Burke was riding north on Beyer Boulevard near Del Sol Boulevard when he was struck by a pickup driver around 11:35 am. He was taken to a hospital in the Hillcrest neighborhood with a brain bleed and other injuries that were expected to be survivable.
Police initially said he was riding in the left of two lanes on the four lane street. However, according to the San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office, Burke was in a designated bike lane when he was run down from behind.
Stephen Taylor Scarpa’s arraignment, scheduled for last Friday, was delayed again.
There are so many facets of this case that don’t look good for him: his status as an addict; his admission during interrogation that he should not have been driving; the amount and sheer number of drugs in his system; the presence in his vehicle of drugs obtained from an alleged overprescriber; his crash after “passing out” behind the wheel earlier in the year… etc.
He’s going down.
What perplexes me is the murder charge, because I can’t find any evidence of a prior DUI conviction — within LA or Orange County, at any rate. He could have priors elsewhere.
The Watson law is specific in its requirements: party has to be informed upon a DUI conviction of the possibility of a murder charge if said party kills someone while DUI.
So, this would mean, wouldn’t it, that Scarpa’s been convicted in some court at some point within the past 10 years?
A Watson advisement notwithstanding, PSA’s, American alcohol ads, and the DMV paperwork you sign before the state issues you a license all tell you that DUI is dangerous. But is that bombardment of facts enough to define malice, which is a required component of murder?
There’s one other thing that might convince a jury that Scarpa was aware of the dangers of DUI, enough so to convict of murder and not just manslaughter.
In 2011, as a student at Esperanza High, he participated in an Every Fifteen Minutes event, which is pretty comprehensive. In addition to pulling “dead” students out of classrooms every 15 minutes, a simulated collision is set up on campus, with the driver “arrested,” and moulaged “injured” & “dead” students extricated from the wreckage. These actors don’t go home that night; they’re sequestered overnight at a hotel, where they write a “Today I died” letter to their parents. (The parents also write to their dead kids.) The next day, these letters are read aloud at a school assembly.
Scarpa was one of the dead who was extricated from a mangled vehicle, who told his parents he died, who read this letter to his entire school.
I hope, every night before he falls asleep, he thinks of all the letters Mike Kreza never gets to write.
Pratiti Renee Mehta is back from her vacation in Chowchilla Women’s Facility. She’s in custody in County, awaiting a court appearance this morning. I will be there, because I am a horrible person and will enjoy seeing her violent, unrepentant ass in saggy jail-issued fashion and shackles. The sentencing was in July, and I missed it. How it wasn’t on my calendar, I dunno. (Busy week with the PAC on the 18th and the Caltrans D7 BAC on the 19th, but I wouldn’t have skipped the sentencing for anything.)
Due to a “clerical inadvertency,” Mehta had been sent up to state prison prior to a required sentencing assessment.
According to court records, on July 17th, the Defense’s request to reduce the felony hit-and-run count to a misdemeanor was denied, and then the judge sentenced Ms. Mehta to 3 years in state prison.
Two other things surprise me about the sentence: (1) The judge actually threw the book at her, wow. (2) The People didn’t request anything close.
That’s right, the People actually requested leniency: 90 days in County and an additional 200 hours of community service. For a woman who broke a guy’s bones, left him in the street, and then put in deliberate effort to lie to the cops about it. I remain furious that the ADW charge didn’t stick.
Hannah Jordan suffers from an unknown metabolic disorder that prevents her body from storing glucose; when she started on an intravenous formula from a Santa Barbara company, she began to thrive — and kick ass on her bicycle.
She’ll compete in Phil Gaimon’s hillclimb competition on Gibraltar Road with the feeding tube attached, then may train for international competition at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs CO.
And yes, her tube has been approved for competition.
There’s a special place in hell for a Japanese man who rode his bike up from behind a bike-riding 17-year old girl and groped her breast as he rode past, telling police he just couldn’t control his lust for her. Which should be read as a confession from a total asshole.
Streetsblog says Gavin Newsom’s veto of the state’s Complete Streets bill stinks, and that Caltrans’ reasoning for fighting it is “hogwash.” Someone suggested that we should now call getting hit by driver on a Caltrans-controlled street “getting Newsomed,” just like we called a close pass “getting Jerry Browned” after he repeatedly vetoed the three-foot passing law.
