Morning Links: Crowdfunding campaign for injured cyclist, and a pre-Thanksgiving bike video trifecta

November 22, 2017 / / 5 comments

Before we get started, let me offer my apologies to anyone who sent me links to the stories below.

With all that’s been going on, I’m afraid I’ve lost any record of who sent me what. So please accept my thanks in advance; I am truly grateful to everyone who forwards bike stories for this site, today or any other day.

Photo of Fred Mackey taken from his GoFundMe page; see below.

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Sometimes I wish the people fighting traffic safety projects in Los Angeles could see the damage done by careless — and too often, cowardly — drivers.

Case in point, this crowdfunding page for yet another bike rider who was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver while crossing La Brea Ave.

The campaign to help Fred Mackey pay the medical expenses his insurance won’t cover has raised a little over $3,000 of the $25,000 goal after four days.

I sort of met Fred while he was in the hospital; after learning about his crash, I popped in to say hi since he was on the same floor as my wife. Unfortunately, he was busy with his doctors at the time, and by the time I could make it back a few days later, his bed was occupied by an Asian woman who was wondering what the hell I was doing there.

And yes, there’s something seriously wrong with a country where people have to go online to beg for money to pay their medical bills.

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CiclaValley offers what amounts to a painful Gravel Mob gag reel.

He follows that up with a compendium of bad drivers he encountered while riding to work.

Then again, looking for bad drivers in Los Angeles is like looking for ice in Greenland.

Except the bad drivers aren’t going anywhere.

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A foul-mouthed excuse for a comedian seems to think running bike riders off the road is amusing, and that share the road means bike riders have to get the hell out of his way.

………

As long as we’re watching videos, let’s make the short leap from the seriously unfunny to a serious whackjob convinced LA is intentionally creating traffic jams to force drivers out of their cars and onto bikes and transit.

Unfortunately, though, he’s not the only one who believes this crap; you’ll find similar comments on almost any news story about or bike lanes or road diets.

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Local

Maybe LA is finally getting the message that it’s cheaper to fix broken bike lanes than pay out multi-million dollar settlements to injured bike riders, since they repaved bike lanes in Lincoln Heights and Eagle Rock last week.

The Daily Breeze looks at the arrival of the LimeBike dockless bikeshares in Watts, San Pedro and Wilmington.

As we mentioned before, Pasadena is threatening to put a stop to the popular Rose Bowl Loop rides by installing a number of stop signs around the route. Something tells me they’ll also park a patrol car next to each one to enforce it, too.

Glendora and South Pasadena are establishing Bicycle Friendly Business Districts, as The Source confirms something we’ve said many times — that bikes are good for business.

Cities in the western San Gabriel Valley are developing a $1 billion wish list for projects they want to install with funding originally set aside for the cancelled 710-N freeway tunnel.

Sad news from Santa Clarita, where a coach for the SCV Mountain Bike Team was killed in a car collision Monday night.

Long Beach is beginning work on reconfiguring Bellflower Blvd to remove parking spaces and add bike lanes.

 

State

Dockless bikeshare is being held up in San Diego due to the city’s exclusive contract with the under-performing DecoBike bikeshare.

San Diego is moving forward with plans for a $140 million replacement for a Mission Bay bridge; the new bridges will include bike lanes and space for walking.

Continuing our all San Diego theme, a kindhearted stranger donated a new bike to an Imperial Beach man after the one he used as his only means of transportation was stolen.

 

National

The US is now an outlier when it comes to traffic safety, with some of the deadliest roads in the industrialized world.

Chances are, you already know making carbon bikes isn’t an environmentally friendly process, but Outside is here to remind you that your carbon mountain bike ain’t exactly green.

Bicycling offers tips on how to deal with road raging drivers. In my experience, the best move is to remove yourself from the roadway; pull up onto the sidewalk if possible, preferably in a public place. And make a public display of taking a photo of the driver and his or her license plate.

