Apparently, no one is safe from idiots with engines.
According to a tweet from the Norwalk Station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a woman was killed in a collision with a motorcyclist while riding on the San Gabriel River Bike Trail a little over two weeks ago.
Yes, on an offroad bike path.
And yes, her killer fled the scene.
The victim was identified as 31-year old Carla Becerra, who was killed in the crash on Saturday, February 1st.
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Twentynine-year old Brandon Lindsley was arrested for the crime eleven days later, and charged with vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run last Friday. Since Becerra died, both should be felony counts.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know right now.
No word on exactly where or how the crash happened. And no explanation for what the hell someone on a motorbike was doing on a bike path.
Hopefully we’ll learn more on Wednesday, when the department is expected to issue a press release.
This is at least the seventh bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the third that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
Becerra was found lying unconscious on the path, with her bicycle several feet away. She was taken to Coast Plaza Medical Center, where she died.
Investigators identified Lindsley as a person of interest based on a distinctive tattoo seen by people who did not witness the crash itself. He was arrested after reportedly making incriminating statements to investigators.
Lindsley is being held on $105,000 bail in this case, as well as a no-bail hold on an outstanding warrant for assault with a deadly weapon.
Comments from Mike Wilkinson and Michael of CLR Effect say motorcycles aren’t unusual on the San Gabriel River Bike Trail, despite a prohibition on anything with an engine.
Maybe this will be a much-needed wakeup call to actually do something about it.
Update 2: Chris Klibowitz reports that the sheriff’s department gave the location as between Imperial and Firestone, rather than near the intersection, as KTLA reported, which makes a lot more sense.
Update 3: I received a message from Carla Becerra’s brother Quin, who offered a few details missing from previous reports.
According to Quin, the first call to 911 came around 6:45 pm on February 1st, as Carla Becerra was riding her bicycle south on the bike path, and Brandon Lindsley was traveling north on his motorcycle; he places the crash site roughly a quarter mile south of Imperial Highway.
Lindsley apparently fled because he had an outstanding warrant for a robbery assault with a deadly weapon.
Then again, he might have run anyway.
And still no explanation for why he was riding illegally on the bike path.
Adding insult to injury — literally — someone stole Becerra’s phone, earphones and ear rings while she was lying unconscious and dying on the bike path, sometime before the first responders could get there.
As a result, emergency personnel were unable to identify her for several hours, and her family had no idea where she was or what happened to her until they received the tragic news at 3 am the next day.
This is how Quin described his sister Carla.
My sister was a full time RN at UCI medical and at MLK hospital. She had worked her entire life, to buy my parents their dream home in Lakewood, even put her social and love life on hold to do so. She always put others before herself, just so her life can be taken away from someone so selfish. The messed up part about all of this is that if he (Brandon) was the one left unconscious then she would have stayed and made sure he made it. She had a huge passion for cycling and running. The only comfort my family and I take from this is that she left us while doing something she loved. It just wasn’t her time yet.
He concluded by noting that Brandon Lindsley will be arraigned on Tuesday, February 25th — the same day his victim will be laid to rest.
There are no words.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Carla Becerra and all her loved ones.
February 18, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Redesigning our cities for people, Metro planner killed in SaMo, and illegal bike dismount signs on Wilshire Blvd
My apologies to anyone who saw a premature draft of today’s page while it was still under construction; I somehow hit the Post button instead of Save.
Blame a daylong rollercoaster dealing with the literal highs and lows of diabetes.
Shops on streets that are closed to private cars do not suffer, but quite the opposite. Living in a city without a car is perfectly possible: it is already significantly cheaper to rent a car as often as you need than to own one and have to face expenses such as insurance, parking or taxes. But all these solutions raise a fundamental question about changing our habits, about how we get to work, for example: working from home or flexible hours are increasingly established trends.
Sad news from Santa Monica, where Metro Transportation Planner Daniel Chuong was killed when he was struck by a driver while training with his brother for the LA Marathon.
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It’s long past time to stop traffic violence in Southern California.
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Signs telling bicyclists to walk their bikes have popped up along the subway construction zones on Wilshire Blvd.
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However, the signs do not appear to be compliant with the California MUTCD manual — the state’s official traffic sign guide — and not legally enforceable.
Although I could be wrong on that.
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Apparently, the bike lanes on Jefferson have been closed for sewer pipe work for the next year.
And as usual, there doesn’t seem to be any accommodation for bike riders.
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It looks like the Culver Blvd pathway is closed for construction work, as well. But at least this should reopen in a better version soon.
However, the OC Register mentions that the driver fled the scene almost as an aside, before finally getting to a description of the suspect vehicle near the end of the story.
An Oklahoma couple is planning to set a new Guinness world record for the longest ebike ride, traveling 20,000 unsupported miles across 48 states. Get back to me when they actually do it. Because it’s easy to make plans, much harder to actually do it. As I’ve learned the hard way.
An Orlando, Florida writer confesses to blowing through stop signs while riding a bicycle on a trail dedicated to non-motorized transportation, where bike riders should get priority, but don’t. Each of the past two nights, I’ve watched drivers blow through the stop signs on my block without even slowing down. But let a bike rider do the same thing at 10 – 15 mph, instead of 30 or more, and people get apoplectic.
