The driver stopped after the crash, and was cooperating with investigators. Police do not think drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash.
The Desert Sun reports the crash occurred on a relatively desolate stretch of northbound Bob Hope Drive. The victim was found several feet from his bike, with a heavily damaged utility truck stopped nearby.
A street view shows two wide, straight traffic lanes in each direction on Bob Hope, with a 50 mph speed limit, and an unprotected gutter bike lane on each side.
No time of the crash, or any other information is available at this time.
There are two intersections for De Soto and Burbank, as the street jumps a block north before continuing; no word yet on exactly which one the crash occurred on. However, there appears to be bike lanes on either side of De Soto.
Hopefully we’ll have more information soon.
This is the 13th bicycling fatality I’m aware of in Southern California, and the sixth in Los Angeles County. It’s also the fifth in the City of Los Angeles.
A ghost bike will be installed at 9 pm tonight.
Update: According to a source with the LAPD, the crash took place at the south intersection, directly in front of Kaiser Medical Center, as Montero was crossing De Soto headed east, where the crosswalk would be if one was painted.
The driver reportedly shifted to the right lane, and accelerated through the intersection as soon as the light changed, catching Montero before he could get across the street.
No information yet on who may be at fault or any possible charges.
Update 2: The Los Angeles Daily News says the crash occurred around 11:40 am Sunday. He died about an hour later after being taken to a local hospital.
Police are investigating the timing of the traffic light, as well as the speed of the driver.
Montero was riding with a friend, who was unharmed.
Photos from GoFundMe page
Photo by Steve
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Sebastian Montero and all his family and friends.
Thanks to Steve and Zachary Rynew for the heads-up.
April 2, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: LADOT’s new focus on “transportation happiness,” and LA BAC meets tomorrow in Hollywood
LADOT chief and NACTO president Seleta Reynolds explains how Los Angeles is adapting urban mobility for the digital age — including an emphasis on transportation happiness.
To achieve that, she says,
We are currently drafting a Mobility Bill of Rights to identify core principles like reliability, safety, comfort, equity, transparency, and community that should be the foundation of services we provide or allow to serve Los Angeles. Each of these principles has a set of key performance indicators that we will baseline with Angelenos in order to guide improvements to existing service, like taxis and transit, and help us to regulate new services as they come into the city.
Of course, if the city really wants to increase transportation happiness, they’d place a greater emphasis on bike riding and safer streets, since bike riders are the happiest commuters.
Today’s photo show a new bike box next to Hollywood High School.
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The Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee will meet this Tuesday at the Hollywood City Hall.
Bike riders offered warning about the dangers of self-driving cars before Uber decamped for Arizona to avoid regulation restrictions in California — and before Elaine Herzberg was killed as she walked her bike across a Tempe street.
Bike rentals have begun for the year in Yosemite. Although someone should tell NBC Bay Area to hire a decent proof reader; pretty sure they meant rentable, not rentalable.
March 30, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Upcoming bike events, bike stolen from Fontana victim, and violently anti-bike cops in San Leandro
Let’s start with some upcoming events we haven’t mentioned yet.
A number of Los Angeles-area legislative districts are holding special elections on Tuesday; Bike the Vote LA has rated the candidates in each district.
And then some lowlife scum stole her bicycle before police could collect it as evidence.
Let’s hope it was just a mistake, and someone took the bike to hold it until it could be picked up.
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This one really pisses me off.
Police in bike-unfriendly San Leandro are allegedly confiscating kids’ bicycles for traffic infractions, under the pretext that they might be stolen. And reportedly dooring teenage bike riders on purpose, and holding unarmed children at gunpoint.
To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing in the law that allows police to confiscate bicycles based on nothing more than a supposition. Which is no different than impounding a driver’s car simply because he looks suspicious, with nothing to back it up.
Meanwhile, intentionally dooring a bike rider not only violates the vehicle code, it’s assault with a deadly weapon and an illegal use of force.
And don’t even get me started on pulling a weapon on nonviolent children for the crime of simply riding a bicycle.
Let’s hope this story results in a fleet of lawyers descending on the town.
And whoever is responsible for these outrageous policies finding new work as an unarmed security guard at the local mall.
Thanks to Frank Lehnerz for the heads-up.
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Long Beach Bike Ambassador Tony Cruz offers basic advice on how to ride a bike safely. Although there could have been a mention of road position beside merely riding outside the door zone.
