traffic Accident Investigator Feaster at 714/738-6812, or via email jfeaster@fullertonpd.org. Anonymous tips can be sent to the Orange County Crime Stoppers at 1-855/TIP-OCCS.
This is at least the 54th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 11th that I’m aware of in Orange County.
Nineteen of those 54 deaths have involved hit-and-run drivers.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and her loved ones.
The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was riding in the bike lane on Camino Del Sur at Casey Glen around 6:50 pm Saturday, when a 50-year old woman headed west on Camino Del Sur drove into the bike lane shortly after crossing Casey Glen.
He died at the scene.
Police say alcohol was not a factor in the crash. However, there’s no word on why the driver went into the bike lane, whether she was distracted, or how fast she was going at the time of the crash.
Anyone with information is urged to call the San Diego Police Department at 858/495-7800, or cal Crime Stoppers at 888/580-8477.
This is at least the 53rd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 12th that I’m aware of in San Diego County; it’s also the eighth in just the last 18 days.
Once again, a bike rider has allegedly been murdered by an apparent road raging driver.
This time, right here in Los Angeles.
According to KCBS-2, a 16-year old boy was killed when he was deliberately run down by a driver who chased a large group of bike-riding teens into the parking lot at BMO Stadium in Exposition Park a little before 4:30 pm Friday.
The incident began when a group of around 40 kids were riding their bikes south on Figueroa Street, north of Martin Luther King Blvd, and an “altercation” began with the driver of an unidentified sedan.
The teens attempted to escape by going through a gap in the fencing around the BMO Stadium parking lot. They were followed by the driver in the sedan, who accelerated into the group and struck the victim, who has not been publicly identified.
The driver then fled the scene.
A report on KABC-7 differs on several key details, stating the victim was 17 years old, and riding a skateboard, rather than a bicycle. (Update: KABC has revised their story to indicate the victim was 16, and riding a bicycle.)
Police report several witnesses left before investigators could speak with them. Anyone with information is urged to call the CHP’s Southern Division Major Crimes Unit at 323/644-9550 or the Los Angeles Communication Center at 323/259-3200.
If the details are born out, it should result in a murder charge when the driver is ultimately identified and arrested. Anything less would be a travesty.
Assuming the victim was riding a bike, this is at least the 52nd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 17th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; it’s also the seventh that we know about in the City of Los Angeles, which is likely an undercount.
(Correction: According to Crosstown LA, the actual number of bicyclists killed in Los Angeles so far this year is 21, not the seven I’ve counted; nine of those have been victims of hit-and-run drivers.)
Update: Fox 11 is reporting that one of the teenagers broke the car’s mirror during the altercation on the street, prior to the driver pursuing the group into the parking lot.
He then intentionally drove his car into the victim, who reportedly wasn’t even involved in the initial confrontation.
Read that last part again. The kid he killed had absolutely nothing to do with it.
“It’s really hard to be honest, we’re just trying to ride and it’s really hard for the family too,” said Manuel Ramirez. “He didn’t deserve to die in the streets like that.”
Meanwhile, Fox spoke with a local pastor. and parent.
Pastor Mariela Madriz, whose own teenage son frequently bikes with friends in the area, described the tragedy as “heartbreaking and horrific.” She spoke to FOX 11 at her nearby church, Iglesia Jesucristo Fuente De Vida.
“As a mom, all I could think is — it could have been my son,” Madriz said…
“If you can get so angry over a broken mirror to your car to kill a child, you don’t deserve to be out and free,” Madriz said. “You deserve to be locked up for the rest of your life.”
The station also talked to a former detective, who said the car should be easy to identify.
Retired LAPD Detective Moses Castillo echoed Madriz’s sentiments, calling the incident a “horrible tragedy” just days before Thanksgiving.
“This is the type of case that can be solved quickly with the public’s help,” Castillo said. “If you see a vehicle with a damaged side-view mirror and front-end collision damage, report it to authorities immediately. More than likely, that’s going to be our suspect.”
Let’s hope someone spots it fast, before the driver can hide or repair it.
Because the pastor is right. This person shouldn’t be out on the streets, ever again.
