A 71-year old man riding a bicycle lost his life in Fountain Valley early Saturday morning, thanks to a drunken coward who didn’t have the decency stop.
Allegedly.
According to County News TV, police responding to reports of a crash found 71-year old Santa Ana resident Liem Bui lying on southbound Euclid Ave just north of Heil Ave, next to Mile Square Regional Park, around 5:39 this morning.
The driver fled the scene, leaving Liem to die alone in the street.
Police identified the suspect vehicle, locating it in Westminster sometime later with 32-year-old Fountain Valley resident Amanda Martin still in the driver’s seat.
She was arrested on suspicion of felony driving under the influence, felony hit-and-run and vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.
It’s not clear if she was driving at the time or had stopped, or whether she was awake or passed out behind the wheel.
She was being held on $100,000 bond.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Traffic Bureau of the Fountain Valley Police Department at 714/593-4481.
This is at least the fifth bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the first that I’m aware of in Orange County. Three of those deaths have been hit-and-runs.
The driver remained at the scene, and police don’t suspect drug or alcohol use.
Unfortunately, there’s no word on how the collision occurred, or who might have had the right of way at the signalized intersection; there are no bike lanes or any other bike infrastructure in any direction.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Traffic Officer Johnathan Drylie at 951/817-5784, or at Johnathan.Drylie@Coronaca.gov.
This is at least the fourth bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the second that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Edward Vazquez and all his family and loved ones.
Let’s start with an email I received earlier this week, which succinctly captures what too many of us are feeling these days.
Here’s what Steven had to say.
Pardon my rant, but it’s just infuriating out there! While I agree with you that being seen is VITALLY important. Every “encounter” I have had with a car or truck has been with someone that definitely saw me or had no excuse for not seeing me! I am paranoidedly cautious doing my best to anticipate possible situations. I have lights, steady and blinking, I wear bright, colorful clothes, I ride the bike lane where I can and fully take the lane when there is no bike lane. I have been ‘right hooked’ so many times I can’t count! So far the worst result of a right hook has been some minor scrapes to my bike and some minor ‘road rash’. (However, I did dent the passenger door of a car once!) There have been a few that I have yelled at and they responded — the most common was “You were going faster than I thought” or just “Sorry” and one woman unbelievably said “Didn’t you see my turn indicator?” The only time I got sent to the hospital was when I was clipped by a side mirror and thanks be to God, released the same day with some major hematoma! The guy, to his credit, did stop. But he did say that “I thought I had enough room” AND THAT IS ON THE POLICE REPORT!!!! It’s getting to the point that I feel like I should start randomly swing a baseball bat and justify it by saying “Well, I didn’t hit anybody”
And just for completeness, I have been left hooked, brake checked, purposely cut off (both from the left and the right!), and have had things thrown at me. The urge to physically fight back is almost overwhelming!
I know that feeling all too well, when the urge to smash someone’s windshield — if not their face — becomes overwhelming.
It’s a natural, and perfectly understandable, reaction to having your life needlessly threatened.
But not exactly helpful.
I have a mantra I save for such situations, repeating over and over The world will not conform to my expectations, until the rage finally passes.
Because, too often, it won’t.
People will continue drive dangerously, despite my expectations that they should drive in a safe and responsible manner. Yet they will somehow blame me for almost getting killed. Or just for being on the road.
Or maybe the planet.
Meanwhile, bad street designs and poor maintenance can be aggravating at best, life threatening at worst. And too often the latter.
And I can’t do a damn thing about any of that.
All I can do is try to control my own reaction to it, and not let the jerks of the world ruin a good ride.
………
Cal Berkeley grad student Ethan Ebinger was honored by the university for his paper on rethinking traffic enforcement, offering a number of interesting proposals challenging current orthodoxy, including —
Decriminalize violations unrelated to traffic safety
Ban stops of non-vehicular road users
Rely on automated technologies
Improve data collection of crashes and stops, test for disparities
Balance downstream effects
Reframe traffic enforcement within Vision Zero
Move traffic enforcement operations to the transportation department
Whether or not you agree with him, it’s worth taking a few minutes to read the full paper to challenge your own beliefs, and maybe even start to see it in a whole new way.
Not surprisingly, while many progressive challengers have signed on to support it, most of the sitting councilmembers up for re-election this year have failed to respond, as have most of the leading candidates for mayor.
CD3’s Bob Blumenfield is a no, as is current city attorney and mayoral candidate Michael Feuer.
………
Bike lanes are coming to Yosemite Drive in Eagle Rock.
That feeling when riding a bike is a bad idea because of all the other people out there who don’t.
