There’s no official confirmation yet, but I’ve received word of a bicycling death in Pico Rivera.
A local resident reports driving past the aftermath of a collision involving a bicyclist on Whittier Blvd at Acacia Ave on Sunday afternoon.
They forwarded a couple photos, which I’ve included below. While they don’t show the victim, that damage to the vehicle is graphic, so be forward if that’s not something you want to see.
In one, you can clearly see a mangled bicycle in the street, 30 to 40 feet in front of a car with a shattered windshield, suggesting the victim was struck at some speed.
He’s identified in the post only as a young man; a commentator describes him as her nephew. But as with anything else on Facebook, that may or may not be accurate.
Unfortunately, that’s all the information we have at this time. So if anyone knows anything, please let me know.
But at least the driver stuck around this time.
Assuming this is confirmed, it is at least the 49th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 15th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
So take a moment to remember those who have been sacrificed to the almighty motor vehicle gods, and those who drive them — including the 48 SoCal bike riders who have needlessly lost their lives this year.
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s ebike rebate pilot program boosted the net earnings of delivery workers compared to using a car, while generating virtually no greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Once again, someone has boobytrapped a UK mountain bike trail, stringing electric wire fencing at neck level across the trail, which could shock or strangle, if not decapitate, an unsuspecting victim. And which should be prosecuted appropriately once they find the asshole.
A road raging Norwegian driver went on a rampage against a bike-riding man, first blocking the bike lane with his van, then drop kicking him off his bicycle before assaulting both bike and rider.
Bike Magazine highlights the country’s six best winter mountain biking destinations; the list includes Southern California from Santa Barbara to Santa Monica. Although word has it that Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties ain’t bad, either.
Life is cheap in Connecticut, where a 72-year old woman walked without a single day behind bars for killing a 47-year old woman riding a bicycle while “fiddling” with her steering wheel, and the two “just seemed to merge together.” Yeah, that’s one way to describe it.
He was pronounced dead after being transported to a hospital.
At last report, Lackey-Berg was being held on $1 million bail at the Cois M. Byrd Detention Center in French Valley for suspicion of murder.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know right now. There’s no word on how or why the crash occurred, any possible motive, or whether the driver was arrested at the scene.
Anyone with information its urged to call Detective Pedro Aguila of the Hemet Police Department at 951/765-2423.
This is at least the 48th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
Note: There is also a story about this incident on the websites of the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the San Bernardino Sun and Ontario’s Daily Bulletin, but it is hidden behind their draconian paywalls. If you have a subscription to any of those papers, let me know if there’s any additional information we haven’t included here.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
To assess the risk posed to cyclists by rigid bollards, DEKRA conducted two identical collision tests at its Crash Test Center in Neumünster, Germany, with a three-wheeled e-cargo bike driven at a speed of 25 km/h (about 15-16 mph), one against a flexible post and the other against a rigid one.
“In the test against the rigid post, there was a strong deceleration [slowing down] that threw the dummy from the saddle towards the handlebars. The bollard buckled and then acted as a ramp. The rear of the bike was lifted up, throwing the dummy off and causing the bike to tip over.”
“In a real-life situation, the person riding the bike would have suffered serious injuries,” Egelhaaf said.
On the other hand, flexible plastic bollards — like the car-tickler bendie posts preferred by LADOT — allowed riders to simply roll over them, with little or no risk of serious injuries.
But flexible bollards also do nothing to keep inattentive or uncaring drivers out of the bike lanes, and are often flattened within weeks, if not days, of their installation.
So the question becomes whether the risk of falls outweighs the risk posed by motorists and their big, dangerous machines.
I don’t know how to answer that.
The only way to get a actual answer would be to try a real world test on comparable roadways, and measure the rate of injuries on both after six months and a year.
And to the best of my knowledge, no one has done that. Or plans to.
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This is who we share the road with.
A Santa Monica collision resulted in unexpected tragedy after a pickup driver collided with a motorcyclist on the 1400 block of Cloverfield Blvd, near the Specialized bike shop at Cloverfield and Santa Monica.