Virgilio Lemus Garcia, the 60-year old victim in Sunday’s Santa Ana hit-and-run, remains in grave condition; police are looking for a dark blue mid-’90s, four-door Honda Civic with probable front end damage and a possible shattered windshield.
Apparently never having heard of induced demand, Caltrans will close San Diego’s Friars Road this weekend in preparation for adding a fourth lane in each direction, along with sidewalks and bike lanes. Hopefully, they’ll also consider how the hell pedestrians are supposed to cross that massive monstrosity.
Apparently, it’s okay to be nuts for nuts. But don’t eat too many because they can cause kidney stones, as I learned the hard way.
A new survey from Lime says scooter users don’t want to ride on the sidewalks, but do it anyway because they don’t feel safe on the street. Which is exactly the same reason many bike riders do. And the answer isn’t threatening or ticketing them, it’s building more and better bike lanes.
Kansas City’s mayor wants to rip out a new protected bike lane less than a month after it was installed, saying it’s made things very difficult for businesses and residents. Apparently, it must have been installed on a whim, without any studies, since he wants to remove it the same way; any change to a roadway requires time for people to adjust to it before you know how its going to work out.
A new British study shows a cheap, widely available drug could save hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide if given in the first few hours after a head injury; the medication, called tranexamic acid, costs the equivalent of less than $8 in the UK. Which means it will probably sell for a couple thousand dollars a dose in the US.
And it’s not a record jump if you don’t stick the landing.
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Thanks to John Hall for his generous donation to support this site, and help keep SoCal’s best bike news and advocacy coming your way (nearly) every day.
My diabetes is kicking my ass tonight, keeping me from writing today’s post. As usual, we’ll be back on Wednesday to catch up on anything we’ve missed.
October 14, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: More of same as Newsom vetos Complete Streets bill, and Santa Ana hit-and-run gravely injures bike rider
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Evidently, not much has changed with a new, more progressive governor in Sacramento.
Former Governor Jerry Brown became famous for obstructing bicycle safety bills, to the point that “Jerry Brown” became a pseudonym for a dangerously close pass after Brown vetoed two versions of a three-foot passing law before finally agreeing to the watered-down version we have today.
And yes, I may have had something to do with popularizing that term.
Which is the primary reason Newsom gave for vetoing it.
But anyone who’s followed Caltrans for any length of time knows they’re notorious for promising change, then continuing with the same deadly, auto-centric policies.
Newsom’s veto message says Caltrans is already committed to Compete Streets “where reasonable and feasible.”
Which is simply another of saying if it gets hard in anyway, or anyone complains, just forget it.
And we’re left with a few minor changes to add sidewalks or bike lanes here and there — the “low hanging fruit,” as LADOT described it.
Newsom also cited Caltrans’ brazen, and successful, attempt to sabotage the bill, despite their many pledges of support for Complete Streets. The agency cited an absurdly high projected cost for the measure, claiming it would cost the state an extra $1 billion a year.
Add that to the bike lanes, and double it for both sides of the street, and you’re looking at less that $375,000 per mile.
Just a tad less than that $4.5 million.
Maybe they were planning on some very expensive crosswalks, and a shitload of Share The Road signs.
Or maybe they just didn’t want to finally be held to account.
So once again, people who choose not to drive, for any length of time and for any reason, are left holding the bag.
Along with the communities these roads pass through. And the earth they’re built on.
And once again, we’re left with a self-proclaimed climate governor, like LA’s ineffectual climate mayor, who’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect the environment and fight climate change.
As long as that doesn’t mean inconveniencing drivers in any way.
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Yet another bike rider is barely clinging to life, thanks to yet another heartless coward behind the wheel.
If the name doesn’t mean anything to you, this spectacular stunt from his self produced video series probably will.
The 36-year old British Columbia native was riding a trail in Cabo San Lucas when he fell, suffering a fatal head injury.
He started racing BMX at 11 before switching to mountain bikes at 15, rising to become the second-ranked North American rider in the 2003 World Cup standings.
He also became the first rider to land a Cork 720 a few years later. Even if he misses it here.
