October 20, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 73-year old man killed by driver while riding bike in Orange crosswalk; 9th SoCal bike rider killed in less than 2 weeks
This has got to stop.
For at least the ninth time in the past 13 days, someone has been killed riding a bicycle on the mean streets of Southern California.
According to New Santa Ana, the victim this time was a 73-year old man from Orange, killed while just trying to ride his bike across the street.
The driver, a woman from Orange, remained at the scene — which should be a given, but isn’t. Police don’t believe she was under the influence.
There’s no word on who had the right of way at the signalized intersection.
Canyon View has a 40 mph speed limit; a pedestrian struck at that speed has just a 15% survival rate. And that’s assuming she wasn’t traveling above the speed limit, like most drivers in Southern California.
Anyone with information is urged to call Orange Police Department Traffic Unit Detective A. Rocha at 714/744-7342.
This is at least the 44th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Orange County.
And hopefully, the last one we’ll see in this tragic streak.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and all his loved ones.
It’s only a pity that the people who have gone out of their way to keep this killer highway dangerous and deadly won’t face charges with him.
It was nearly a decade ago that I began representing the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, now BikeLA, on the PCH Task Force.
The task force was created by the state legislators who then represented the Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica and Ventura County areas to address safety and other concerns on the highway, with input from the various stakeholders.
The LACBC took an interest because PCH is such a popular route for bicyclists of all kinds. And claimed so many as victims.
In fact, it is the single most deadly roadway for bike riders in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
The LACBC joined with other representatives to demand safety improvements to the highway, ranging from road diets and protected bike lanes, to eliminating roadside parking and reducing speed limits.
In almost every case, we were told what we were asking for was impossible. We were told the road, Malibu’s 22-mile long main street, was necessary to funnel commuters from Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley in and out of the LA area.
The overly wide traffic lanes, high speed limits that were nearly universally exceeded, slip lane right turns and roadside parking were all necessary to prevent excessive traffic congestion, or so we were told.
Never mind they also encouraged speeding drivers weaving in and out of slower traffic 22 hours a day. And put bike riders at needless risk of right hooks and dooring.
Caltrans, which has responsibility for the roadway, could have taken steps to dramatically improve safety years ago.
They didn’t.
Malibu, Los Angeles and Santa Monica could have demanded changes that would have saved lives.
They didn’t.
Sure, minor changes were made. A painted bike lane here, widening the shoulder there. But the killer highway remained, and remains, a deadly speedway for most of the day and night.
Now four young women, who did nothing to put their lives in danger, are dead — victims of an alleged speeding driver, and the officials, engineers and bureaucrats who enabled him.
The young man behind the wheel is likely to be middle-aged before he gets out of prison, unless an overly lenient judge takes pity on him.
It’s just a pity that the others who have worked so hard to keep PCH so deadly won’t be there with him.
What a fucking waste.
A 2013 publication highlights the joys of biking sans helmets on SoCal’s deadliest highway.
Yet once again, they fail to put any of it in context.
Injuries can be expected to rise with increasing rates of any activity. If more people started playing Frisbee golf, we’d see rising rates of arm and impact injuries as a result.
What matters is whether those injuries are rising faster than the increase in ridership, or becoming more serious than a baseline of bicycling injuries.
Unless and until we have that context, reports like this are nothing more than a concerning, but anecdotal, data point.
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Frequent contributor Megan Lynch forwards news that UC Davis journalism students, not the professional press, are digging into what’s been done since a student was killed by a university employee while riding her bike.
I was lucky enough to be logged on to Mastodon at the time the MuckRock bot sent this through. Otherwise I’d never have known someone was finally making a CPRA request on this. Sadly, it was not made by UC Davis student journalists, but students in a journalism class at University of Nevada, Reno.
You may remember that (19-year old sophomore)Tris Yasay was killed by a yet-unnamed UC Davis employee driving a UC Davis sanitation truck on May 25, 2022. First responders were all UC Davis employees as well (UCDPD and UCDFD). Local press didn’t ask many questions and the few that the Davis Enterprise followed up on was because I got after the reporter about it. It still wasn’t what was needed. UC Davis was successful in burying the questions.