Ebikes really are pulling people out of their cars; 28% of people surveyed purchased their ebikes to reduce their reliance on cars, while 76% of ebike trips would have otherwise been made by car.
Canadian musician Rich Aucion is on a 15-city tour of the US, riding from gig to gig by bike in what will eventually be a coast-to-coast ride to raise funds for a mental health organization.
Philadelphia’s bike-hating columnist inexplicably says flipping bike lanes from the right to the left side on two one way streets is equivalent to flipping the bird to local residents. And compares the city’s bike advocacy group to the NRA.
A disabled polio survivor from Nepal visits Brunei, the 68th country he’s visited on his round-the-world bike tour. Yet another reminder that bikes offer increased mobility for people with disabilities.
And if you’re caught on video trying to steal a bike, come up with a better excuse than alleging that the owner asked you to bust the lock and bring it to him.
Even though that means ignoring the concerns of everyone who wants to live on a quieter, calmer street. Or doesn’t want to get run down by those same drivers.
Which marks yet another victory, albeit hopefully a temporary one, for the people behind the driver activist group Keep LA Moving, which organized the resistance to the bike lane.
As well as opposition to the recently shelved Temple Street road diet, and the failed road diets in Playa del Rey.
So far, only the Mar Vista Great Streets Project on Venice Blvd has survived their traffic safety denier onslaught.
Let’s hope Pasadena can do a better job of communicating the benefits of such projects than LADOT has up to this point. And that the Orange Grove project will come back more successfully at a later date.
Because right now, the people in the black hats and two-ton vehicles are winning.
As Matthew T. Hall, San Diego Union-Tribune editorial director, lamented on Twitter about the kits, “What kind of world are we leaving our children?”
Well, for one, apparently one where folks Spin’s age, edging toward 60 and above, think the appearance of bicycles in certain communities amounts to some apocalyptic hellscape of two-wheeling insurgents intent on demolishing mankind as we know it…
Never mind that not everyone can afford to buy a bike, nor the notion that perhaps a significant portion of the bikes that appear in Little Italy—or Mission Hills or Point Loma for that matter—might have actually brought someone to your popular neighborhood. Seems like short-sighted economics to drive that kind of business away…
Is it a perfect system? Hell no, but what is? But for this curmudgeon who this week turned 59, the bikes have offered—at a reasonable price—an opportunity to regain some semblance of a connection with my city and, by some miracle, my youth.
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Horrifying video of a head-on collision as a driver turned directly into a bike rider waiting at a red light.
Needless to say, the driver claims she never saw him. Which should be seen as a confession rather than an excuse.
Note: This video shows exactly what it looks like to get hit head-on from the rider’s perspective. So consider that before deciding if you really want to hit play.
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Bloomberg reports that Uber disconnected the collision avoidance system that comes standard in the Volvo SUV that stuck and killed Elaine Herzberg while she was crossing the street in Tempe Arizona, relying on their own failed self-driving technology instead.
An American Idol contestant is teaming with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and a Nashville bike/walk advocacy group to discourage texting while driving, two years after he was run down by a distracted driver while riding his bike.
A Canadian mountie won’t face charges after investigators conclude there isn’t enough evidence to prove he ran over a fleeing bike theft suspect, even though he probably did.
A new study shows one in four drivers in Australia’s Queensland state pass bicyclists too closely. Which should sound familiar to most bike riders just about anywhere else.
Now he reports the city has begun pouring new concrete to patch the crumbling stretch of concrete that took him down.
As usual, despite years of complaints, they only got around to it after it was too late. And after being embarrassed with a front page story.
But at least it should help prevent the next one.
Photos by Patrick Pascal.
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More fallout from the crash of a self-driving Uber car that killed an Arizona woman as she walked her bike across an overly wide street.
Arizona’s governor has suspended testing of self-driving cars in the state, after previously welcoming them with open arms when California installed safety restrictions on them.
Speaking of the LA River bike path, it’s about to be shut down once again, this time for construction of a long-planned bike and pedestrian bridge connecting Atwater Village and Griffith Park.
San Diego’s Little Italy Association is scooping up dockless bikeshare bikes, and depositing them outside the business district. Which is strange, because these are the same people who fought planned bike lanes, insisting that all their customers come by cars. Thanks to Frank Lehnerz for the heads-up.
