April 2, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Nipsey Hussle was one of us, and kindhearted cop replaces 91-year old Tarzana woman’s stolen bike
No surprise here. Encinitas bicycle advocate and local leader Roberta Walker and her husband have filed a claim against the city for the crash that left her with critical injuries last December, arguing that the signage and sharrows she was riding on were confusing and contributed to the crash. And that there should have been a bike lane, instead.
A pair of Napa parents are committed to promoting bicycle safety after their 11-year old son was seriously injured when he was struck by a driver while crossing the street on his bike; naturally, the driver wasn’t charged.
National
Outside discusses five insects everyone can eat. Most bike riders have probably eaten a few before learning to ride with their mouths closed.
Looks like Seattle is retreating on its bike-friendly reputation. A week after pulling the plug on a long-planed bike lane, Seattle scratches plans for 22 proposed bikeways, requiring an update in the city’s Bike Master Plan.
Grand Junction CO makes a big deal over their new sharrows, saying they show where bicyclists are allowed to use the full lane — before noting that they don’t actually change anything.
A group of bike-riding teenagers swarmed Boston’s former Big Dig tunnel, taking over two lanes of the freeway on the O’Neill Tunnel until they were herded out by police. Although I’m more concerned by the driver who used a handheld cellphone to record them.
They’re some of us, too. US Magazineshows bike-riding celebs around the world. Depending on how you define celebrities, of course. Although I like Lea Michelle, who said she kept a bicycle on the Paramount lot to bike to the set and back.
The BBC’s Piers Morgan insists that bike riders should be licensed and insured, accusing riders of being “completely unaccountable,” “invisible people marching around anonymously on your bikes creating havoc.” Maybe someone should explain to him how bicycling works, because marching ain’t it.
April 1, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: LA approves memorial signs instead of fixing streets, BAC agenda, and Yerba Buena Road closed
I honestly don’t know what to think about this one.
The signs can be requested by the families of fallen bicyclists, memorializing the victim while offering a general nod to bike safety.
They’ll stay in place for five to seven years, after which families can pay to have them replaced.
However, a maximum of just 20 signs will be installed each year, which will barely keep up with the number of riders killed on an annual basis in Los Angeles.
In an interview withKPCC’s Take Two, (Councilmember Bob) Blumenfield explained how the idea for the signs was borne out of a tragedy in Woodland Hills last April. On Easter Sunday, 15-year-old Sebastian Montero was struck by a car and killedwhile riding his bike on Burbank Boulevard.
Blumenfield was in contact with the boy’s family, as well as local police officers— together, they discussed ways to prevent future tragedies.
“I’ve been to too many of those ghost bike ceremonies, and they’re heartbreaking,” Blumenfield said.
After one officer, Duke Dao, suggested the idea for the memorial signs, Blumenfield ran with it.
I’m told be someone who worked closely with Blumenfield on the proposal that he’s absolutely sincere in wanting to do something to both remember the victims of traffic violence, and keep it from happening again.
But a simple sign’s not going to do that.
Blumenfield is one of the city’s better councilmembers on traffic issues, and is working to get a bike lane installed where Montero was killed.
But many of his peers have taken active steps to block desperately needed, potentially life-saving bikeways.
Despite the unanimous vote to establish the memorial program, we have to wonder how many of the councilmembers voted for memorials to fallen bicyclists instead of taking active steps to prevent their deaths.
Because it’s a lot easier to put up a small memorial sign than to fix the roads to avoid the need for them.
Among those voting yes,
Gil Cedillo has blocked road diets on North Figueroa and Temple Street, as well as trying to remove his entire district from the bike plan.
All voted to approve the memorials, while helping create — or at least not alleviate — conditions likely to require them.
Meanwhile, there’s a reasonable fear that the memorial signs will just blend into the streetscape, no more noticeable than the street signs indicating where police officers have been killed.
And if you haven’t seen those, that’s exactly my point.
Ghost bikes are intrusive and evocative. Granted, many drivers don’t know what they are. But once they do, they notice them every time they pass, and that drives the meaning home.
I’m not sure that will happen with these.
Especially if the limit of just 20 a year stays in place. It should be expanded to include not just those riders killed in the future, but the many riders who have needlessly lost their lives in the past.
And it should include pedestrians, as well, since they die in much greater numbers on LA’s mean streets than we do.