So far as I know, UC Davis has not done any campaign to re-train its own drivers or at least it has not publicized one. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the claim was that the driver could not see the cyclist in the side view mirror. In which case, the position and efficacy of these mirrors needs to be examined. Because cyclists are a regular feature of the UC Davis campus and if the side view does not accurately reflect what’s going on, drivers should be trained to crane their heads around and look for themselves BEFORE turning. “Blind” spots should be minimized on the vehicle.
But haven’t read about any of that happening.
I’m interested to see what the student journalist finds and if the MuckRock interface will let everyone see it when UC Davis responds. They also requested the City of Davis Bicycle Action Plan.
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Our Deutschland correspondent Ralph Durham forwards a newsletter from the ADFC, aka General German Bicycle Club, on the subject of licensing bicycles, and why that’s a bad idea.
Bicycling offers a requiem and post-mortem for the popular Surly Cross Check, which has been discontinued by the bikemaker. This one doesn’t seem to be available from other sources, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you.
The wife and daughter of fallen former Bell, California police chief Andreas “Andy” Probst first realized he was injured when they got an alert of a fall from his Apple Watch, then heard police sirens and helicopters just blocks from their Las Vegas home; two teens face murder charges for intentionally running down Probst in a stolen car, apparently just for the hell of it.
Once again, a cop has killed someone riding a bicycle, this time in Marion County, Florida, where a 22-year old sheriff’s deputy ran down a 63-year old man early Wednesday; investigators quickly blamed the victim for riding on a dark roadway without a helmet or reflective clothing, or using lights on his bike. Because apparently, patrol cars in Florida don’t have headlights that could have illuminated someone riding a bike.
October 18, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Disappointing new LA bike lane totals, Angelenos suffer from car blindness, and Long Beach needs bike count volunteers
It just keeps getting worse.
I’m told someone was killed riding a bike yesterday on Fountain Ave in East Hollywood.
Today’s photo, in contrast with too much of the day’s news, is a very happy corgi enjoying a pedicab ride over the new 6th Street Bridge during Sunday’s CicLAvia.
And finds the current results underwhelming, with far too many disappointments including truncated mileage, downgraded facilities, long delayed timelines and false claims, just to name a few.
Or as we call that here in Los Angeles, Wednesday.
As noted in past posts (FY21-22, FY20-21, FY19-20), not all bikeway miles are equal. Quality protected bike lanes and bike paths serve riders aged 8 to 80, while sharrows serve almost nobody. New bikeway mileage expands the network; upgrades to existing bikeways do not. Among upgrades, some are significant (protecting unprotected lanes) and others are nearly meaningless (adding a buffer stripe to an existing lane).
In recent years, around a quarter of the city’s output consists of these less than newsworthy facilities. Among the city’s FY23 totals are about 6 miles of new sharrows and 5 miles of buffer stripes added to existing bike lanes.
The city’s FY22-23 total of 45.2 miles breaks down into 27.7 miles of newbikeways and 17.5 miles of upgrades to existing bikeways. This represents a slight improvement over last year, which saw 26.6 new bikeway miles and 12.5 upgraded miles.
That’s a far cry from the city’s commitment to build 50 miles of bike lanes a year when the current bike plan was approved. Which was quickly cut in half when the city switched to measuring by lane miles, which counts bike lanes on each side of the road separately.
Then reduced further, when they decided sharrows count, too.
Adding disappointment, on disappointment, on disappointment.
We are car blind in Los Angeles; as a City, we seem to have accepted cars as essential for society to function, and we overlook their downsides and harms they cause on our society.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A San Mateo bike rider was arrested for brandishing a weapon after a woman tried to pass a large group of bicyclists in the downtown area; he raised his shirt to show the weapon in his waistband when a group of riders surrounded her car and started beating on it.
Accused killer Kaitlin Armstrong’s recent failed escape attempt was apparently premeditated, as a Texas site notes that she exercised vigorously for months and wore civilian clothes in advance of a doctor’s appointment; Armstrong is accused of fatally shooting gravel cycling star Moriah “Mo” Wilson over an imagined love triangle.
New York officials blamed the increase in bicycling deaths on ebikes, with 62.2% of bicyclists killed in the city this year riding one, compared to 57.9% two years ago and 47.4% last year — but failed to provide any stats putting it in context, such as the proportion of ebike riders, or who was at fault in the crashes; meanwhile, 94% of this year’s deaths occurred on streets without protected bike lanes, calling into question the mayor’s failure to fulfill his campaign promise to build more.