They get it, too. A writer for Rouleur says the one thing all bicyclist have in common, regardless of ability, is how vulnerable we are on the roads. And concludes that the culture, and the laws, have to change.
File this one under you’ve got to be kidding. Melbourne residents are calling for bikes to be banned from shared paths because riders are exceeding the ridiculously low 6.2 mph speed limit. I’m not sure my bike can even go that slow without falling over. Or maybe it can, and I can’t.
Adults over 50 are invited to compete in the Pasadena Senior Games, which includes cycling as well as a number of other sports. Although it’s not clear from the article whether you have to be a Pasadena resident.
February 17, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Stolen bikes and the jerks who take them, 9-year old San Marcos BMX bike flipper, and South African bicycle hip hop
Today’s a holiday, in case you hadn’t noticed. Which is easy to do if you didn’t get it off.
But my wife did, surprisingly enough.
So we’re going with sort of a Morning Links lite today, with most of the weekend’s bike news, so I can get a little sleep before she wakes me up too damned early in the morning; we’ll catch up on the rest tomorrow.
Today’s photo is what’s left of a bike after thieves stripped it, leaving its mangled carcass behind.
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Today’s common theme is stolen bikes and the jerks who take them.
Introducing my new favorite South African hip hop video.
Seriously, who can top rhymes like this?
When I hop on the metal and push on the pedal, there’s a certain peace that I get that’s really good for my mental.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on. And on.
A Willits CA woman intentionally ran over a man on a bike who she had been arguing with; she was arrested after fleeing the scene, along with her husband and son-in-law, who were booked as accessories after the fact for helping with her coverup.
No bias here, either. A Toronto columnist says the city’s Vision Zero isn’t failing because drivers need more safety education, but rather, they break the law because they’re frustrated by gridlock caused by all those bike lanes and lower speed limits. Which doesn’t explain why drivers broke the law before all those things, though.
His death did not go unnoticed in Pacific Palisades, where he was a longtime resident, chair emeritus of the community council, and the former leader of the Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association.
One he ultimately lost to a group of fellow advocates who preferred the danger of keeping bicyclists on deadly PCH to the optics of such an expensive bikeway project.
But George quickly got me involved in other projects, from joining the PCH Task Force to represent the needs on bike riders on the dangerous corridor, to connecting me with just the right people in the city and county governments to get finally piles of sand swept off the beachfront path months after a storm.
Which wouldn’t have happened without Wolfberg’s help.
Because George Wolfberg knew almost everyone at every level of the city, county and state governments. And even set up meetings with state Assembly Members and Senators to present my approach to halting hit-and-runs.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to convince them at the time that hit-and-run was that big a problem.
I wonder if they get it now.
For years, I could count on finding links to some bicycling story or another from the Wall Street Journal or New York Times popping up in my inbox on a regular basis, with the email address invariably leading back to him.
And he never missed contributing to this site’s holiday fundraiser every year; it breaks my heart to think this last one was, in fact, the last one.
But that’s the funny thing about giants.
They don’t always tell you they are one. Or why.
I’d known for some time that George Wolfberg was one of the first members of the Los Angeles Bicycle Advocacy Committee.
But it wasn’t until yesterday that I learned he’d also served on the LA County BAC. Or that there even was an LACBAC.
I was familiar with the late LA bike legend Alex Baum’s work to bring the ’84 Olympic Games to Los Angeles, and that he was instrumental in bringing women’s cycling to the Games for the first time.
But I never knew Wolfberg had worked hand-in-glove with him, writing the original proposal for the Games that forced the International Olympic Committee’s hand by including women’s cycling as a demonstration sport.
Or that he was instrumental in bringing the World Cup to Los Angeles in ’94. Let alone that he fought the horrific South African apartheid by working to get the city to divest from the racially divided county, later earning thanks from Nelson Mandela himself.
And worked just as hard for the residents of South LA, setting up a meals program for soccer playing kids who didn’t get enough to eat at home.
I am poorer today, because I lost a friend and ally.
But more importantly, this city is poorer because it lost a true giant of a community leader. A man who did everything Los Angeles asked of him, then kept on doing more.
We will all miss George Wolfberg, even if most of us will never know it.
Banks’ public defender couldn’t get herself extricated from another case that’s currently at trial (these things happen), so today’s preliminary hearing was delayed until March 17th, and I’ll be there.
A film crew from USC was there to cover the proceedings, which were brief. Bogart was there, Spencer was there. I met a budding activist, new to LA from Chicago, who had lost his fiancee of 8 years, and another activist fresh from Corvallis.
Nobody’s bike was stolen during the hearing, but Bogart et al were in the elevator (with Courtroom 38’s bailiff!) when it jammed, so their arrival was delayed for 20 minutes.
Woon’s mama was there and holding it together as best she could, which of course meant rivers of tears. She wore a t-shirt with a picture of young Woon and his bike, from which his face beamed. She repeated the words he said to her as he walked out the door for the last time, and I could just about hear them in his voice. Then her body heaved with sobs. So many arms were there to comfort her, but there’ll never be enough.