Maybe if hundreds of these memorial signs started to appear every year, blanketing every part of the city, people might finally get it. And realize that too damn many people are getting killed just because they rode a bike or went for a walk.
Then the council might finally do more than put up a sign.
Maybe.
Thanks to everyone who sent me links to this story.
No word on whether the alleged speeding driver who killed him was ever charged.
Photo by Steve S
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The Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee will hold its bimonthly meeting this Tuesday. As always, the meetings are open to the public, and you are encouraged to attend.
The LA City Bicycle Advisory Committee meets Tuesday 4/2/19 7pm in Hollywood to consider a number of topics including Vision Zero update, LADOT's on-street wayfinding sign project, dockless scooters and bicycles in LA +more. See agenda for more details. Bring your bike inside. pic.twitter.com/ErIQrh5wr5
I’d like to think that might actually make someone think twice before getting behind the wheel after drinking, smoking or downing pills.
But the threat of the death penalty hasn’t seemed to stop anyone from murdering other people.
So there’s that.
Thanks to Evan Burbridge for the link.
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Local
LAistnotes the problems with LA’s troubled Vision Zero program, including a lack of social media presence for the past seven months. What the city doesn’t seem to get is that most of us really, really want to support Vision Zero LA — if they ever get their shit together.
The San Francisco Chronicle complains about the mythical war on cars, exemplified by a discussion of congestion pricing. Never mind that congestion pricing is intended to help improve traffic flow, which is hardly anti-driver. Or that nearly 100% of the roads are already dedicated to motorists, and the rest of us are just hoping for a few crumbs.
Two Kansas men were killed when a driver slammed into their bicycles from behind. No word on why the driver apparently didn’t see a couple grown men on bikes directly in front of him, but I’m sure we could all take a pretty reasonable guess.
An Oklahoma man learned the hard way not to wear a skull mask while carrying meth and weed on his bike. Although his lawyer might want to argue that simply wearing a mask, scary or otherwise, on a public street is not probable cause for a traffic stop. Which makes everything that followed moot.
The upstate New York jerk who wrote a ten-year old boy a letter of non-apology after a judge let him off easy for sideswiping the boy’s bike will now have to perform community service.
Taking a cue from LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s playbook, Baltimore’s mayor decides to rip out a protected bike lane, and says no way to a planned road diet. Although to be fair, she’s replacing the protected lane with a painted green lane. And she gave it four years, while Garcetti removed the non-protected bike lanes and road diets in Playa del Rey after just one month of driver complaints.
Only after he passed away at the ripe old age of 93 on Saturday was it revealed that a Montreal man was the secret “Mr. Bike Man” who gave away over 1,700 bikes, helmets and locks to children in the Montreal area for the past 34 years.
French drivers are apparently vandalizing speed cameras, costing the country the equivalent of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars. And it may have contributed to a jump in traffic deaths.
Sydney, Australia residents rise up against what they term a “nonsensical” bicycle superhighway, fearing it would somehow jeopardize pedestrians more than all those cars zooming past. Seriously, why is it that people continue to fight bike lanes that have repeatedly proven to be a net benefit to the surrounding community, regardless of any loss of parking?
Thanks to Matthew R for his generous monthly donation to support this site, and keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.
March 29, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Bike rider severely injured in bizarre hit-and-run, and Garcetti swears he supports road diets
The victim, identified only as a 45-year old man named Esteban, remains hospitalized in the ICU with severe injuries.
But in a bizarre twist, the police have found the car, talked with the owner and identified the hit-and-run driver. They just don’t know where he is.
Thirty-five-year old Jose Miguel Mendez Lopez was running an errand in his boss’ car when he ran the victim down from behind.
And despite informing his boss of the crash, he ignored her pleas to return to the scene of the crash, and is now in hiding at an undisclosed location.
Meanwhile, a young woman suffered life-threatening injuries in a collision while riding at 8th and Hope in DTLA Tuesday evening.
Even though the chance of achieving zero traffic deaths within the decade ending in 2025 is pretty close to zero, itself.
Garcetti also swears he supports road diets, calling them absolutely necessary — when communities support them, that is.
Even though he’s done absolutely nothing to support road diets on Temple Street, 6th Street and North Figueroa, where the local communities have done exactly that.
And he hasn’t shown up at any of the many public meetings to defend the road diet on Venice Blvd, which he also claims to support.
At best, his support so far has been exemplified by benign neglect. Which in practice isn’t much better than outright opposition, allowing opponents to gain an outsized voice with the lack of any vocal support from the mayor’s office.