A New Jersey man faces a manslaughter charge for allegedly pushing a 70-year old man off his bike, for no apparent reason; the victim died after hitting his head on the pavement and initially refusing treatment. A tragic reminder to always get checked out after hitting your head, because life-threatening injuries may not show up until hours later.
A British man will spend the next four years behind bars for killing another man with a single punch, after an argument over the sale of a bike, as he claimed the victim’s friend still owed him money for it. Yet another reminder than no bicycle is worth a human life.
My most humble apologies for neglecting to thank Megan L for her generous donation to support this site when my eyes were out of commission last month. As always, donations are welcome and very appreciated anytime, for any reason, even if I’m too blind to properly show my gratitude.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
October 17, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 67-year old Eugene Arayata killed riding bike in rear-end Hesperia collision; 8th SoCal bike rider killed in 10 days
There seems to be no end to the recent carnage on the mean streets of Southern California.
For the eighth time in just ten days, someone was killed by a driver while riding a bike, this time in Hesperia Thursday evening.
The newspaper places the time of the crash at around 5:30 pm on Thursday, October 12th.
Arayata was riding next to the curb when the westbound driver apparently drifted over to the right to strike him, throwing Arayata several feet through the air.
He was taken to a local hospital in critical condition, where he died sometime later.
The driver, who was not publicly identified, remained at the scene, the windshield of his Lexus shattered.
An earlier story shows the remains of Arayata’s bicycle crumpled in the gutter, a green shopping bag dangling to the street, as a police investigator photographs it.
A nearby resident complained about speeding on Cedar, noting the lack of painted lane markers on the narrow residential street contribute to drivers traveling all over the roadway. However, there is nothing to indicate at this time that the driver was speeding at the time of the crash.
According to family members, Arayata had retired just three months earlier, but continued working to pay property taxes on his home of 20 years, and loved riding his bike around the town.
It’s unclear if he was riding home from work when he was killed.
This is at least the 43rd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the ninth that I’m aware of in San Bernardino County.
Just ten days ago, that total stood at just 35 for the seven county region, exceptionally low for this late in the year.
But SoCal drivers seem to be making up for lost time.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Eugenio R. “Eugene” Arayata and his loved ones.
October 16, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Newsom approves limited speed cam pilot, Israeli bicyclists victims of Hamas violence, and DOJ sues eBay for rolling coal
However, the program will be limited to streets in “school zones, highway segments most prone to injuries, and areas identified by local authorities as having high volumes of speeders and street racing.”
The pilot program continues California’s insistence on reinventing the wheel, since speed cams have already proven successful in 200 communities in 21 other states, including New York City, Chicago and DC.
Twitter post
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You knew the recent Hamas massacre in Israel wouldn’t spare the bicycling community.
The platform could face a well-deserved $5,580 fine for each devise sold under the Clean Air Act, for a total of nearly $2 billion.
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This is the future bike riders want.
Twitter post
Meanwhile, as today’s top photo demonstrates, the countless full bike racks at Sunday’s CicLAvia offered more proof that bikes mean business, with bars, restaurants and cafes jammed with happy participants.
Along with more than a few corgis.
And this one definitely won the most creative award at Sunday’s Heart of LA CicLAvia.
Although the LAPD responded to the end of Sunday’s CicLAvia with an illegal order telling bike riders to get off the street.
Family members continue to call for justice two years after Pittsburgh police tased a homeless man up to ten times, even though he didn’t pose a threat to them or anyone else, just because he rode a bicycle that appeared to be abandoned around the block before returning it; the city has already paid an $8 million settlement in the case, but no officers have been charged in his death.
Police in South Australia said they have arrested the state’s infamous “Bicycle Bandit,” after DNA led them to a 73-year old man who allegedly robbed at least ten banks over a ten-year period beginning in 2004, using a bicycle as his primary getaway vehicle.
October 15, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Update: Bicyclist killed illegally riding bicycle on 405 Freeway in Carson, 7th SoCal bike death in last 10 days
Once again, someone has been killed riding a bicycle inexplicably on a SoCal freeway.