The mayor of Hamilton, Quebec learned about the need for safer streets the hard way, nearly getting hit by a car just seconds into a ride to promote the city’s bike infrastructure.
A Kiwi sociologist says the bikelash over the new bikeways stems from “a sort of initial adjustment stress” from people who are unable to handle the change to the street.
March 27, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Save money by biking in the nation’s second most expensive city, and bikelash in the Rose City
Although I’m told that the opposition is being guided by the people behind anti-traffic safety group Keep LA Moving, which has apparently set its sights on halting any lane reduction plan in the greater LA area.
The Pew Charitable Trust looks at the possible spread of the Idaho Stop Law, which was considered in a number of states this year — including California, where it failed in part thanks to opposition from AAA, which seems to have confused the solution with the problem.
Canada’s Cycling Magazine offers advice on what to do, and not to do, when taking your bike to a mechanic this spring. I’ve said it before; treat a good wrench like your best friend, because for your bike, he — or she — is.
The Guardian offers advice on what to do if your bike hits a pothole. Which is good advice here, too. Especially the part about hiring a lawyer if you’re going to take on city hall.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a driver gets off with just eight months for plowing through traffic lights and into a bike rider while driving with five times the legal level of a cocaine derivative in his system. Seriously, who knew there was a legal level of coke for getting behind the wheel?
Clearly, hit-and-run isn’t just an American problem. Although apparently in the UK, it’s considered hit-and-run if you leave the scene after hitting an animal, unless it’s a cat.
A long-planned Wisconsin bikeway connecting Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River is at risk after estimates for a bridge over a highway come in higher than expected.
Singapore went carfree on Sunday, as part of a monthly program to close the streets of the Civic District to motor vehicles on the last Sunday of each month.
A special thanks to Pedego 101 and J Fylling for their generous donations to help replace my late, lamented laptop, which, after two full months in the repair shop, appears destined for that great recycling facility in the sky.
Despite the city’s lip service to Vision Zero, it’s clear, to paraphrase Casablanca, that the deaths of a few innocent people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy town.
Now neighboring Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has joined him, citing a lack of significant, widespread support for the vital safety project.
If that’s going to be the standard, we might as well toss Vision Zero in the scrapheap of Los Angeles history right now. Because we may never get a majority of Angelenos to believe that saving lives trumps saving a few minutes on their commute.
City officials are elected to do the right thing, not the popular thing. And make the difficult choices that they know will prove correct down the road, even if they initially lack “significant, widespread support.”
Like saving lives, for instance.
Instead, O’Farrell became just the latest LA councilmember to back down in the face of organized opposition from angry motoring activists, settling for a number of incremental improvements to the street that may make it a little safer and slightly more pleasant, but likely do nothing to stop speeding drivers from running down more innocent people.
In part, because of attitudes like this from Rachael Luckey, a member of the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council.
A road diet on Temple, Luckey says, would have been too extreme.
“I hate to use the words ‘acceptable loss,’ but we do live in a metropolitan city, and it’s a dangerous world we live in,” she says. “As far as Temple Street is concerned, I don’t know that it is a crisis per-se. If we were seeing 20, 30, 50 people run over, I would be a lot more alarmed.”
A California Highway Patrol collisions database shows that from 2009 to 2017 on the stretch of Temple Street between Beverly and Beaudry, 34 people have been severely injured and five people have died in traffic crashes.
I wonder if she’d still consider it an acceptable loss if one of those victims was a member of her own family.
And once again, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti was too busy running for president to weigh in on one of his own signature programs, exchanging pledged commitment to Vision Zero for zero involvement.
When Vision Zero was first announced in Los Angeles, I questioned whether the city’s leaders had the courage to made the tough choices necessary to save lives, and help make this a healthier, more vibrant and livable city.
The answer, sadly, is no.
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On a related subject, a new journal article from Chapman University assistant law professor Ernesto Hernandez Lopez examines the legal aspects of the LA Mobility Plan.
And the auto-centric bikelash that threatens to derail it.
Here’s how he summarizes the paper, titled Bike Lanes, Not Cars: Mobility and the Legal Fight for Future Los Angeles:
Examines LA’s Mobility Plan 2035
Summarizes lessons from biking scholarship
Uses these lessons to make sense of the litigation on the Mobility Plan 2035
Suggests how law and politics can help city bike lane policies and advocacy and policy making for these
Relates bike lanes to Vision Zero (safety), “first and last mile” (intermodal), and mobility (de-car)
Correlates the litigation and LA experiences with Vehicular Cycling and Automobility theories
The San Gabriel River trail will be closed at Carson Street in Long Beach today for an emergency repair due to water damage. Riders will be detoured to Town Center Drive.