Sometimes the problem is just bald-faced bigotry directed to someone made more vulnerable by being on a bike. A British man intervened when a handful of teenagers surrounded a Jewish man, shouting anti-semitic slurs and threatening to take his bicycle. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with some people?
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A man was fatally stabbed in South El Monte Friday evening after three men got out of a passing car, knocked him off his bike, and repeatedly stabbed him; the victim tried to get back on his bike and ride for help, but only made it another block.
Life is cheap in New York State, where authorities plea bargained a case of vehicular manslaughter in the drunken hit-and-run death of a bike rider down to a simple hit-and-run injury case; the driver could be out in as little as 18 months. Also good to know that driving at nearly three times the legal limit is just an effing misdemeanor in the Empire State.
The University of Alabama football team has sent a football and jersey signed by star quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to the family of a 12-year old boy who was recently shot and killed by another boy because he wouldn’t give his bicycle; his family plans to have him buried with both.
At 6:40 am, a driver was reportedly unable to avoid him, and slammed into Velez-Segovia at roughly 55 mph.
Not surprisingly, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The LA County Coroner’s office places the location as the freeway onramp; however, neither source mentions which direction he was traveling in.
No explanation is given for why he was riding on the freeway, particularly in the traffic lane; bicycles are prohibited from all limited-access highways in Los Angeles County.
It’s possible he may have been riding on the shoulder, and moved into the traffic lane when the shoulder disappeared at the onramp. Or he may have been forced into the lane by cars entering the freeway.
Unfortunately, we’ll probably never get any answers beyond what is contained in the brief story.
This is at least the 57th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 25th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Nelson Mariano Velez-Segovia and his loved ones.
October 11, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Eric Garcetti strange choice to chair global mayors’ climate group, and lots of upcoming bike events
By comparison, Garcetti has talked about, but not implemented, Vision Zero and a citywide Green New Deal. And ripped out road diets and bike lanes in Playa del Rey because some people got mad.
Maybe he could start by doing something about the sheer number of motor vehicles on the streets, and providing safe, convenient alternatives to driving. Something he’s failed at miserably in the six years he’s been mayor.
But maybe all those other mayors know something we don’t.
Paris’ green revolution has been both wildly popular and incredibly controversial — in part because the transformation has been so swift. But the mayor has been unrelenting in her campaign, showing what is possible when a major city commits to fight climate change on the ground.
Garcetti could do something similar in Los Angeles. He could, for example, build bus-only lanes, protected bike lanes and safer streets. He could set a powerful example for the entire world by starting to transform a city famous for its cars (and the traffic and pollution and greenhouse gases they bring) into one that people can navigate without them.
But unless Eric Garcetti can rediscover the political leadership he showed as council president under former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, you can probably plan for a very hot future.
Photo of Eric Garcetti at C40 group taken from press announcement from the mayor’s office.
This Sunday Lyft and Santa Monica Spoke are sponsoring a Lyft Scooters Safety Event with free test rides, skills training, refreshments and helmet giveaways at the Santa Monica Bike Campus.
San Diego’s CicloSDias open street event will walk, roll, skate and stroll the streets of our neighbor to the south on October 27th. Thanks to Robert Leone for the heads-up.
A Vallejo cop takes the fifth in a lawsuit over the shooting death of a man who was stopped for not having a light on his bike; he was also one of the cops who fatally shot a man who was sleeping in his car in a Taco Bell parking lot with a gun in his lap.
National
A new study shows wearing a bike helmet can reduce your risk of a facial injury by 40%, but does nothing to reduce the severity if you do suffer one; despite those results, the researchers recommend that bicyclists should wear the equivalent of a full-face motorcycle helmet.
Some people think the answer to everything is found in the Bible, like whether to build a bike path. If you’re riding a stolen bicycle while carrying garden shears, brass knuckles and a shotgun, put a damn light on it, already.
And let’s end today with a couple minute mountain bike break.
According to the Ventura County Star, a 45-year old man was killed when he was struck by the driver of a semi-truck while riding his bike against traffic on an Oxnard street.
The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was struck just after 11:30 am as he was riding east in the westbound lane of East Wooley Road, west of Saviers Road in Oxnard
He was dead at the scene before emergency personnel arrived.
The driver of the truck continued west without stopping. When Oxnard police stopped the truck shortly later, the driver reportedly cooperated with investigators, claiming he was unaware of the crash.