Witnesses said a driver seemed to intentionally crash into the victim’s motorcycle, after the motorbike rider waved a gun as the two men argued moments before the crash.
The driver claimed he accidentally hit the motorcycle while attempting to flee from the gunman — then he did flee immediately after the crash, turning a road rage incident into a fatal hit-and-run.
All because video showed a driver correctly slow down behind the recumbent rider to wait for a safe opportunity to pass, before a truck driver slammed on his brakes to avoid running up the driver’s ass, and nearly hit an oncoming car headed in the other direction.
And somehow, they managed to conclude this was all the bike rider’s fault.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here, either. A Boston bike commuter says the city’s new bike lanes are a metaphor for the Democratic Party, since they were built to appease a “small, highly vocal minority,” a “depressing number” of whom consider the resulting traffic congestion a benefit, not a trade-off. Tell us you don’t understand traffic calming without saying it.
If you’re going to hate on bicycles, might as well do it poetically, as a British letter writer pens an ode to the local city council’s “absurd” and “crazy” “cycle crusade.”
They get it. A Pasadena study session will consider how to revitalize North Lake Ave and turn it into a Complete Street to make it more inviting to bike riders and pedestrians, as it currently “suffers from excessive space allocated to cars.”
Costa Mesa will host Micromobility America, a trade show for ebike and e-scooter makers, and others in the micromobility industry, this Thursday and Friday.
Sad news from Sacramento, where a 32-year old woman was killed when she was stuck by a driver while trying to ride across the street; naturally, the CHP blamed the victim for riding directly into the car’s path, without mentioning whether the driver may have been speeding or gone through a traffic signal.
Bicycling considers how to say goodbye to the rider you used to be. A lesson I’ve struggled to learn myself. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you.
That’s more like it. An Illinois driver faces up to 61 years in prison for the drugged-driving crash that killed a man riding a bicycle, after he was convicted on four counts of aggravated DUI causing death and one count of reckless homicide.
Life is cheap in Wales, where an 84-year old driver walked without a single day behind bars for killing a bike rider after claiming he just couldn’t see the victim, he was apparently spared jail time by virtue of being old. And once again raising the question of how old is too old to drive, if you can’t even see a grown man on a bicycle.
Cyclist looks back to Connie Carpenter’s — now Connie Carpenter-Phinney — win in the first women’s Olympic road cycling race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, 40 years before the next American woman would take gold at this year’s Paris Olympics.
Just 48 days until LA fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
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We have a time-sensitive matter to discuss.
The Santa Monica City Council is going to address a motion to accept a $300,000 grant from the Office of Traffic Safety as part of their pro forma consent calendar at today’s meeting.
The purpose of the grant is to fund more Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Enforcement Operations by the Santa Monica Police Department, in which officers ticket anyone who commits a violation on the road that could endanger vulnerable road users.
But as you’ll see below, that isn’t always enforced equally, fairly or equitably.
Longtime Santa Monica bike advocate and former LACBC Board Member Dr. Michael Cahn wrote the following open letter to the council, calling attention to the windshield bias and other problems inherent in these operations.
So I’m going to step aside, and let Dr. Cahn do the talking today.
You can do some talking of your own by contacting the Santa Monica City Councilmembers prior to today’s 5:30 pm meeting, to call for fairer police enforcement in bike/ped safety operations before approving Item 5D — particularly if you live, work or ride in Santa Monica.
And if you’re one of those unfortunate bike riders who was ticketed in one of the previous operations, they especially need to hear from you.
We’ll be back tomorrow, as usual, to catch up on anything we missed today.
They used to be awarded for Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety, and they were always conducted “through the windshield”. The motto was: Drivers are driving, now let’s keep the pedestrians and cyclists out of harm’s way. To do that we must ticket them when they ride their bikes on the sidewalk, we must educate them to cross at the intersection.
There is a big monster in town, it is called vehicle traffic, and it will snap a pedestrian, a cyclist here and there. The main job of SMPD Traffic Division is to keep the monster rolling through town, and keep those who use the streets without a license plate out of the path of this dangerous beast. Not exactly the best way to address the source of the danger, methinks.