The path should be reopened on Saturday, unless they run into unexpected problems.
If not, take a few minutes to see if you can reconcile what you see with the local police chief’s insistence that the victim, a homeless woman walking her bicycle across the street, darted out of nowhere into the car’s path.
Right.
Then look closely at the interior view, which shows the clearly distracted emergency human driver looking down the whole time, until just before the moment of impact.
The car should have been able to detect the victim; the fact that it didn’t indicates a major flaw in the system. And the woman behind the wheel definitely should have, if she’d been paying the slighted bit of attention.
Correction: The initial stories identified the driver as a man, Raphael Vasquez. However, it appears that Vasquez has been living as woman, Raphaela Vasquez, since being released from prison in 2005. Thanks to Andy Stow for the correction.
The head of a European bike industry trade group responds that bike riders will have to wear beacons to identify themselves to autonomous vehicles. Why stop there? Why not implant all newborns with transponders so self-driving cars can see them regardless of how they travel, and choose to kill the one person crossing the street rather than the three people in a car.
A former Los Angeles Times staff writer calls LA streets a contested space where no improvement — such as the Venice Blvd Great Streets project — goes unpunished.
You’ve got to be kidding. Life is cheap in Yolo County, where a garbage truck driver walked in a plea deal in the death of a bike-riding college professor after pleading no contest to vehicular manslaughter. And was rewarded with a deferred judgement and a lousy 80 hours of community service.
Eugene, OR decides to make a six-block test road diet permanent, concluding it was worth the effort despite initial concerns. Sort of what might happen here if more city officials had the guts to actually try it.
Traffic delays caused by highway construction enticed an El Paso, Texas man to sell his truck and buy a motorized bicycle, improving his health and saving at least $800 a month.
Cycling Weekly considers the symptoms, tests and recovery for concussions. Sooner or later, everyone comes off their bike, and chances are, you can’t count on your helmet to protect you from TBIs, because that’s not what most helmets are designed to do.
A new reports says 43% of the Ontario, Canada bike riders killed between 2010 and 2015 were struck from behind. And 25% were under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
My St. Patrick’s Day was interrupted by a sudden sharp pain, a panicked trip to the emergency room, and an unplanned stay at Cedars-Sinai.
Where their firewall somehow prevented me from logging into this site. Not that I was capable of doing much in my morphine-induced haze, anyway.
Now I’m finally back home, a handful of kidney stones, a few pounds and a couple thousand bucks lighter.
I’m still trying to shake the last of that drug fog and make up for some lost sleep, so let’s skip the Morning Links one more day, and catch up on a couple of recent guest posts.
First up is a one from Mike Vandeman arguing against allowing kids to take up mountain biking. While it’s not something I agree with in any way, I’ll let him make his case. As he said in an email to me, you can’t argue with facts. We’ll let you decide just what those facts are.
Next, I had planned to share the LACBC’s press release on the tragic death of Elisa Gomez in Monday’s post, so we’ll finish with that today. As you’ll recall, Gomez was killed by a FedEx driver who pulled out from a stop sign while she was directly in front of his truck, then run over after he failed to stop, and fled the scene. A suspect was taken into custody, but no word on an arrest.
Then barring any unexpected setbacks, we’ll be back with our regularly scheduled Morning Links tomorrow.
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Children and Mountain Biking
by Mike Vandeman, mjvande@pacbell.net
Introducing children to mountain biking is CRIMINAL. Mountain biking,
besides being expensive and very environmentally destructive, is
extremely dangerous. Recently a 12-year-old girl DIED during her very
first mountain biking lesson! Another became quadriplegic at 13!
Serious accidents and even deaths are commonplace. Truth be told,
mountain bikers want to introduce kids to mountain biking because (1)
they want more people to help them lobby to open our precious natural
areas to mountain biking and (2) children are too naive to understand
and object to this activity. For 600+ examples of serious accidents
and deaths caused by mountain biking, see http://mjvande.info/mtb_dangerous.htm.