But who knows?
Maybe now that he’s not running for president he might actually show up for the job he was hired to do.
Presumably it will still remain free to ride your bike through the area.
Although given the lack of infrastructure, and all the angry drivers upset about forking over $4 for the pleasure of driving home from work, I’m not sure if you’d want to.
Call it a mini-ciclovia. With the coming return of the Long Beach Grand Prix, Long Beach will once again open the 1.5-mile course to people without motors, whether on foot, skates, bicycles, or any other form of non-motorized transportation. And once again, only for one and a half hours, in the middle of the work day, when most people can’t go.
State
This is the cost of traffic violence. Both members of the British indie band Her were killed in a car crash, along with their manager, while driving to a show in Santa Ana; no word on just where the crash occurred.
The father of Olympic cyclist and Stanford University student Kelly Catlin, who took her own life earlier this month, says Stanford could have done more to prevent her suicide, despite an earlier attempt and a week’s stay at the university hospital.
Sacramento approves a new bike trail, even though it will mean the removal of unused train tracks and a burned out bridge that train fans had hoped to use someday.
A 75-year old Healdsburg driver will face a misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charge for killing a woman on an organized charity ride when he drove onto the wrong side of the road to pass a slow moving truck, hitting her head-on.
Two-thirds of British drivers apparently believe in magic, somehow imagining that bicyclists just come out of nowhere. Which is another way of saying they aren’t paying attention behind the wheel, and have no idea what’s going on around them.
An 82-year old English woman suffered a serious head injury when she was knocked down by members of a university cycling team; she was collateral damage when a half-dozen riders went down trying to avoid her as she crossed the road.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. An Irish bike rider says he was knocked off his bike after someone threw a catalog at him from a passing car. Which strains credibility, if only because no one uses a dead tree catalog these days.
Australian cyclist Michael Hepburn was praised for his sportsmanship after he got off his bike to help his friend Zak Dempster when he fell during the Three Days of Panne race, even though they were competitors in the race.
It takes a major schmuck to stand over a cyclist laughing and filming as he lies on the ground writhing in pain after going off the road — let alone joke about stealing his bike. Portuguese pro Domingos Goncalves suffered a broken collarbone and shoulder blade in the crash, while the jerk filming him hopefully suffered massive humiliation.
He’s described as a dark-skinned Hispanic man in his 30s with a shaved head, and wearing black clothing. He was last seen riding a black bike with mountain bike frame and oversized wheels.
A neighborhood greenway — aka bike boulevard — through a historically black Portland neighborhood has been moved over two blocks to appease residents who want to keep driving to local businesses.
There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole a bicycle from the yard of an Ohio couple, who had kept it there as a memorial to their late son for the last 15 years; the world-class cyclist and nuclear engineer was killed in a collision 25 years ago.
Talk about victim blaming. After the NYPD charged the driver of an oil tanker who killed a bicyclist with a pair of misdemeanors — even though he drove off after the crash, which is a felony — the company he works for said it was the victim’s fault for wearing dark clothes and riding after dark. Neither of which are against the law.
After New Orleans bike advocates installed temporary protected bike lanes to connect segments of the city’s bike network, traffic speeds dropped 26%, while ridership nearly doubled. And 87% of local residents wanted to make them permanent.
Shocking story from Taiwan, where a man riding a bicycle and playing Pokemon Go discovered a baby abandoned by migrant workers. The shocking part isn’t the abandoned baby; it’s that anyone is still playing Pokemon Go.
An executive directive issued by the mayor at that time called for a 20 percent reduction in deaths by 2017, with an emphasis on preventing “pedestrian fatalities involving older adults and children.” Traffic deaths rose 38 percent in 2016 and have fallen just 5 percent since then.
The transportation department’s initial count, which does not yet include the final two days of the year, also indicates that 127 pedestrians were killed in crashes in 2018. That’s down slightly from the 135 pedestrian deaths recorded in 2017, but it’s the second-highest total in the last 15 years.
And nearly as many bike riders were killed in the City of Angels last year — 21 — as all the traffic deaths of any kind in San Francisco, where they actually take Vision Zero seriously.
The mayor’s office argues, contrary to the widespread perception that little or nothing has been done to implement Vision Zero, that the city has made over 1,000 safety improvements over the past three years.
Which works out to just 333 a year.