It does not look good when an SMPD Sergeant is parked at the intersection and ignores how this Prius endangers the pedestrian in the crosswalk (Montana):
All photos by Dr. Michael Cahn
But the cyclist on the sidewalk is quickly found and stopped and “enforced”:
Sometimes crossing the intersection without a green light is safer for the cyclist, but the officer only cares about the rules:
SMPD knows that riding bicycles on Lincoln Blvd is hairy, so they do it on the sidewalk:
But the black kid is being hassled for doing the same — riding his bicycle on the sidewalk on Lincoln:
We all sometimes think cars can not be avoided. Our police force, too, is fully subscribed to this attitude. We once had a transportation management division in this city, but how do you manage the king of the American road? The car is in charge, but CicLAvias and other open streets events come and go.
And yet, we must manage and challenge all this driving. We must do less of it, and we must do it less often. And the SMPD, too, must project this goal of less driving. One way to do this is to contradict the idea that driving is always necessary (it is not), that we all drive (we do not). Imagine the citywide moment of education and insight that would happen if our own police department challenged the poison of motonormativity. Encourage the SMPD to challenge the notion that driving is the default. Let’s see these officers on their bicycles enforcing the law on Wilshire, for a change.
Yes, they do ride their bicycles on the beach path, but are they big and strong enough to do it in town? In town the bicycles are transported on the back of a car.
Chicken anybody?
SMPD avoiding ride bicycles on city streets (“we are not crazy”):
Every time the SMPD is not riding a bicycle in traffic, it gives us cyclists the sense that we are just a crazy suicidal minority. And it gives all the drivers out there the same message: Crazy cyclists. What we need from them is to share the road with us on a bicycle, and to bring their authority and their uniforms and their tickets to the bike lane, and to deal with the drivers parking on the bike lane, turning without indicating, overtaking dangerously, ignoring crosswalks, opening doors without looking. This should be part of the 300K grant from OTS!
You want safer streets in Santa Monica? Put your officers on bicycles and let them ride up and down Wilshire, up and down Lincoln. That is where the education and the enforcement needs to happen. Enforcement of our drivers, the single most dangerous road participants
You know you want to do it, just see how you imagined the SMPD as an all terrain mountain cyclists force. No road chickens here.
Please make approval of item 5D contingent on consideration of the following items
Highly visible bicycle patrols on heavily trafficked streets: Film it, Share it: Show us and show the community that cars are not always necessary.
Conduct Crosswalk Sting Operations on Montana, Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvd etc. Film it, Share it.
Enforcement of drivers who stop or park on bike lanes.
Enforcement of illegal parking and waiting around schools: Lincoln Middle School has crossing guards. Their good work is made impossible by parents defiantly waiting in their cars on bike lanes and in alleys in the vicinity. Saint Monica School proudly displays long lines of illegal parking and waiting on California Ave over multiple blocks.
Just 49 days until LA fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
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Happy Veterans Day to everyone who has served our country at home and abroad!
Get out for a good ride today to celebrate. And thank you.
Photo from Lime Micromobility.
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Rancho Palos Verdes extends its usual unwelcome mat for bicyclists to e-bike riders, with new restrictions and fines to make you feel as unwanted as possible.
However, this excerpt from the article suggests that they intend to ban ebikes entirely from city streets and sidewalks; the last part is legal, the first not so much.
Expanded e-bike restrictions
The city council recently expanded the ordinance to ban e-bikes on city streets and sidewalks, while allowing them on bicycle paths.
California state law allows bicycles on any street where cars are allowed, and ebikes are allowed under state law. So unless they’re planning to ban cars from city streets, they can’t ban ebikes, either.
But it could mean going to court to fight a ticket and convince a judge if you want to challenge it.
After a homeowner parked his ebike in his driveway to check on his property, he returned to find the bike missing. He confronted a landscaping crew working in the area, and one of the men admitted to taking the bike, and gave it back to him.
The homeowner reported the incident to the police the next day, resulting in Ramon Avila Pacheco being booked on suspicion of looting in an evacuation order area.
