Instead of responding to an increase in bicycling and pedestrian death by going after the people in the big, dangerous machines, New York police are cracking down on the people on two wheels, in some cases ticketing bike riders from violations that don’t actually exist.
The good news, former Columbian pro Juan Pablo Valencia Gonzales wasn’t accused of doping. The bad, he was arrested by Italian authorities on drug trafficking charges after he was found in possession of over 60 grams of cocaine he had allegedly transported in the seat tube of his bike.
I’ll be joining Curbed LA’s inestimable Alissa Walker, new LACBC Executive Director Eli Akira Kaufman, and Romel Pascual, Executive Director of CicLAvia to paint the Spectrum audience a portrait of biking in Los Angeles, good, bad and otherwise.
I tried to recommend a few other bike advocates with better insights and more TV-friendly faces, but for some reason, they wanted mine.
Go figure.
So let’s just hope I don’t break your TV.
Inside the Issues airs at 7 pm on channel 1 if you’re an LA-area Spectrum Cable subscriber. If not, it should be posted online at the above link sometime after it airs.
Who knows. Maybe I can parlay this into a talking head role as the highly paid bike pundit for CNN.
It could happen.
Let’s all play a drinking game tonight.
Take a sip every time I mention aggressive or distracted drivers, and take a shot every time I say “traffic safety deniers.”
If I do my job right, by the time the show’s over, no one will care whether I screwed up or not.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on.
According to the local paper, the ordinance would have imposed the following restrictions, which probably would have killed bike riding entirely in the town.
Bicyclists are not allowed to ride on streets that have no bike safety lane
Bicyclists are not allowed to ride side by side and must be at least 10 feet apart.
Bicyclists older than 16 must register their bike with the town;
Bicyclists are not allowed to wear head phones, sound-preventing device or any type of hearing distraction; and
Bicyclists could be fined $250 for the first offense and $500 for subsequent ones.
The man claimed he drafted it “out of concern for ‘human lives'” after seeing some people ride unsafely.
Just a reminder that there are people out there who would gladly take away our right to the road based on the actions of a few.
Or just restrict it in ways that serve the same purpose.
………
The war on bikes, part two.
A San Diego cyclist says a truck driver attempted to run him and his riding partners off the road.
While riding bikes in San Diego on Friday, the white truck in the background here had just tried to intentionally run us off the road. So I tracked down his company and called his boss today. Not letting him off the hook. pic.twitter.com/U5wqnZzlqQ
Reporting the miscreant driver to his employer was the right thing to do.
However, it’s also a crime; attempting to deliberately run down someone on a bicycle or run them off the road is assault with a deadly weapon. Which means he should also be reported to the police, especially if there’s video evidence of the attack.
Even if the police can’t do anything now, they’ll have a report on file that may be useful if the driver does it again to someone else.
It was the prior police reports that didn’t result in prosecution that finally helped make the case against Dr. Christopher Thompson in the infamous Mandeville Canyon brake check.
………
Somehow we missed this one last month.
David Drexler forwards video of a brazen tag-team bike theft in broad daylight on a busy street in DTLA, directly in front of Whole Foods.
Watch to the end to see just how much teamwork went into it.
………
The Anaheim Police Department says share the road in a new video posted on Facebook, explaining to an angry driver that bike riders have the right to take the lane.
Thanks to Erik Griswold for the link.
………
British TV personality Jeremy Vine had what has to be the close call of the day, if not the year, as an impatient and overly aggressive driver buzzed him while passing in the bike lane he was riding in.
A Moreno Valley bike rider was busted in Santa Monica for riding salmon, riding without a light, and delaying a police officer — evidently by making them look for her when she tried to flee the traffic stop. The first two are just ticketable offenses, so she must have really pissed them off.
A homeless man was sentenced to two years behind bars for beating another transient with his bicycle before attacking two Santa Ana police officers who tried to intervene.
Snowy Halifax, Nova Scotia is gearing up for Friday’s International Winter Bike Week with a full week of winter bike events. The forecast for Halifax calls for a rainy 45° on Friday; Los Angeles should be sunny and 15 degrees warmer. Just saying.
