The victim, who appeared to be on a knobby-tired bicycle, died at the scene. The impact was hard enough that a witness described finding his shoes on opposite sides of the wide, four lane street.
Unfortunately, there is no description of the suspect or his or her vehicle.
An infuriating report by KCAL-9 says the victim was riding in the street despite the presence of a wide sidewalk, implying that’s where he should have been.
This is the second fatal hit-and-run involving a bicycle rider on Manchester Blvd in less than a year, following the death of Frederick “Woon” Frazer at less that a mile away at Manchester and Normandie last April.
Which makes you wonder just what it takes to get the DA to file charges.
In addition, no action has been taken to improve the deadly street that has now taken the lives of two bike riders in recent months, despite the presence of both Manchester and Normandie on the city’s High Injury Network.
As with any fatal hit-and-run in LA, there is a standing $50,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
This is at least the tenth bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; it’s also the third in the City of Los Angeles.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and all his loved ones.
This is going to be the last Morning Links for awhile.
I’ll be having surgery next week to hack out a chunk of my knee, and replace it with a piece of lifeless metal.
Otherwise known as a full knee replacement.
I’m going to need some time to calm my nerves and get ready for the procedure. And once it’s over, I expect to be too drugged out to get any significant work done.
However, I’m planning to put up a guest post or two, and hope to get to a couple of other brief items. And I’ll do my best to keep up with any breaking news while I’m out.
So check back every now and then so you don’t miss anything.
If all goes as expected, I should be back on Monday the 4th with a fresh Morning Links, and knee that actually works for a change.
An intrepid, trench coated BBC reporter traces the early history of the bicycle firsthand in a video from 1963.
Twitter post
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Prince Harry and Megan’s new baby hasn’t even been born yet, and the kid’s already got as many bikes as I do.
Twitter post
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes goes on, as some Brit asshole — and I use the term advisedly — pushes a woman off her bike from a moving car.
Let’s hope police find this jerk, and give him a shove into a jail cell.
If you’re on a waitlist for a bike locker at a Metro station, you may have to keep waiting. The transit agency has proposed scrapping the program because of break-ins and bike thefts, and replacing it with smartphone controlled docking racks.
Environmentalists are fighting plans to move a line of palm trees to make room for a Long Beach Complete Streets project. Even though palm trees aren’t native plants and are big consumers of scarce SoCal water.
A San Diego bike rider was seriously injured in a fall, apparently caused by a passing driver. Another reminder that a car doesn’t have to hit you to cause serious damage.
The Oregon driver who killed a woman riding a bike while high on 12 different prescription drugs — including her dog’s anxiety meds — was sentenced to a well–deserved 12 years behind bars. That’s one year for each medication; let’s hope she gets the drug treatment she seems to desperately need.
A professional reporter, who is apparently better versed in the 1st Amendment than some police officers, confronted an Arizona marshal who threatened to arrest her for following on her bicycle and filming him. Did I mention that she’s just 12-years old?
A judge issued a search warrant for the Austin, Texas bus driver who killed a bike rider on the UT campus last month; police say she appeared to be stoned on prescription medications, oblivious to her surroundings and driving distracted at the time of the crash, while failing to brake and ignoring passengers’ cries to stop. Thanks to Stephen Katz for the link.
A Minnesota bicycle columnist calls plans for a coast-to-coast bike path “fanciful but resilient,” saying Adventure Cycling is taking the long view in efforts to complete it. Wake me up when the LA Times — or any other local paper — gets around to hosting a column on bicycling.
Life really is cheap in Ohio, where a driver walked with just a $250 fine, and an order to donate another $250 to a local national park, after killing a bike rider while driving with a fogged-up windshield.
A Scottish road safety researcher says lowering speed limits to 20 mph could actually make the streets more deadly by lulling bicyclists and pedestrians into a false sense of security. Which is another way of saying many, if not most, motorists would simply ignore the lower limits and drive as fast as they damn well please. Sort of like they do now.
After writing about yesterday’s fatal bike crash in Koreatown, and spending far too much time making preparations for my upcoming knee surgery, there’s just no time left to write today’s Morning Links and get it online.
As usual, we’ll be back tomorrow to catch up on anything we missed.
And if anyone knows a good, reliable, corgi-friendly dog walker, let me know.