Unfortunately, they don’t explain how the crash happened. It strains credibility to believe the driver could have been unaware of a head-on collision; however, it’s possible he may not have known if he sideswiped the victim or hit him with the truck’s wing mirror.
October 10, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Charges increased in Frederick “Woon” Frazier death, and WeHo drag queen run down on purpose
Maybe there will be justice for Woon after all.
I received the following email from an anonymous correspondent at yesterday’s scheduled prelim for Mariah Kandise Banks, charged with the hit-and-run death of Frederick “Woon” Frazier and the attempted coverup that followed.
The People have filed an amended complaint against Ms. Banks in which the charge of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence has been upgraded to felony.
Judge Lynne Hobbs thanked Ms. Banks for being on time this morning. Alas, the prelim was trailed yet again.
The judge inquired about the prosecution’s previous request for an increase in bail due to the accused’s alleged harassment of the victim’s family (and frankly, she seemed willing and prepared to grant it). The prosecutor stated that she had spoken to the victim’s family two days ago and had received no further reports of harassment, so the bail stands as-is.
Ms. Banks was her usual muttery self as she exited the courtroom.
The increased charges mean Banks now faces six years for felony vehicular manslaughter, rather than one year for the misdemeanor count.
That’s in addition to a possible four years for felony hit-and-run.
However, it’s unlikely she’ll serve anywhere near that. The LA district attorney’s office has a well-deserved reputation for bargaining charges down to avoid a trial.
If Banks is smart, she’ll drop the attitude and cop a plea. And maybe get out in a couple years, rather than risk serving the full dime behind bars.
Photo of Frederick “Woon” Frazier taken from his original crowdfunding page.
The victim, Sasha Markgraf, says he was the only member of the group dressed in an effeminate manner.
In addition to being a drag performer and singer, Markgraf is also a costume designer. When he left the bar with his friends to cross Larrabee Street after 2 a.m. he was wearing high heels and suspects the driver may have intentionally hit him.
“It’s sad to say but I think he was coming straight for us. He didn’t have to go right. He didn’t have to veer to the right,” Markgraf says.
A crowdfunding page says the driver turned on his car as Markgraf stepped off the curb and revved his engine before plowing into him. So far, it’s raised just $2,100 of the $50,000 goal.
Unfortunately, the only description of the car is a silver Honda Civic. There’s no description available for the driver.
Lets hope they catch this jerk before he or she tries to kill someone else.
Great piece about a British Columbia bike shop owner and inventor who earned the Lanterne Rouge in the 1955 Tour de France, joining another rider as the first British cyclists to finish the tour; after moving to Canada, he built the wheelchair used on an around-the-world journey, as well as refurbishing bicycles to give to those in need. Sadly, he died of cancer on Saturday.
A Pittsburgh man is making his third official attempt to set a new handcycle 24-hour record. The paraplegic athlete set an unofficial record of 407.7 miles in 2016, breaking the existing record of 403.8; however, the track wasn’t certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, so it didn’t count.
Life is cheap in Pennsylvania, where a 73-year old woman was killed in a left cross collision, and the driver walked with a lousy traffic ticket. There’s something seriously wrong when needlessly taking the life of another person amounts to nothing more than a simple traffic violation.
Life is cheap in Wales, too, where a woman got off with just 27 months behind bars for drunkenly driving “like a maniac” and plowing into four members of a family out for a bike ride, then fleeing the scene; one of her victims was lucky to survive. So naturally, she blamed the entire thing on her boyfriend.
October 9, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: NIMBY Pasadena traffic survey, LA finally counts bikes, and bust made in near-fatal Ramona hit-and-run
But the best way to overcome their extreme NIMBY windshield bias is to get everyone you know who supports walking, bicycling, transit and safe, livable streets to take the survey themselves.
Hardly a valid basis for any city to make solid transportation decisions.
Bizarrely, though, the story implies that the counts will only be done on weekends, which will provide little real information on bike commuting and transportation riding.
Almost as if the city has fallen for the old myth that the only people who ride bikes in LA are the weekend recreational riders.
By contrast, the LACBC counts were done during both morning and evening commutes, as well as on weekends.
However, that may not be totally accurate, as Sean Meredith suggests that the weekday counts may have been contracted out to a private company.