Forbes looks at the best holiday gifts for women cyclists.

Bike Snob asks if riding with headphones is really such a big deal.

This may be LA’s future, as a Seattle paper looks at some of the strange places people have left dockless bikeshare bikes in the city.

A Colorado bike shop is teaching life skills to low-income kids and people with disabilities, while providing them with low-cost or free bikes.

Seriously, who the hell would steal St. Paul MN’s egg-shaped, solar-powered literary arts ebike and trailer?

Detroit is about to get a spanking new world-class velodrome.

The parents of one of the victims of the New York bike path terrorist attack are suing the city for not installing safety barriers until after the attack. Meanwhile, prosecutors have filed 22 charges against the attacker, including eight possible death penalty charges.

The Pennsylvania bike rider who served 20 months behind bars for obstructing traffic has filed an appeal, claiming the judge in the case was biased and didn’t understand the law.

Now that’s more like it. An unlicensed Florida driver got 12 years for the hit-and-run death of a bike rider, after getting his girlfriend to claim she was behind the wheel. Note to women: If your boyfriend, husband and/or significant other wants you to take the fall for his crimes, get a new one.

 

International

A road raging Canadian bike rider is facing weapons charges after threatening a couple in a car with a knife.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole and vandalized a handicapped British boy’s specialized adaptive bike.

An English man gets nine and a half years for plowing into a bike rider during a Jack Daniels-fueled rampage, after telling his girlfriend he was cheating on her, followed by carjacking a woman’s car.

Life is cheap in the UK, where a truck driver walks after seriously injuring a bike rider, despite his admission that he was “avoidably distracted.”

A drunk driver who was high on coke got three and a half years for the death of a British bike rider in a head-on crash while he was speeding to get another drink. Although that’s still just a fraction of what it should have been.

American cities can’t even get Vision Zero right, yet Sweden is already Moving Beyond Vision Zero to encourage safe bicycling and walking while designing roadways to make fatal collisions impossible.

A Norwegian researcher concludes ebikes are good exercise, while a Swedish retail company predicts they will be the country’s Christmas gift of the year.

Paris vows to reimburse customers as the city’s famed Velib bikeshare system grinds to a halt due to a series of strikes.

Once again, a bike maker is determined to demonstrate just how sexist the industry is, as Italian brand Pinarello’s new ads for their forthcoming ebike fall flat. To put it mildly.

Don’t sexually harass a woman on the street while riding by on your bike like this Aussie jerk, especially if she has her camera on. Or, better yet, just don’t do it. Period.

 

Competitive Cycling

No, you didn’t win that pro cycling contract by pedaling inside; a young New Zealand cyclist won the Zwift competition to join the Team Dimension Data under 23 team.

In the best news of the day, Italian cyclist Claudi Cretti is back on her bike, just four months after she suffered major head injuries in a crash at the Giro Rosa.

 

Finally…

If you lose your cellphone while stealing a bike, probably not the best idea to walk into the police station to ask if they’d found it. Who needs headphones when you can ride with your own piano?

And sometimes a dog’s best defense is just being too fat to attack anyone.

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On a personal note, let me offer my sincere thanks to everyone who has expressed their best wishes for my wife’s recovery from her recent surgery; it’s helped get us through a difficult few days.

And if you’re riding this weekend, remember that drivers will be far more focused on shopping and finding a finding parking space than watching out for you. So ride safely and defensively; I want to see you all back here next week.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , ,

Sorry, no post today

November 21, 2017 / / One comment

My apologies.

As you may know, my wife had major surgery recently. While the operation went well, her recovery has been considerably longer and more complicated than expected.

As a result, I am just too exhausted, and in no frame of mind, to write anything tonight.

 

Category: General /

Morning Links: Anti-road diet NIMBYs boycott businesses, road safety in LA & Houston, and New Yorker bike covers

November 20, 2017 / / 26 comments

Last month, the road diets in Playa del Rey were ripped out before they had a chance to prove whether they were working.