This is the cost of traffic violence, too. A British woman overdosed on heroin in her Paris apartment as she struggled to cope with killing a teenage bike rider; she had moved to Paris after the breakup of her marriage following the crash.
February 6, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Mad as hell drivers and they’re not going to take it anymore, and BOLO Alert for CA bike thief
Talk about not getting it.
A self-described “avid cyclist” — and, ahem, president and CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association — just doesn’t get why the automobile has become a public enemy, arguing that a fundamentally American freedom is under attack.
You know, the freedom for drivers to spew smog into the air with your gas guzzling SUV, which is right up there with freedom of speech or religion.
Except virtually every argument he makes for why the state shouldn’t adopt California’s clean air standard works against him.
Maybe he’s never tried to breath Denver’s air during one of the city’s frequent winter temperature inversions. Let alone heard of climate change.
Then there’s this tired old myth.
Meanwhile, some cities have put their drivers on forced road diets. They are reducing lanes available to drivers on key arterial streets.
Part of the motivation is to increase bicycle and bus lanes. But again, this gift comes at a cost to drivers. The goal is to discourage driving by intentionally reducing capacity and creating traffic congestion by design. Backers say it’s more “people friendly” — at least for people who don’t need to drive.
The bottom line is they want to force more residents to use alternative transportation by making driving as unpleasant as possible.
Because those road diets couldn’t possibly be about slowing traffic and keeping those people in cars alive long enough to get back home.
Or reducing congestion so that people who need to drive, or simply choose to, can actually get where they’re going in a timely manner.
But maybe that’s what happens when you only see the world through the perspective of your own windshield while driving your bike hundreds of miles to that distant trailhead.
Not to mention when your own bank account depends on convincing other people to buy those bigass trucks and SUVs.
But hey, no bias there.
Right?
………
Then again, he’s not the only one.
A writer for a motorists’ website devoted to maintaining automobiles über alles says recreational roadies are okay, but those urban bike advocates are just Vision Zero zealots dedicated to forcing poor, innocent drivers like himself off the roads. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.
And credit Peter Flax with uncovering gem from a guy who’s not going to let the sick tyranny of a small minority of anti-car extremists push him onto disease-filled public transit.
Once again, an independent student newspaper at UC Davis mistakenly thinks that violence against bike riders is funny, publishing what they believe passes for satire about someone kicking bikeshare riders off their ebikes.
February 5, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Fight over road diets goes national, flooding closes GMR, and Emperor Norton was one of us
Advocates, alert: “Keep L.A. Moving,” a small, vindictive group of well-heeled westsiders with little regard for the safety of L.A.’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged residents, is now pushing its disinformation to a national audience – or, at least, attempting to – by rebranding itself as “Keep The U.S. Moving…”
As bicycle advocate Peter Flax has noted, KLAM’s work seems to thrive best in closed-door conservative echo chambers, like Nextdoor and closed Facebook groups. From there, they work to seed aligned broadcast media, including right-wing radio, where their claims are not questioned. When their dubious assertions, for example “[road diets cause] more accidents, more pollution, more gridlock, heavy traffic,” are actually aired in public debate, or studied using actual real world data, they just don’t hold up.
Like climate change deniers, these “Keep Moving” groups deny data-based studies showing that speed kills and that road diets work…
Behind all their crackpot assertions is the empowerment of drivers in well-to-do communities. These ideologues push for unfettered driver access at the expense of safety for all road users, particularly those who have the fewest mobility choices available to them and who are most at-risk to harm. The “right” of this handful of disgruntled drivers to speed is costing the lives of tens of thousands of people in the U.S. every year. Unfortunately, this is a double whammy to low-income communities of color, whose residents continue to die at higher rates. And as Rutgers’ Charles Brown points out, minority communities overlooked for road diet safety improvements “receive enforcement” instead.
It’s well worth clicking the link to read all of Linton’s hard-hitting story.