Police have also identified, but not named, a person of interest in his killing, after serving a search warrant at a Los Angeles home Saturday night, and seizing two cars.
Our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad November is showing no sign of letting up.
Now another bicyclist has been killed on the mean streets of Southern California, the sixth so far this month — an average of just over one every three days.
Both drivers remained at the scene, and neither showed signs of impairment, according to police investigators. There’s no word at this time on the cause of the collision, or who may have been at fault.
Anyone who with information is urged to call the Santa Monica Police Department at 310/458-8427.
However, this is more evidence that Lincoln remains one of Santa Monica’s deadliest corridors, despite a decades-long effort to fix it.
This is at least the 51st bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 16th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Bradley Allen Proudfoot and his loved ones.
I’m told Orange was struck when she was traveling east on 16th Street at San Antonio Ave this Tuesday, after a driver headed west on 16th entered the intersection at the same time and left-hooked her while turning onto southbound San Antonio.
Which means there should be no question who was at fault. And it’s not her.
She reportedly died after being taken off life-support at the Pomona Valley Medical Center this weekend.
You can learn more about Orange in the post below.
This is at least the 50th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth that I’m aware of in San Bernardino County.
How many more there are that we haven’t learned about remains an open question.
Correction: I originally misidentified the victim as Barbara Orange rather than Donna. I apologize for the mistake.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Donna Orange and her loved ones.
There’s no official confirmation yet, but I’ve received word of a bicycling death in Pico Rivera.
A local resident reports driving past the aftermath of a collision involving a bicyclist on Whittier Blvd at Acacia Ave on Sunday afternoon.
They forwarded a couple photos, which I’ve included below. While they don’t show the victim, that damage to the vehicle is graphic, so be forward if that’s not something you want to see.
In one, you can clearly see a mangled bicycle in the street, 30 to 40 feet in front of a car with a shattered windshield, suggesting the victim was struck at some speed.
He’s identified in the post only as a young man; a commentator describes him as her nephew. But as with anything else on Facebook, that may or may not be accurate.
Unfortunately, that’s all the information we have at this time. So if anyone knows anything, please let me know.
But at least the driver stuck around this time.
Assuming this is confirmed, it is at least the 49th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 15th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
He was pronounced dead after being transported to a hospital.
At last report, Lackey-Berg was being held on $1 million bail at the Cois M. Byrd Detention Center in French Valley for suspicion of murder.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know right now. There’s no word on how or why the crash occurred, any possible motive, or whether the driver was arrested at the scene.
Anyone with information its urged to call Detective Pedro Aguila of the Hemet Police Department at 951/765-2423.
This is at least the 48th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
Note: There is also a story about this incident on the websites of the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the San Bernardino Sun and Ontario’s Daily Bulletin, but it is hidden behind their draconian paywalls. If you have a subscription to any of those papers, let me know if there’s any additional information we haven’t included here.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
To assess the risk posed to cyclists by rigid bollards, DEKRA conducted two identical collision tests at its Crash Test Center in Neumünster, Germany, with a three-wheeled e-cargo bike driven at a speed of 25 km/h (about 15-16 mph), one against a flexible post and the other against a rigid one.
“In the test against the rigid post, there was a strong deceleration [slowing down] that threw the dummy from the saddle towards the handlebars. The bollard buckled and then acted as a ramp. The rear of the bike was lifted up, throwing the dummy off and causing the bike to tip over.”
“In a real-life situation, the person riding the bike would have suffered serious injuries,” Egelhaaf said.
On the other hand, flexible plastic bollards — like the car-tickler bendie posts preferred by LADOT — allowed riders to simply roll over them, with little or no risk of serious injuries.
But flexible bollards also do nothing to keep inattentive or uncaring drivers out of the bike lanes, and are often flattened within weeks, if not days, of their installation.
So the question becomes whether the risk of falls outweighs the risk posed by motorists and their big, dangerous machines.
I don’t know how to answer that.
The only way to get a actual answer would be to try a real world test on comparable roadways, and measure the rate of injuries on both after six months and a year.
And to the best of my knowledge, no one has done that. Or plans to.
………
This is who we share the road with.