But even if we accept that total, 1,000 improvements in a city the size of Los Angeles makes a drop in the bucket look like a tidal wave.
And those improvements have represented a form of timid incrementalism. None have been the kind of bold, wholesale changes the city would need to meet that failed 2017 reduction of just 20%.
Let alone put the city on the road to actually eliminating traffic deaths by 2025.
Which ain’t gonna happen.
But still, it’s cute the city still pretends that zero traffic deaths by 2025 is possible, as if closing our eyes, crossing our fingers and wishing really hard will make it happen.
Actually ending traffic deaths will takes major changes to the streets to slow traffic, encourage active transportation and get people out of their cars.
Let alone the political courage to actually make it happen.
One other quick note on the piece.
I’m told new LACBC Executive Director Eli Akira Kaufman was quoted accurately in the piece, but misspoke.
Kaufman says building community support for road diets and other measures will take time, though he argues that making the city safer is about more than individual projects.
“Infrastructure doesn’t save lives; culture does,”he says, arguing that it’s important for people to consider the safety of others when moving around the city.
What he really meant to say, my sources tell me, was that infrastructure alone doesn’t save lives.
As the story notes, both Kaufman and the LACBC both remain firmly in the pro-infrastructure camp.
But he’s right.
If Vision Zero is ever going to have a significant impact in this city — let alone actually end traffic deaths — we have to change the culture that cars are king on the streets of Los Angeles.
And everyone else needs to get the hell out of the way.
No, that’s not vanilla soft serve. That’s thermoplastic in preparation for striping. A kettle heats the material, it’s transferred to the handliner (seen here) and then it’s laid down as striping #behindthescenes#GoLongBeach#bikelanespic.twitter.com/gaY9wq1T42
So you melted the thermoplastic and applied the striping, but there’s one more step. You sprinkle these glass beads on top of the fresh thermo to give it that reflective nighttime sheen. [Pro tip: act fast…thermo dries really quickly] #GoLongBeach#bikelanespic.twitter.com/fX8bK1NxLa
An Indian Wells bicyclist is in critical condition after reportedly crashing into the rear of a stationary minivan; no word on how or why the crash happened. Thanks to John McBrearty for the tip.
Utah legalizes lane filtering for motorcyclists, allowing riders to split lanes when traffic is stopped on roads with a speed limit of 45 mph or less. The story doesn’t mention whether that would extend to people on bicycles.
Now that’s more like it. An Iowa woman will spend the next five years behind bars for intentionally ramming her car into a woman riding a bicycle, then getting out of her car and repeatedly punching her; she accused the woman of sleeping with her baby daddy.
An Argentine cyclist faces a four year ban for being just the latest to get busted for doping with EPO. Seriously, if the era of doping over, why do so many dopers keep getting caught?
My nephew is in the final semester of film school, and in need of a location for his senior project.
If you know of a high-rise building in the LA area that has a long hallway with an elevator and multiple office doors, and might be open to a low budget student shoot, let me know.
An op-ed in the Sunday Los Angeles Times makes the case that the troubled MyFigueroa project represents everything that’s wrong with LA’s alternative transportation efforts.
At the project’s launch last August, Mayor Eric Garcetti boasted of a “safer” and “more enjoyable” way to get around Los Angeles — a harbinger of our transit-friendly, less-car-reliant future.
But when I hopped on a bike share and rode the entire south to north length of the project, I discovered the same patchwork approach to safety that governs the rest of L.A.’s infrastructure….
In isolation, and for blocks at a time, MyFig’s enhancements are worthwhile, even exemplary. But benevolently making things safer for a block or two — only moments later leaving anyone without a car inconvenienced at best, in danger at worst — isn’t enough of an improvement.
As a pilot redesign, what MyFig doesn’t do is as instructive as what it does.
For anyone who remembers the long, difficult process getting the MyFig project off the ground, the final result comes as no surprise.
At every step along the way, compromises were made to appease business owners and drivers, from AAA, who have their SoCal headquarters on the street, to Felix Chevrolet, which didn’t want to give up free street parking.
Too many times, bike riders and pedestrians were frozen out of the discussions to resolve any issues.
So what resulted was a project that was, in effect, designed by a committee that didn’t want it there in the first place.
And not surprisingly, ended up as a very incomplete Complete Street.
The LA Times says yes, Los Angeles will collect data on every scooter ride you take, but no, Big Brother isn’t watching.