Because these are the people who, so far at least, have succeeded in halting road diets and other vital safety measures in Los Angeles, keeping our streets dangerous and deadly so people like them can continue to drive unimpeded.
At least until LA’s inevitable encroaching gridlock forces them to a full stop.
And if they have their way, everywhere.
………
Popular riding route Glendora Mountain Road is closed until further notice due to flooding.
UCLA is offering a week-long, 550-mile bike tour along the California coast to learn firsthand about the impacts of climate change, and possible solutions. Solution #1 — ditch the car, and ride a bike. Thanks to Audrey Kopp for the heads-up.
A Massachusetts town wants to become a bicycling city, building on a bike heritage that goes back over 100 years. Although honestly, just about every city and town can say that; it’s what happened in the past 50 or 60 years that matters.
No bias here. A Georgia college student gets the blame in the local media for hitting a bus with his bike, when he was actually right-hooked as he came off the sidewalk. Yes, he should have slowed or stopped before riding out into the crosswalk, and probably shouldn’t have been on the sidewalk in the first place. But the driver bears responsibility for apparently not noticing him on the sidewalk and pausing to let him cross the street.
This is who we share the roads with. A London motorist suffered serious injuries when a road raging driver intentionally plowed into him as he stood next to his car following a minor collision; no word on whether the other driver was arrested.
British pro cyclist Scott Auld was lucky to escape with a broken collarbone and various other injuries when he was the victim of a car crash while training in Spain; he was riding on the inside of a double pace line when the rider next to him was clipped by a driver on the wrong side of the road, crashing into him and sending him flying down a ravine.
Greetings from Los Angeles, America’s second-place city™.
The Super Bowl is over, but the rain isn’t.
So be careful out there. Light yourself up even during day rides, and ride defensively, because drivers assume no one in their right mind would ride a bike in weather like this.
My apologies to anyone who sent me links over the weekend. While I truly appreciate it, I’m afraid I lost track of some of the people who sent them. So please accept my apologies, as well as my thanks.
Even a separated bike path isn’t safe when it rains, as this driver ended up upside down on the San Gabriel River bike path.
It is raining☔️ and we are asking motorists to please drive safely while on the roads. We have had two significant traffic collisions already today and both drivers were extremely lucky. We remind you to please slow down and drive accordingly. #LARainpic.twitter.com/ev1CYTR0g5
— Irwindale Police Department (@IrwindalePolice) February 3, 2019
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on.
After a New York bike rider raps on a man’s car to chastise him for parking in a bike lane, the driver gets out and threatens to shoot her in the head if she does it again.
Which is a nice, psychopathic response to a totally non-threatening gesture.
In a bizarre case, an 8-year old South Carolina boy claims a car full of men stopped next to him as he rode his bike, and the driver pulled a gun on him for no apparent reason.
A Nigerian journalist offers a tourist’s eye view of the City of Angeles, including a bike tour of Venice, after an Ethiopian airline begins direct flights from Togo. Although he seems to confused Los Angeles with San Diego, size-wise.
This is why people keep dying on our streets. Police in Gardena pulled over a suspected drunk driver who was weaving across the street, with a BAC over four times the legal limit — a level so high it’s usually fatal. He was already on probation for a previous DUI, and had an interlock device on his ignition, which he somehow managed to defeat.
A San Jose columnist credits bike lanes with a drop in bike and pedestrian deaths last year, equalling the number of homicides in the city, which is not necessarily a good thing. In the same piece, a former prosecutor and defense attorney tries to excuse DUIs, saying everyone does it and drunk drivers should get off with just a diversion class. I’m not saying he’s completely full of shit, but if someone gave him an enema, he probably disappear entirely.
The San Jose Mercury News says Complete Streets are spreading across the state. Except in Los Angeles, of course, where too many councilmembers lack the courage to stand up to NIMBYs and traffic safety deniers.
Stephen Katz forwards a rare story of forgiveness, as the family of a bike rider killed by a dangerous bus driver on the campus of the University of Texas decides to turn the other cheek.
Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas offers UK readers advice on buying a bike, from ebikes and single speeds to gravel bikes and roadies. No offense, but is a pro cyslist who probably hasn’t bought his own bike in years really the best person to offer advice to casual and transportation riders?
In today’s edition of two countries divided by a common language, English authorities warn people not to ride croggy. And yes, I had to click the link to learn what the hell that meant. Just like you will.
After police caught up with a British hit-and-run driver, she claimed she didn’t stop because she didn’t do anything wrong, and that the bike rider she ran down was trying to get hit. No, really, Because we all enjoy pain, especially when it’s delivered at the end of a bumper.
Great Britain’s future heir and two spares enjoy daily bike rides and dog walks, as Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis — third, fourth and fifth in line for the British crown once their father and granddad kick the bucket — enjoy a relatively normal upbringing with their self-defense and evasive driving-trained nanny.
Horrifying story from Scotland, where a driver hit an Edinburgh bicyclist with his van, talked him into getting inside to take him somewhere to get help — then dumped him in the street a few blocks away, dragging him out by his leg.
A Kiwi columnist says don’t waste time arguing over e-scooters, when the real danger is quad bikes. Which aren’t really bikes at all, since they have four wheels.
Thanks to Bill Clare (no relation) for the heads-up.
………
Sometimes it takes awhile to get to the punchline.
All week we’ve talking about the Aussie man who illegally drove on a bike path to scream abuse at the two bicyclists riding legally on the parallel roadway.
UC San Diego is celebrating the opening of a new bridge over I-5 linking the two sides of the campus, with sidewalks and bike lanes to cut commute times and improve safety for non-driving students and faculty.
Correction: I initially wrote San Diego State University when I meant UC San Diego. Thanks to Robert Leone for the tip, and Charles for the correction.
………
OC bike lawyer Ed Rubinstein offers a correction to yesterday’s item saying you have two years to file a lawsuit if you’re injured in a crash.
The comment about the deadline to file a civil suit in California after a crash is accurate, but dangerously incomplete. The deadline to file a personal injury or property loss against a private person or entity is correctly stated as 2 years. However in California if a public government entity is involved (I.e., state or local government and any public entity e.g. CALTRANS, CHP, a public school or university) you must first file a claim within only 6 months (California Tort Claims Act Gov’t Code 810-996.6). So if a cyclist is hit by a school bus, public transit bus or a police car, the deadline is 6 months to first file a claim. Also the 6 months claim requirement applies if the crash involves a dangerous road condition.
Today’s racing news is all about the Amgen Tour of California.
Almost, anyway.
The full route for this year’s race was released yesterday; officials describe the 773-mile route as the longest and most challenging yet. But once again, women get the scraps, with just three stages totaling 177 miles.
In non-AToC news, the sexist prick clearly didn’t fall far from the tree. After Belgian pro Iljo Keisse walked with a small fine for rubbing his genitals against an Argentine waitress while posing for a photo, his father claims that she was partly responsible for being “very suggestive with her ass.”Note to clueless pricks: It doesn’t matter what the fuck a woman does — or what you think she does. No one has a right to touch another human being in a sexual manner without their consent. Period.
And yes, he may have been texting while driving a car with expired plates, was already wanted for evading police, and drove off down a one-way street when a bike cop tried to pull him over.
“She was drunk or she was crazy or something. She was not normal. I could feel it the whole time I was on the bus,” Mitchell said. “She was all over the place. One second she’d be 34 miles per hour, then 17 miles per hour, then 21 miles per hour. There was nothing steadfast about it.”
Not exactly the most comfortable way to get from here to there. And as usual, it was the guy on the bike who paid the price.
Thanks to Stephen Katz for the heads-up.
………
This is who we share the roads with, part 3.
A drunken Honolulu driver killed three people when he somehow drove his truck across three lanes, jumped a traffic island and hit six people, followed by crashing into a pole, then into another truck.
Three other people remain in critical condition, including the driver of the other truck.
Initial reports indicate one of the people killed was on a bicycle.