Twitter post
………
Local
Leah Shahum, the founder and executive director of the Vision Zero Network, writes to the LA Times to say Los Angeles, and the entire nation, needs to move past the outdated “Five E’s” approach to Vision Zero, and have the political will to create an effective and equitable Vision Zero effort built on proactive strategies such as designing streets and managing speeds for safety. Let’s hope the mayor reads it while he’s packing for India. Or the new interim mayor, anyway.
Santa Monica has unveiled new bollard-protected bike lanes on 23rd Street. And for a change, they’re the kind of substantial bollards that might actually keep someone out, as opposed to the flimsy, car-tickler plastic bendy posts usually used in LA.
A writer for D Magazine applauds the new Vision Zero plan for Dallas, Texas, but questions whether it will actually save lives. Only if the city’s leaders have the political courage to make substantial changes to the streets, unlike the spineless wonders in charge of a certain Left Coast megalopolis we could name.
Good question. Cycling Weekly writes that 1,100 bicycles are stolen in the UK every day, so why isn’t bike theft a higher priority? I’d like to hear an answer to that one here, as well.
A judge told a 76-year old Scottish driver to expect a “substantial” prison sentence next month, after he was convicted of killing a popular primary school teacher while attempting to pass two large vehicles at once, hitting the teacher’s bike head-on. Let’s just hope the judge meant what he said.
Is anyone really surprised to see Gil Cedillo’s fingerprints all over the death of the fully approved and funded bike lanes on the newly widened North Spring Street Bridge?
Cedillo, the councilmember for LA’s 1st Council District, seems to have an irrational fear and/or hatred of bicycles and the people who ride them.
Maybe he’s still mad that Santa never brought him one.
That extends to bike lanes, as well. Cedillo has apparently never seen one in his district that he didn’t want to stop, even going so far as to request the removal of every planned bike lane in CD1 from the city’s mobility plan.
That includes the desperately needed, shovel-ready lane reduction on deadly North Figueroa, which he claimed to support — right up to the moment he took office, and began a series of rigged public meetings to justify killing a project with broad popular support.
Something that earned him the moniker Roadkill Gil, as needless deaths continued to mount on the corridor, and in his district.
And now, newly uncovered evidence has confirmed long-held suspicions that he was behind the endless delays, and ultimately, the de facto cancellation, of the planned bike lanes on the North Spring Street Bridge.
Twitter post
The $50 million reconstructed bridge crosses the Los Angeles River north of downtown, connecting Lincoln Heights with Chinatown.
And sure enough, it specifies that Cedillo’s office had them removed, claiming “safety concerns,” that somehow couldn’t have been rectified up to this point.
After all, they’ve only had ten years to address them.
The good news is, Cedillo is up for re-election to a final term this year. Maybe someone can step up and make this his final term, instead.
Something tells me sales were flat here in Los Angeles.
Twitter post
But clearly, it’s still a thing.
Twitter post
………
Evidently, trail rage is a thing now, too.
Twitter post
The only time my Iditarod-mushing brother ran into something like that, it was at the hands — or hooves — of an angry moose who didn’t take kindly to sharing the trail with a bunch of dogs. Fortunately, they all came out of it okay, if a little banged-up and moose shy.
The twin Western Colorado towns of Nucla and Naturita, with barely 1,000 residents between them, are hoping to become the next big mountain biking destination, with plans for 50 over miles of new trails. Although they might want to figure out where all those new visitors are going to eat and sleep first.
France will once again debate whether to mandate bike helmets for adult riders, with a proposed €135 — or $155 — fine for anyone caught without one. As has been the case everywhere else, expect homeless people and people of color to bear the brunt of it.
Barcelona has doubled its bike lane mileage in just five years while eliminating 3,500 parking spaces, in a successful effort to give the city back to people instead of cars. Then again, Los Angeles doubled its bike lane mileage virtually overnight just by counting each side of the road separately.
January 12, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New ADA in Woon hit-and-run case, LA paid out 300 grand in hit-and-run rewards, and bike theft down 22% in Long Beach
It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from our anonymous courtroom correspondent.
So let’s have her kick things off today by catching us up with the latest happenings in bike jurisprudence and other related stuff.
Mariah Kandise Banks (charged in the hit-and-run death of Frederick “Woon” Frazier) has yet another DA newly assigned to her case. He was tranfserred from the Van Nuys courthouse on the morning of her most react hearing, December 6th. He had a whole new caseload to familiarize himself with, but was present for Banks’ appearance. I was able to speak with him very briefly and he indicated that the prosecution is continuing to work with the defense on a plea deal.
(Editor’s note — Let’s hope they finally get a conviction while Woon’s long-suffering mother is still around to see it.)
………
Samantha Cunha killed her friend during a bizarre road rage incident. On December 1st, the charge was dismissed.