Apparently, returning the ebike had no effect on the charge.
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Streets For All founder Michael Schneider visits Mexico City, and discovers what Los Angeles could do with a little more political will.
Okay, a lot more.
Amazing, simple urbanism all over Mexico City. I will never understand why LA can’t do this. pic.twitter.com/kuB6z2P49o
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Seriously? The Marin County Supervisors are backing what the local newspaper calls a “bike-lane experiment,” which amounts to ripping out the bike lane on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge four days a week, on a trial basis. Although it’s questionable whether they could do it without a CEQA review on anything but a trial basis.
An op-ed writer in the Los Angeles Times says he thought he had his bike commute down, until a bike-riding German man pointed out the obvious flaw in his route, which needlessly bypassed the beachfront bike path.
Good news from the Bay Area, where Prop K is leading with 54% of the vote, although it’s still too early to call; the ballot measure would permanently close San Francisco’s Upper Great Highway to motor vehicles and turn it into a linear park, bikeway and walkway.
Speaking of stories hidden behind paywalls, Kaifeng, China learned to be careful what they wish for when they encouraged night-time bike riding, and the streets became gridlocked with bicycles. Seriously, if the photo is legit, we’re talking wall-to-wall bikes.
Just 53 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
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Shockingly, California was rated as the second-safest state to ride a bike in, behind only Massachusetts.
That’s despite having the country’s second-highest number of bicycling deaths, after Florida. But as Sports Illustrated notes, we also have the nation’s largest population, and the most drivers.
However, the picture is more complicated for the 217 bus line on La Cienega Ave, and Hollywood and Los Feliz Blvds, where the quick-build Hollywood Blvd bike lane amounts to just two miles of the expanded 15.5-mile route.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Police in Ann Arbor, Michigan are investigating a driver who allegedly responded to getting yelled at for nearly hitting a bicyclist by pointing a gun at the bike rider and threatening him, but they insist it was just an isolated incident and there’s no threat to the public. Although someone who threatens random people with a gun over minor traffic incidents seems like kind of a big public threat to me. But what the hell do I know?
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A Columbian extreme cyclist and bicycling influencer was killed, along with a 13-year old girl riding on the back of his bike, when he crashed his brakeless gravity bike head-on into motorcyclist while trying to pass a car on the wrong side of the roadway. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
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Local
The annual cleanup of Ballona Creek, home to the popular Ballona Creek bike path, will take place tomorrow(scroll down).
Shockingly, the British woman sentenced to over six years for the drug-fueled hit-and-run death of a bike riding man was five times over the legal limit for cocaine. No, what’s shocking is that Britain even has a legal limit for coke.
Sometimes it seems like they just don’t want us to know how deadly our streets really are.
Far too often, when people riding bicycles in Los Angeles are killed or seriously injured in traffic violence, it never makes the news.
Or even a lousy LAPD press release.
Not even for a hit-and-run, where notifying the public could help identify and capture the suspect — which is why we have hit-and-run alert systems on both the local and state level that somehow never get used.
Yet that was the case yet again last month, when 42-year old Oscar Guardado was killed in a hit-and-run while riding his bike in LA’s West Adams neighborhood.
According to a fundraising page posted by his daughter, Guardado died on October 27th when he was struck by a drunk driver, who fled the scene afterwards; unfortunately, it’s only raised $825 of the modest $7,000 goal for funeral expenses.
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD Sgt. Garbiel Nily of the South Traffic Division at 323/421-2500, or call the South Traffic Division Watch Commander after business hours at 323/421-2577.
As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for any fatal hit-and-run in the City of Los Angeles.
Although the odds of finding the suspect would have been much higher had the department made this announcement in the hours after the crash, rather than weeks later.
Just 54 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
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I hope you’ll forgive yesterday’s unexcused absence.
After writing about the man killed riding his bicycle in Victorville, I just wasn’t in a good space, mentally or emotionally.
And I’m still not.
To be honest, this week’s election feels like a repudiation of everything I have believed and work for my entire life. While I understand you may think differently, that’s just where I am right now, until I get a chance to work through it.