Early reports indicate the collision occurred at the intersection of Wilshire Blvd and Catalina Street in Koreatown at 3:30 am Wednesday, near the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, now the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools.
The station also reports that coroners smelled alcohol at the scene, suggesting the victim may have been intoxicated, which could explain why he was was lying in the street. Although it does not explain why the driver failed to seem him or the bicycle next to him.
This is at least the ninth bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fourth I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; it’s also the second in the City of Los Angeles.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and all his loved ones.
Thanks to Mike Wilkinson, Sindy Saito, David Drexler and John McBrearty for the heads-up. And my apologies for the delay in posting this.
February 20, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: LA traffic isn’t our fault, OC man on trial for stabbing bicyclist, and LA street & transit meetings
It’s a relatively light news day, so let’s just get right to it.
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Somehow, I just can’t spot the bike lane causing all this traffic congestion on Robertson Blvd yesterday.
So it must be a scooter.
Right?
Or maybe it’s just more LA drivers who can’t see the traffic for the cars.
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Local
Los Angeles will host a series of public workshops to help create proposals for the city’s Great Streets Challenge Grants, beginning tonight in Van Nuys.
Montana considers clarifying the right-of-way rules regarding bicycles, requiring drivers to move to the left lane or cross the center line to pass bicyclists, even when they’re riding on the shoulder, and to yield to bike traffic traveling in the same direction before turning.
A Concord NH woman faces a vehicular assault charge for running down a man on his bike from behind while driving without a license; prosecutors contend she was following the victim too closely, even though he was in a bike lane. Although the charges are just misdemeanors and traffic violations, so let’s hope survives that vicious slap on the wrist.
A New Orleans attorney offers tips on riding your bike to Mardi Gras, including advice to avoid riding drunk. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the Carnival Season.
Putting 37,000 alternatives to driving on the street is a good thing. But key to the success of any dockless mobility program is providing safe places to ride and park them.
Hopefully, this will spur development of the city bike plan, as city leaders finally recognize the need for safety. And drivers are more willing to sacrifice a few feet of roadway to get scooters out of their way.
It could happen.
The city also needs to provide on-street parking facilities — ideally converting one parking space per block for e-scooter and bike parking.
We should also require every e-scooter to be equipped with a low-volume beeping device to warn pedestrians when one is approaching. And let people with limited sight know when one is parked in their way.
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Talk about getting the story wrong.
Yesterday we linked to a Kansas story about a teen driver getting a reduced sentence for killing a bike rider in a hit-and-run, but criticized the paper for leaving out just how long he would be behind bars.
Not to mention the fact that the crash was intentional.
A passenger in his car told police the driver passed the man as he was riding in the opposite direction, and made a U-turn to deliberately run him down from behind before fleeing the scene.
And never mind that the victim was Latino and the driver was white, giving a racial tint to both the murder and the lack of justice. .
Amazingly, the judge excused the driver’s behavior because of his young age, clean record and that he had accepted responsibility. Although that came long after he had abandoned the car and gone home to play video games, later calling the police to report his car had been stolen.
Sure sounds like taking responsibility to me.
But no matter how sorry he might claim to be, there is no way to justify just two years behind bars for murder.
If he had used any other choice of weapon, from a gun or knife, to a rock or broken beer bottle, it would undoubtedly have been taken more seriously.
Or maybe the problem was just a victim on two wheels, with a Hispanic name.
And they should use “public transportation or ride your ridiculous bikes in your ridiculous bike shorts to your shriveled hearts’ content!” somewhere else, while all those “normal” Americans keep gleefully destroying the planet with their massive SUVs.
Except by repeatedly plugging his books makes it all come off as a shameless effort just to sell a few more.
I don’t care whether you’re conservative, liberal or anything else. Or whether you walk, bike, ride transit or drive.
We’re all need to stop demonizing one another, and work together to make this country succeed.
Period.
And the same goes for our cities and states.
Because the alternative isn’t pretty.
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CiclaValley offers a firsthand view of what it’s like to blow a tire during a descent.
And to have members of one university cycling team help you up while their rival school just rides on by.
Twitter post
Fortunately, he escaped relatively unscathed, walking away with a few bruises and a banged up wheel.
You still can’t legally ride an e-scooter in Torrance. The city is slow-walking approving e-scooters, even as other South Bay cities are moving forward with legalizing them.