Velo Club LaGrangereturns to sponsoring a road race this June after the demise of the popular Brentwood Grand Prix, with closed course race at the Porsche Experience Center.
CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin offers an overview of Westside Fast Forward, a series of projects designed to help reduce congestion and provide alternatives to driving, including Metro bikeshare and dockless e-scooters. Although it’s disappointing that one of LA’s most bike-friendly councilmembers didn’t even mention building out the bike plan.
Amsterdam’s nine-year old junior bike mayor explains what it takes to make the city safe for kids. Needless to say, Los Angeles doesn’t have a bike mayor, junior or otherwise.
An Indian hit man put that line about “if you want to get away with murder, use a car” into practice, getting away with a hit-and-run that killed a bike rider for five years before police realized it was a contract killing.
March 22, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: 63-year old bike rider killed in Pomona drive-by, Culver City bike petition, and free bike tourism doc
Pomona resident Robert Arthur Fausto was shot at 12:49 am by the occupants of a small blue car, and pronounced dead at the scene.
Shootings like this usually turn out to be gang related, although the victim’s age might argue against that in this case.
Either way, he’s one more needless victim of violence. And one death too many.
Thanks to Henry Fung for the heads-up.
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LACBC neighborhood chapter Bike Culver City wants your signature on a petition calling on the city to stand by its ten-year old promise to complete a bike network and build infrastructure by the end of next year.
Or as he put it, “Lots of interesting places and people, pared with some stunning scenery.”
The video is available free until the end of this month.
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Local
US News & World Report — yes, it’s still around — questions why Los Angeles is so dangerous for bike riders. Then fails to answer the question, and digs about as deep into the subject as scraping your fingernail through the dust.
Just what the world needs. A $7,000, 45 mph ped-assist e-mountain bike made by a California company that would qualify as an electric motorcycle under state law, and requires a license, license plate and helmet. And isn’t likely to be allowed on any public trails.
A Queens NY newspaper says bike riders should stay in their lane, and not speculate about how a fatal bike crash happened or say bad things about the driver. Which might be valid if the NYPD didn’t have a long established bias against bicyclists, and a history of wrongly blaming bike riders for crashes. Which inevitably leads people to question their conclusions.
Speaking of San Francisco, the city is considering plans to make more streets carfree to improve safety; plans are already underway to remove cars from iconic Market Street. Make a fist and count your fingers; that’s how many carfree streets you’ll find in Los Angeles.
The Sacramento Bee says two recent deaths in San Diego and Santa Monica show just how dangerous e-scooters are. But fails to mention that the Santa Monica victim was killed by a hit-and-run driver after falling off his scooter.
Sacramento residents are upset that someone who apparently doesn’t get the concept locked a pair of Jump dockless ebikes to a fire hydrant, and no one’s done anything about it. Seriously, the point of dockless bikeshare is that you don’t have to lock them up, you just leave them when you’re done — hopefully out of the way and not on the sidewalk. And never blocking a fire hydrant.
New York will install speed cameras around every public school in the city, after cameras previously installed at some schools cut speeding 60% and resulted in a 50% drop in fatalities. Yet another reminder that speed cameras save lives. And that they’re still illegal in California.
A Boston group is auctioning a $10,000 Boston Strong-themed bicycle commemorating the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing that was ridden in the 2015 Amgen Tour of California; the money will benefit a man suffering from ALS.
A Massachusetts town is “torn,” and “a town in crisis,” by a state proposal to install a rail-to-trail conversion. Seriously, if that’s the biggest problem they have, they should let go of each other’s throats and throw a party to count their blessings.
No, seriously. If you’re already wanted for kidnapping, robbery with a deadly weapon and accessory to a felony, don’t ride salmon. If you’re riding your bike with an outstanding warrant, nearly 7 grams of meth and a thousand bucks, put a damn light on it, already.
Kern County residents Ronald Wolfe, Kyle Stewart and Nichole Stewart were booked on suspicion of robbery, conspiracy and attempted murder for the Incycle heist. Police say they may have conducted similar crimes — without running over anyone else — throughout Southern California.
Let’s hope authorities take this case as seriously as those potential charges suggest.
Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.
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Here’s a great opportunity to advocate for bikes and safer streets. Or maybe just give officials a piece of your mind.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it, even though the library is just walking distance from my home. Or would be, if I could actually walk these days.