One reason for my disappointment is that the election of Donald Trump and a GOP majority in the Senate does not bode well for active transportation, which has frequently been targeted for cuts by Republicans.
Locally, @streetsforall candidates swept in Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and Culver City. Our candidates also won in CD10 and CD14. Incredible mandate for change and progress.
Nationally, I don’t have words. Many of our major regional…
I’m also pleased to report that former Assembly Transportation Chair Laura Friedman will be my new representative in Congress, replacing newly elected California Senator Adam Schiff.
I am so grateful for the support of my community. Although we will inevitably disagree on some things, I will serve LA, CA & the US to the very best of my ability. I will listen to all voices & try to do the most good for the greatest number of people. This is my promise to you.
November 2024 LA Metro update on LA River Path project. Draft EIR release in 2025 (previous plan was 2022). Estimated cost now $1b, built in phases. Complicated project with many government stakeholders and property owners. 46% of path will be elevated.https://t.co/mQDh6UQ54qhttps://t.co/ZlIhCtBu9Ppic.twitter.com/vahXJtEbhN
The Partnership For Active Travel and Health released an open letter calling on governments around the world to include walking and biking in their next round of climate commitments.
The Partnership for Active Travel and Health (PATH) calls on national governments to commit to walking and cycling in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reach climate goals and improve people’s health and lives.
Enabling more people to walk and cycle safely and to access public transport by foot and by bicycle can help cut transport emissions in half by 2030 and is a fast-track way to achieve progress on urgent climate goals and the Paris Agreement. Yet PATH’s groundbreaking research shows that walking and cycling are significantly undervalued in countries’ NDCs. Despite two-thirds of nations having active travel policies in place, there remains a pressing need for increased ambition, action, and investment in their climate commitments to fully unlock the benefits of walking and cycling.
PATH has launched a new set of knowledge tools and guidance to support national policymakers to compare and benchmark existing policies, build capacity, and adopt walking and cycling as part of their country’s climate commitments.
The PATH’s Active Travel NDC Template offers a step-by-step guide with 20 actions to create effective policies, including interventions to create safe and accessible places to walk and cycle, public campaigns to shift mobility habits and embed walking and cycling into policy processes.
The PATH Dashboard visualises data from PATH’s 2023 report National Policies for Walking and Cycling in all 197 UNFCCC countries. It offers an overview of the progress made by countries in integrating walking and cycling strategies into their policy frameworks and NDCs. It also facilitates direct comparisons between countries and pinpoints areas requiring additional investment and ambition.
The PATH Walking and Cycling Regional Fact Sheets feature a comprehensive set of infographics analysing NDCs and walking and cycling policies across the six WHO- defined regions, detailing their objectives, actions, investments, and evaluations.
We urge countries to take full advantage of these tools to build walking and cycling into their climate commitments through the next round of NDCs submissions between November 2024 to February 2025, ahead of COP30 in Brazil.
PATH and its over 400 supporters stand ready to support national governments in this process.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
An English writer says he set a personal best on a recent gravel ride — despite getting punched by a motorbike rider — but says the real lesson is why aggression shouldn’t be countered.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Santa Barbara reached an agreement to build a 4,000-foot bike lane to complete a missing link in the city’s bike network; the plan will trade land for an easement, while sparing over half the trees originally planned for removal.
An editor for Cycling Weekly says banning bicycles from city centers, like Birmingham, England is doing, won’t stop illegal ebike use, but it will make it harder for everyone else.
Rivera was struck around 6:23 pm Saturday while riding on Mojave Drive, near Village Drive. He was declared dead after being taken to a local hospital.
The driver stuck around after the crash, and reportedly cooperated with the investigators.
As usual, there’s no word on how the crash occurred, or who may have been at fault. There’s also no word on whether the driver was ticketed or arrested.
Anyone with information is urged to call Deputy J. Stroik of the Victorville Police Department at 760/241-2911.
This is at least the 46th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fourth that I’m aware of in San Bernardino County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Manuel Rivera and his loved ones.