After Banks accepted the motion for continuance, the Assistant DA spoke to us in the hallway, providing a basic overview of the prosecution process and a chronology of expected future events. Woon’s mama indicated that she’s unlikely to actually be in the same room with Ms. Banks.
Bates has made it clear that she is hostile to taxing people to pay for transportation, and hates the idea of paying for transportation infrastructure that doesn’t involve cars. At the hearing, she said that active transportation projects–“translated as ‘road diets,’ which is the term used these days,” she said, further muddling the topic–contribute to higher emissions by causing “mounting congestion on some of the primary arterials.”
“I think [the Active Transportation Program] had more to do with moving people out of automobiles and onto bikes and things where you create less greenhouse gas and the emissions, but when you’ve got the other two lanes and people are sitting in their cars, running, you have the same problem,” she said.
The transportation site’s Melany Curry had this to say in response.
Sure, it’s possible for a poorly designed road diet to increase congestion. But that’s not what happens, for the most part. And Senator Bates’ repeating the idea that they do is unhelpful, at best.
And blaming bike lanes for vehicle emissions is just gaslighting. Senator Bates is not alone in doing this, and she needs to stop. And she also needs to stop pushing that as a reason for the state to stop funding active transportation projects.
Seriously, give it a read.
Because we have to know who and what we’re up against out there.
And how to respond to made-up facts with real ones.
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This is who we share the roads with. And the airspace, apparently.
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It may not be romantic, but chances are, you’ll still love killing a little time this foggy downhill run.
Colorado Public Radio offers tips on how to keep riding in the snow. Which is not a problem you’re likely to encounter on International Winter Bike to Work Day here in Los Angeles.
A red light-running London driver has been convicted in the hit-and-run death of a bike rider, who slipped away after 18 months in a coma; his father, cousin and younger brother were convicted of helping him coverup the crime.
February 13, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Huizar calls for carfree Broadway in DTLA, Arroyo Seco Bike Path finally open, and studies support bus and bike lanes
Breaking news: KNBC-4 reported that a bike rider was critically injured last night in a collision at Hollywood Blvd and McCadden Place. However, video from the scene appears to show the victim may have been seated on a Wheels scooter rather than a bicycle.
Unfortunately, nothing has been posted online yet.
This comes after years of efforts to revitalize the corridor, including a road diet that cut the number of traffic lanes in half, and reopening or repurposing many of the street’s grand theaters.
Note to KCBS-2: Despite the headline in the above link, the proposed ban is on cars and trucks, not feet.
A must-read from Curbed, which argues that public meetings are broken and offers advice for how to fix them. Anyone who’s been shouted down by traffic safety deniers and NIMBYs in recent years knows just how broken the current system is.
Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss says recent Los Angeles transplant LeBron James is the new hero of bikeshare and bike lanes, saying children need access to bikes and safe places to ride them. Rumor has it he also plays basketball here in LA. LeBron, that is, not Weiss.
A Colorado CEO plans to ride a bike barefoot across the US, from Disneyland in Anaheim to Disney World in Orlando, to call attention to human trafficking; it’s the first known attempt by anyone to pedal barefoot across the country.
Goleta resident Eric Maurcio Ramirez-Aguilar was charged with felony counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, hit-and-run causing death, and driving under the influence causing great bodily injury, as well as special allegations of fleeing the scene of a fatal collision and injuring multiple victims.
He was already on four years supervised probation for misdemeanor child cruelty at the time of the crash, with an order to abstain from all drugs and alcohol, and attend AA meetings twice a week.
Needless to say, he didn’t.
Allegedly.
The couple leaves behind four kids, ranging from 10 to 20; a GoFundMe page for their care has raised nearly $170,000 of the $300,000 goal.
Bike the Vote LA grades their picks in the Pasadena mayoral and council races.
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This one should be pretty self-explanatory, since it’s clearly up to us to get the hell out of the way of drivers, regardless of who has the right-of-way.
Streetsblog’s Damien Newton applauds Mayor Garcetti’s new climate directive calling for a major shift to green transportation in the next decade, but points out he’s running out of time to get anything accomplished while he’s still mayor. Let’s just hope Garcetti actually reads it.
This is who we share the roads with. A Florida woman faces charges for literally running away after shifting a car into gear and running over her friend, who had somehow fallen out and struck a tree following a road rage dispute with a motorcyclist in Hollywood. And yes, that’s every bit as confusing as it sounds.
No bias here. A writer for the Guardianblames bike lanes and pedestrian crossings for traffic “grinding to a halt” in central London, despite what he calls a complete absence of private cars — even though by his own admission, they’ve actually declined by just 15%. Never mind that the real cause of traffic congestion is all those delivery trucks, ride hailing drivers and all the other cars and trucks on the streets. In London or anywhere else.
DIY cycling is growing in Peshawar, Pakistan, as local men — and yes, women — are buying inexpensive Chinese bikes and rebuilding them as racing bikes, while making the rest of their kits and gear themselves.