Let’s hope he’s right.
Update: The LACBC confirms that LADOT has contracted out to a private company to do bike and pedestrian count using traffic cameras.
We've been told they hired a company to do weekday counts with cameras and the weekend counts are being done by volunteers. Yes, there should be more locations and we told them so, along with others. But they ARE doing weekday counts. #bikeLA@Maddz4planning
FWIW, I wrote to LADOT about the weekend survey, and they mentioned they already collected weekday data last month, and will use the weekend survey to contrast usage patterns.
The damaged car, which had stolen plates, was seized as evidence.
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This is who we share the road with.
CiclaValley catches the end of a nasty U-turn by a driver who didn’t seem to care he was there.
My front camera was out of battery, but my rear camera still caught this driver who almost made a u-turn into me on Laurel Canyon. CLP# 7KOY224 pic.twitter.com/FX1i2PymdW
Unruly teenage bike riders participating in a ride out take over the streets of Vacaville, allegedly kicking and slapping vehicles, and attempting to open car doors at red lights. Police took several riders into custody for traffic offenses, even though those are ticketable violations, rather than crimes subject to arrest. Note to Daily Republic: Unless the kids were trying to sell something to the people in those cars, the word you’re looking for is “pedalers,” not “peddlers.”
A Singaporean e-scooter rider will spend six weeks behind bars for crashing into the back of a man’s leg without slowing down. Seriously, they take this shit seriously over there. Thanks to Mike Cane — that’s C-A-N-E, with no R — for the heads-up. Despite how I usually seem to spell his name.
There is a case to be made that the city has built 600 miles of bikeways over the past nine years.
But only if you include bike paths and sharrows in that total.
And only if you measure part of that in lane miles — which counts each side of the road separately, effectively doubling the total.
A more easily understandable figure is center lane miles, which measures both sides of the roadway at once.
In truth, Los Angeles had only painted 250.82 miles of bike lanes when adjusted for lane miles, as of the 2015-16 fiscal year. Along with 19.95 miles of bike paths, and 90.44 miles of basically useless sharrows.
And this with a progressive mayor who supposedly supports bicycling, and one of the nation’s most respected planning heads in LADOT’s Seleta Reynolds.
The word pathetic comes to mind.
So a more accurate figure, measured the way most people would understand it, comes out to less than 400 miles of bikeways of any kind built in Los Angeles since 2010.
394.46, to be exact.
And only 284.04 miles of those are on-street bike lanes – assuming all the bikeways built after the 2013-2014 fiscal year are bike lanes, and not sharrows.
Or looking at it another way, only 120.61 miles of bikeways of any kind have been built since Eric Garcetti became mayor in 2013, for an average of just 17.23 center lane miles per year.
And yes, that includes sharrows.
To make matters worse, half of those were built during his first year in office, so they were already under way when he came in.
Which means in reality, Garcetti and Reynolds should only be credited with just 60.85 center lane miles of any kind.
An average of just 10.14 miles per year after his first year.
Just in case you wondered why Vision Zero is failing in Los Angeles.
It would be a real shame if the responses to the survey reflected a desire for safe streets and increased density, instead their desire to keep zoom, zooming on bike and pedestrian unfriendly Rose City streets only a car could love.
And while the survey says you can only respond once, that’s once per device.
I also may have *accidently* discovered that you can respond as many times as you want if you keep deleting the two Survey Monkey cookies on your computer.
Not that anyone would do that. of course.
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CiclaValley’s Zachary Rynew is none too pleased with a UPS driver.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on.
A road raging San Diego man drove onto a golf course to chase two bike-riding teens after they allegedly through food onto his car, first running down one boy with his car, then getting out and repeatedly punching him. Note to crazy man: just get your damn car washed next time.
But sometimes, it’s the people on bikes behaving badly.
Apparently, things are no different in Hoboken as they are anywhere else, as local NIMBYs swear their support for bike lanes and Vision Zero, just not where the city wants to put them.
Apparently, suffering a severe brain injury isn’t good for your marriage. The wife of British adventurer James Cracknell explains why the couple split up after 17 years of marriage, saying the extreme brain injury he suffered when he was struck by a truck driver while riding across the US in 2010 left him with a different personality.