………
CiclaValley points out that the new Spring Street sort-of-but-not-really protected bike lanes don’t seem to have hurt filming, unlike the Hollywood rebellion over the previous green lanes.
Not bias here. A Marin newspaper says six months is plenty of time to judge if a pilot bikeway program on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge is a success. Let’s see if they say the same thing about the area’s next highway project.
In yet another example of our legal system keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a Las Vegas hit-and-run driver with a previous DUI conviction downed three-quarters of a gallon of beer before he ran down a bike rider. Then downed another three-quarters afterward because he said he was going to jail anyway.
Toronto votes to make a set of separated bike lanes permanent after they reduced crashes involving bicyclists by a whopping 73% during the pilot period. More proof that bike lanes work, despite what the traffic safety deniers claim.
No size shaming here. An Irish rugby player says when he sees someone who weighs 280 pounds riding a bicycle, he wonders “What’s the point?”The point is a) they’re improving their health, b) they may be going somewhere, and c) they’re enjoying themselves. So get over it, already.
Hurry, and you might be able to score one of two remaining handmade ti bikes inspired by the ancient Chinese imperial court in the Forbidden City, for just under $6,000; the other seven have already been given to foreign dignitaries as national gifts. Or you could just ask your favorite dignitary to give you theirs.
January 30, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Garcetti skips White House run, bike riding bank robber, and Colville-Andersen thinks you’re lazy
It looks like we’ll have Eric Garcetti to kick around for the next few years.
Now maybe he’ll finally get back to fighting for his own policies like Vision Zero and the Great Streets program, which have suffered from a significant backlash while Garcetti has been crisscrossing the county testing tepid waters.
Or maybe just start fighting.
According to the article, Garcetti says he’s skipping a run for the White House because he wants to finish the work he stated.
Let’s hope he means it. And shows a lot more backbone than we’ve seen so far.
Photo shows LA Mayor Eric Garcetti signing the Vision Zero proclamation; photo from lamayor.org.
………
From track cyclist, to French Foreign Legionnaire, to bank robber.
He’d throw the money in the trash, or leave it where homeless people would find it. At least until he developed a crack habit, and needed money to buy that bike.
His undoing came as he was making his latest getaway, when a cop wondered why a Lycra-clad roadie on an orange bike would be carrying a messenger bag.
Apparently, Mikael Colville-Andersen, the host of Copenhagenize and self-appointed ambassador of Danish bicycling, isn’t a fan of ebikes, or the people who ride them.
It appears that all these able-bodied people who bang on ad naseum about e-scooters and e-bikes don't give a fuck about public health or safety and prefer just to announce to the world that they are lazy af. Lazy af people should promptly unfollow me. Life is too short (yours)
Sad news from Stallion Springs, where a Bakersfield woman was killed in a crash. The Bakersfield Californian felt the need to say she wasn’t wearing a helmet, but failed to note whether she died of a head injury or if her injuries could have been survivable with one.
A Florida driver spotted a bicyclist riding on the shoulder of a highway, towing his dog in a trailer, and moved over the the left lane to give him room. Except he cut off another driver, who swerved into the right lane, clipping the first car and spinning into the bike rider. At least the dog survived; his owner wasn’t so lucky.
An Israeli MD has developed a startup to collect data on the severity of car crashes, so emergency room physicians have a better idea of what to expect when a patient is brought in. Call me crazy, but wouldn’t it be better to just avoid crashes in the first place?
Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn ride among us, too, as they go for a spin on the Westside. Although judging by her frown, Goldie may not be a fan of riding in traffic. Then again, who is?
And Busy Phillips is no fan of e-scooters, especially after helping a woman who fell off one in WeHo on Sunday.Although it should be pointed out that the scooters are officially banned in West Hollywood, but good luck enforcing that.
………
CiclaValley plays a guessing game with a careless driver.
Sometimes, the dangers are people with guns instead of people in cars.
Two armed men bike-jacked a 19-year old man in New Orleans, one getting out of a Jeep with a handgun to demand the bike, while the other pointed a rifle at him from behind the wheel.