A Santa Monica collision resulted in unexpected tragedy after a pickup driver collided with a motorcyclist on the 1400 block of Cloverfield Blvd, near the Specialized bike shop at Cloverfield and Santa Monica.
Witnesses said a driver seemed to intentionally crash into the victim’s motorcycle, after the motorbike rider waved a gun as the two men argued moments before the crash.
The driver claimed he accidentally hit the motorcycle while attempting to flee from the gunman — then he did flee immediately after the crash, turning a road rage incident into a fatal hit-and-run.
All because video showed a driver correctly slow down behind the recumbent rider to wait for a safe opportunity to pass, before a truck driver slammed on his brakes to avoid running up the driver’s ass, and nearly hit an oncoming car headed in the other direction.
And somehow, they managed to conclude this was all the bike rider’s fault.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here, either. A Boston bike commuter says the city’s new bike lanes are a metaphor for the Democratic Party, since they were built to appease a “small, highly vocal minority,” a “depressing number” of whom consider the resulting traffic congestion a benefit, not a trade-off. Tell us you don’t understand traffic calming without saying it.
If you’re going to hate on bicycles, might as well do it poetically, as a British letter writer pens an ode to the local city council’s “absurd” and “crazy” “cycle crusade.”
They get it. A Pasadena study session will consider how to revitalize North Lake Ave and turn it into a Complete Street to make it more inviting to bike riders and pedestrians, as it currently “suffers from excessive space allocated to cars.”
Costa Mesa will host Micromobility America, a trade show for ebike and e-scooter makers, and others in the micromobility industry, this Thursday and Friday.
Sad news from Sacramento, where a 32-year old woman was killed when she was stuck by a driver while trying to ride across the street; naturally, the CHP blamed the victim for riding directly into the car’s path, without mentioning whether the driver may have been speeding or gone through a traffic signal.
Bicycling considers how to say goodbye to the rider you used to be. A lesson I’ve struggled to learn myself. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you.
That’s more like it. An Illinois driver faces up to 61 years in prison for the drugged-driving crash that killed a man riding a bicycle, after he was convicted on four counts of aggravated DUI causing death and one count of reckless homicide.
Life is cheap in Wales, where an 84-year old driver walked without a single day behind bars for killing a bike rider after claiming he just couldn’t see the victim, he was apparently spared jail time by virtue of being old. And once again raising the question of how old is too old to drive, if you can’t even see a grown man on a bicycle.
Cyclist looks back to Connie Carpenter’s — now Connie Carpenter-Phinney — win in the first women’s Olympic road cycling race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, 40 years before the next American woman would take gold at this year’s Paris Olympics.
Sometimes it seems like they just don’t want us to know how deadly our streets really are.
Far too often, when people riding bicycles in Los Angeles are killed or seriously injured in traffic violence, it never makes the news.
Or even a lousy LAPD press release.
Not even for a hit-and-run, where notifying the public could help identify and capture the suspect — which is why we have hit-and-run alert systems on both the local and state level that somehow never get used.
Yet that was the case yet again last month, when 42-year old Oscar Guardado was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his bike in LA’s West Adams neighborhood.
According to a fundraising page posted by his daughter, Guardado died on October 27th when he was struck by a drunk driver, who fled the scene afterwards; unfortunately, it’s only raised $825 of the modest $7,000 goal for funeral expenses.
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD Sgt. Garbiel Nily of the South Traffic Division at 323/421-2500, or call the South Traffic Division Watch Commander after business hours at 323/421-2577.
As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for any fatal hit-and-run in the City of Los Angeles.
Although the odds of finding the suspect would have been much higher had the department made this announcement in the hours after the crash, rather than weeks later.
Rivera was struck around 6:23 pm Saturday while riding on Mojave Drive, near Village Drive. He was declared dead after being taken to a local hospital.
The driver stuck around after the crash, and reportedly cooperated with the investigators.
As usual, there’s no word on how the crash occurred, or who may have been at fault. There’s also no word on whether the driver was ticketed or arrested.
Anyone with information is urged to call Deputy J. Stroik of the Victorville Police Department at 760/241-2911.
This is at least the 46th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fourth that I’m aware of in San Bernardino County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Manuel Rivera and his loved ones.