Bicycles should not be allowed in any natural area. They are
inanimate objects and have no rights. There is also no right to
mountain bike. That was settled in federal court in 1996: http://mjvande.info/mtb10.htm. It’s dishonest of mountain bikers to
say that they don’t have access to trails closed to bikes. They have
EXACTLY the same access as everyone else — ON FOOT! Why isn’t that
good enough for mountain bikers? They are all capable of walking….
A favorite myth of mountain bikers is that mountain biking is no more
harmful to wildlife, people, and the environment than hiking, and
that science supports that view. Of course, it’s not true. To settle
the matter once and for all, I read all of the research they cited,
and wrote a review of the research on mountain biking impacts (see http://mjvande.info/scb7.htm). I found that of the seven studies
they cited, (1) all were written by mountain bikers, and (2) in every
case, the authors misinterpreted their own data, in order to come to
the conclusion that they favored. They also studiously avoided
mentioning another scientific study (Wisdom et al) which did not
favor mountain biking, and came to the opposite conclusions.
Those were all experimental studies. Two other studies (by White et
al and by Jeff Marion) used a survey design, which is inherently
incapable of answering that question (comparing hiking with mountain
biking). I only mention them because mountain bikers often cite them,
but scientifically, they are worthless.
Mountain biking accelerates erosion, creates V-shaped ruts, kills
small animals and plants on and next to the trail, drives wildlife
and other trail users out of the area, and, worst of all, teaches
kids that the rough treatment of nature is okay (it’s NOT!). What’s
good about THAT?
Note: It’s the policy of this site not to post personal contact information; however, Mike Vandeman’s email address has been included at his request.
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LACBC CALLS ON OFFICIALS TO ACT FOR SAFER STREETS: 54-YEAR-OLD WOMAN ON BICYCLE KILLED IN HIT-AND-RUN CRASH
LOS ANGELES – Yesterday morning, Elisa Gomez was hit by a delivery truck southeast of downtown Los Angeles, and left to die in the middle of the street. The 54-year-old bicyclist was riding Eastbound on Washington Avenue at around 8:30 in the morning and was struck from behind by a FedEx delivery truck, which then sped away. This tragedy is indicative of the grim realities faced by bicyclists and pedestrians on our county’s streets.
Los Angeles County is known as the “hit-and-run capital of the nation” with 50% of all traffic crashes categorized as “hit-and-run.” The national average is 11%. In 2015, over 28,000 hit-and-run crashes were reported across the county. That averages out to one hit-and-run crash every 18 minutes in Los Angeles County, a number that glaringly shows the risks faced by those walking or biking in our county.
Making streets safer for all road users has to be a priority for the City of Los Angeles,” stated LACBC Executive Director Erik Jansen. “Simple steps can be taken to calm traffic and make drivers more aware of vulnerable road users, like people walking and biking. We know how it do it — other cities have shown immense progress building infrastructure to decrease speeds, make turns safer, and build a city at a human scale. Angelenos deserve safe streets and they deserve elected officials willing to show real leadership to make it happen.
Elisa was killed a block away from the Washington Blue Line Metro station southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. In 2017, LACBC partnered with other community organizations and Metro to conduct community engagement along the Blue Line to assess the safety and access needs for people walking and biking to stations. LACBC chose to focus on Washington Station, an area surrounded by the High Injury Network, to work to prevent tragedies such as these. Currently, Metro is using the data collected through this process to apply for funding to make infrastructure improvements identified by the community.
The widely-accepted belief that people dying on our streets is inevitable is a false one. These tragedies are wholly preventable, and that’s why we call them “crashes” and not “accidents.” LACBC calls upon our city and elected officials to be leaders for safe streets and commit to adequately funding and implementing initiatives like Vision Zero. Without their leadership, Elisa Gomez will not be the last bicyclist who will be killed on Los Angeles streets.
I reached out to Jansen for further comment, and received the following response.
Elisa Gomez didn’t have to die. While the driver is ultimately responsible for running her down and leaving her to die on the pavement, her death could have been prevented by ensuring Angelenos have access to safe streets. We know how to make streets safe, and Elisa Gomez deserved elected officials willing to show real leadership to end traffic fatalities in Los Angeles. We need action, and not just another plan sitting on a shelf.
It’s good to see the LACBC take an active lead in fighting for safer streets. Because if there’s any good that can come from this senseless tragedy, it will be keeping it from happening to someone else.