And a Florida man threatened three kids with a BB gun when they chased after him for stealing a bicycle. While the the TV report calls his weapon a toy, BBs can still cause serious injuries, as too many bike riders can attest.
Metro is attempting to solve the first mile/last mile problem with a new app that will allow users to hail a shared car ride to one of three Metro rail stations for just $1.75. I’d much rather see improved bus and bikeshare service that would get more cars off the roads. Including shared ones.
In a study that should surprise absolutely no one who walks or rides a bike in California, researchers determined that cellphone use by drivers increased last year, with 4.5% of all drivers using their phones illegally at any given time. The only real surprise is that the figure is that low.
San Diego is honoring Somali immigrants in the City Heights neighborhood by installing a camel-shaped bike rack. Which hopefully isn’t as offensive at it sounds.
Unbelievable. A Las Vegas driver fled the scene after killing a bike rider was fleeing the scene after causing another crash; he ran into a casino and changed his clothes twice in an attempt to get away before he was caught. Sadly, the victim’s family lives here in Los Angeles; my sympathy and prayers go out to them.
Police in Victoria, British Columbia recover two of a bike shop owner’s three bikes just hours after they were stolen, after shifting priorities to recover hot bikes; they recovered five bicycles worth $10,000 the first day alone. So it can be done — if police are willing to devote sufficient resources to fight bike theft.
Last Friday, I had a very pleasant talk with Communications Director Dana Variano and new Executive Director Eli Akira Kaufman of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, aka LACBC.
I won’t go into details, since everything we discussed was off the record. But we had a very frank and open discussion about the state of bicycling in general, and the state of the LACBC in general.
Suffice it to say that Kaufman recognizes that he’s got a steep learning curve to get a firm grasp on LA bike culture and street safety.
And he’s well aware of the problems facing the LACBC after drifting far too long without effective leadership.
But he’s committed to listening and improving communications, which has been a major problem as long as I’ve been involved with the coalition, as a member and former board member.
And to making the hard decisions the LACBC will need to return to being an effective voice for LA bicyclists.
I left the meeting feeling like the LACBC is in good hands.
And with a little hope for the first time in a long time.
………
Disappointing news from Seal Beach, where Eric Dalton reports the ghost bike for Paul Smith has already been removed, less than three weeks after he was killed.
“In this study of a case series, 249 patients presented to the emergency department with injuries associated with electric scooter use during a 1-year period, with 10.8% of patients younger than 18 years,” says the January 25 paper by Tarak K. Trivedi, Charles Liu, and Anna Liza M. Antonio.
“The most common injuries were fractures (31.7%), head injuries (40.2%), and soft-tissue injuries (27.7%).”
“Only 10 riders were documented as wearing a helmet, constituting 4.4% of all riders,” the report notes. “Twelve patients (4.8%) had physician-documented intoxication or a blood alcohol level greater than 0.05%
Not all of the injured patients had been riding scooters. Eleven had been hit by scooters, and five had tried to lift scooters. Another five had simply tripped over parked scooters, which is what can happen when there are Bird or Lime droppings on the sidewalk.
In other words, despite the panicked response to this study in the media, over 90% of the injuries were to the people riding them. So just like with bicyclists, even the most careless riders are a danger primarily to themselves.
Just wait until the study authors discover how many people get hurt by cars every day.
Which is not to say everyone shouldn’t ride safely, so they don’t pose a risk to themselves or anyone else.
And for chrissakes, don’t leave your damn scooter on the sidewalk, or anywhere else it can pose a danger to anyone.
Or the Japanese man who got a well-deserved 18 years for the road rage death of a motorbike rider, intentionally slamming into him after briefly chasing his bike. Thanks to Norm Bradwell for the link.
If you haven’t already, mark your calendar for International Winter Bike to Work Day on February 8th. We should be able to show a good turnout here in Southern California, where Viking Biking means you might have to put fenders on your bike.
Sad news from New Zealand, where a 32-year old elite cyclist is dying of intestinal cancer, saying she should have pushed harder for a diagnosis after suffering from years of stomach pain.