(Editor’s note — This was the case where Cunha was a passenger in a car driven by Sophia Ardalan when they became involved in a running road rage dispute on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Ardalan was killed when she either got out, or fell out, of her car attempting to confront the motorcyclist in front of a West Hollywood apartment building, and Cunha somehow put the car into reverse, crushing her against a tree.)
………
In the latest episode of Drivers Hitting Buildings:
On the 6th, a driver smashed into a building at Los Altos Dr. & Caricia Dr. in Hacienda Heights.
On Sunday morning, a speeding driver in a Nissan Frontier took out a parked pick-up, a light pole, and the garage at the T-intersection of City Terrace Drive & Ditman.
In the wee, wee hours of Monday, the flower shop at Colima & Lambert, the site of a Black Friday fatality, was again collateral damage in a 3-vehicle collision. This time a driver made a drive-thru of it.
A driver fled a hit and run on the 710, went zipping down surface streets, and ended up hitting the house at 5th St. & Sydney Dr. (This is not the first time that house has been hit.)
On the 3rd, a dipstick departed the Sinclair gas station at Alameda & Nadeau with the gas nozzle still attached. Counts as structural damage?
………
There was a candlelight vigil Sunday for a mother & daughter killed on my coworker’s commute route. Last week, she asked, “You do this all the time. Do I take a candle, or will they hand them out there? Is it okay to take more flowers?” I’m kinda upset to be the go-to for advice on this subject, tbh.
The speed limit on this stretch is 40mph, and this intersection is close to the terminus of the 105 at Studebaker, which has frequent collisions, sometimes involving the already red-tagged building on the east side of the street. Currently, the guardrail “protecting” the sidewalk has a 20-inch dent. Just a half mile up the road, Chandler Ray was killed on his bike.
The killer was released last Tuesday before the tox exam was even returned. She’s out there. Just like Mariah Banks.
………
This was the third Christmas in a row that it was too wet for me & my friends to put up our hit-and-run reward posters… y’know, the some people are in such a rush on Christmas Eve that they really don’t watch out for grannies trying to make their way home. We have really sharp pictures of the suspect and his vehicle, too! The posters and the reindeer hoof print stencils have to wait til next year.
Prior to last year, the city had only paid three people a total of $55,000 in the previous four years of the program.
The sudden explosion of payments was most likely due the time it takes to make an arrest and for the case to work its way through the court system, according to a police spokesman.
The site also reports that serious hit-and-runs are up in the city, while overall hit-and-runs decreased somewhat.
Los Angeles has seen a rise in people dying or being seriously injured in car crashes. In 2021, there were 359 felony hit and runs in the city that resulted in serious injury or death, up 25% from the 286 in 2020, according to LAPD Traffic Division Compstat data.
Altogether, there were 3,536 felony hit and run cases in Los Angeles last year. That was a decrease of 17% from the 4,273 in 2020.
………
Time is running out to voice your thoughts on the planned rush hour bus lanes on La Brea Ave, which would provide a relatively safe route from Hollywood to South LA.
San Francisco Streetsblog’s Roger Rudick takes an Oakland TV station to task for displaying its windshield bias by criticizing bicycle rideout taking over a local freeway, while failing to criticize dangerous drivers using bike lanes. Because one is a lot more dangerous than the other, and it ain’t the kids on bikes. Even if riding on a freeway isn’t the brightest choice.
Kind of a strange post from Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss, who finds his knickers in a twist after criticism from Peter Flax and Doug Gordon of The War on Cars podcast, who made their comments without actually naming him.
Bike mechanics, co-ops, and various advocates and nonprofit advocacy groups are joining together to call for more durable and repairable budget bikes that can last at least 500 riding hours before breaking down, and be fixed when they do. You can sign the petition here. However, you’ll be required to give your full address, which is usually a deal breaker for me.
The second shoe has fallen in Las Vegas, where the family of one of the five bike riders killed by a meth-fueled truck driver have filed suit against the driver and his employer, as well as the ride’s escort driver, leaving just three more shoes to inevitably fall. The driver, Jordan Barson, is doing 16 to 40 years behind bars for the crash.
You’ve got to be kidding. Life is cheap in Florida, where an accused hit-and-run driver who killed a man riding a bicycle copped a sweetheart plea deal in a long-delayed conclusion to the 2016 case, walking without a single day behind bars in a case that should could have resulted in four to 15 years behind bars.
Now surprise here, as Australian researchers report three-quarters of people surveyed in the country’s Victoria state want to ride their bikes more, but only if there’s safe bike infrastructure to do it in. Which pretty much corresponds with similar surveys everywhere else, including Los Angeles.
Louisiana’s “challenging” Rouge Roubaix bike race is back this year after a five year hiatus due to flooding and Covid, as well as a misguided local ordinance banning groups of more than ten people on bicycles. Which makes it kind of hard to host a race with hundreds of competitors.