So feel free to show up in my place, and demand some serious action on improving street safety in Hollywood, and throughout the LA area.
Speaking for myself, after spending time in the ICU when my helmet failed to prevent a serious concussion in the infamous beachfront bee incident, I may be the first in line to get one once I can ride again.
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Somehow, we missed this one last year.
But if you’ve got eleven minutes to kill, you could do worse than watching pro mountain bikers shred on tiny bikes.
Berkeley pulls a page from LA’s former playbook and continues to let the city’s streets deteriorate, saying they would cost $120 million to fix, and another $50 million to transform them into Complete Streets. Which is probably cheaper than the legal settlements they’ll pay out for not fixing them. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the link.
Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss says confronting the driver who almost killed you is never worth it. As someone who’s done exactly that for most of my riding career, I’ve had some very positive conversations with drivers who’ve unintentionally threatened my safety. But the bad outweighed the good by a significant margin.
Iowa City, Iowa is conducting a road diet on a major street, stressing that it’s being done to improve safety and that the extra space for bike lanes is just an added benefit. No word on whether the locals will revolt like West LA’s entitled drivers.
A North Carolina bill would require bike owners to license their bicycles for a $10 annual fee, with the funds going to support bike safety projects. Except studies have shown that it would cost more to license bikes than a program like that would bring in. And result in more bikes rusting in the garage once the registration expires.
Heartbreaking news from Mississippi, where a 12-year old boy is in an induced coma and facing multiple surgeries after he was badly mauled by a pack of dogs, who knocked him off his bike and dragged him into a ditch. The dogs were put down, but owner won’t face any charges because there are no regulations for dogs in the county.
We may have to deal with distracted LA drivers. But at least we hardly ever have to worry about getting live cobras stuck in our wheels like these Indian bike riders.
The driver initially stopped but fled the scene before police and paramedics arrived.
That was followed by another crash in front of the Santa Monica Public Library on Sunday afternoon.
A teenaged girl described as an experienced bicyclist suffered a broken jaw when she was struck by the driver of a Metro bus while riding in the bike lane on Santa Monica Blvd.
Unfortunately, no other details are available.
David Drexler came upon the scene shortly after the crash, and took photos of the scene.
Unfortunately, things didn’t get any better on Monday.
Evan Burbridge came across the aftermath of another scooter rider who struck by a driver.
I just saw the aftermath of a woman hit by a car here in Santa Monica. She was riding north on 14th across Olympic and the car was turning left onto Olympic. My coworkers actually saw the incident, and she apparently went onto the driver’s windshield and broke it. By the time I got there, all I saw was the ambulance driving her away and the mangled scooter on the center median.
The frustrating thing is the conversations I had with people after the incident. A woman at Tacos Por Favor who saw the accident said we should ban all scooters. I informed her that it sounded like it was the car’s fault, and that cars cause hundreds of deaths every day in America. Then, my coworkers used the classic victim-blaming argument, “she should have been wearing a helmet.”
I try my best to explain the facts to people, and point out their biased perspective on the incident, but it’s so deep seeded that I don’t think people will ever let it go.
Then again, things weren’t much better in Los Angeles, where Josh Steich, aka Kierkegaarden Cop, reported seeing the aftermath of a crash involving a bike rider on his commute through Eagle Rock Friday evening.
That was followed by another crash involving a pedestrian a few minutes and several block later.
No word on the condition of either victim.
Let’s hope all the victims make a full and fast recovery. And offer our deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim of Friday’s night’s scooter crash.
Photo is of a broken Lime scooter on my block in Hollywood.
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Today’s common theme is justice for dangerous — and too often deadly — drivers.
And a Florida drunk driver got a well deserved nine years for the hit-and-run death of a bike rider. He fled the scene, leaving the victim lying in the street, where he was run over by another driver; it was the second crash that actually killed him.
CD1 Councilmember Gil Cedillo continues his one man war against any form of transportation with less than four wheels, as he attempts to ban e-scooters from Chinatown in DTLA, as well as the rest of his district.
Los Feliz residents are calling for improvements on deadly Hyperion Avenue, two years after they first raised the alarm — and before a woman was killed by an out-of-control driver as she stood on the sidewalk. Needless to say, they’ve never received a response.
Forbes highlights five exotic bicycling adventures, from a mountain bike safari from Zululand to Mozambique, to a coast-to-coast crossing of Sri Lanka. If you happen to have an extra several thousand dollars lying around.