Now we know why.

A must-read tweetstorm from writer Peter Flax, who served on Councilmember Mike Bonin’s ill-fated committee to re-examine the lane reductions, reveals that the primary reason behind their removal was the negative effect they were having on local business.

Which wasn’t coincidental.

He offers a number of social media posts in which opponents of the road diets call for a boycott of businesses in the area to force them to oppose the safety measures. Which were then echoed by anti-road diet forces like Keep LA Moving — whose leader actually lives in Manhattan Beach — Recall Bonin, and conservative radio hosts John and Ken.

And now the same tactics are being used in Mar Vista, where the owner of Louie’s restaurant blamed the lane reductions in the Venice Blvd Great Streets Project for the failure of his restaurant.

Even though it had just reopened after being closed for a vermin infestation. And even though it had a meager 2.5 Yelp rating. And even though a new chef insisted on making much hated changes to the place, including a new upscale menu, that drove longtime customers away.

But sure, let’s blame the removal of excess lane capacity, which didn’t result in the loss of a single parking space.

Despite, as Peter notes, numerous studies from around the country showing that Complete Streets projects like the one on Venice are good for business — including one on LA’s York Blvd, which has thrived since a road diet went in.

Of course, that doesn’t fit with the NIMBY narrative that Vision Zero and road diets are the work of Satan himself.

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A powerful piece from Los Angeles resident and Houston native Colleen Corcoran compares the traffic safety problems and struggle to improve safety for bike riders and pedestrians in the two cities.

Corcoran, a co-founder of CicLAvia, says no one should die as a result of thoughtless street design — after her own mother was killed riding her bike through a dangerous Houston intersection earlier this year.

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We’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s worth mentioning again. An online petition opposes a proposal allowing a private school to take over a public road in Calabasas, which is a popular route allowing bicyclists to bypass traffic on busy Mulholland Highway. Thanks to Steve S. for the reminder.

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A new Flickr page offers an exceptional collection of bicycling covers from the New Yorker dating back to the 1920s.

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An Irish pundit apologized for calling bike riders Nazis, and swore he would never give a Nazi salute again.

Of course, his apology was to a local Jewish organization, not to the people he accused of being a brown-shirt uniformed, two-wheeled cult.

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Local

Construction for the MyFigueroa project is getting blamed for some of the parking problems in South Park, even though it has the support of local businesses.

A December 2nd exhibition at the LA Central Library in DTLA will feature makers, including an LA man who explores “unique bicycle shapes and designs.”

The Daily News reports on Saturday’s Finish the Ride event in Sunland-Tujunga in honor of fallen bicyclist Jeff Knopp.

 

State

Advocates for the homeless insist that the 1,000 bikes found after a homeless camp along the Santa Ana River Trail was cleared out had nothing to do with the people who had been living there, since they were found in a tunnel over two miles away.

A Huntington Beach man gets six years behind bars for attacking a police officer who stopped his son for a traffic violation while they were riding their bikes; the younger man had already been sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty last year.

Apple is donating $1.8 million to build a protected bike lane in Cupertino.

Two thousand Bay Area cyclists, joggers, skaters and strollers gear up for Thanksgiving with a 2.5 mile carfree Sunday.

 

National

Denver voted for $431 million in transportation bonds, including $18 million for bicycle projects.

Plans are underway for a program that could link Wyoming’s bike trails into a statewide network.

Sad news, as the 88-year old founder of Iowa’s legendary RAGBRAI passed away last week.

A 21-mile Ohio bike path connects local four breweries and a cider house.

Now that’s more like it. A Kentucky driver gets 35 years for the drunk and stoned hit-and-run death of a bike rider; he drove three miles after the crash with his dying victim still in the bed of his truck.

Evidently Los Angeles isn’t the only place where NIMBYs want to rip out recently installed bike lanes; outraged Cambridge, Mass residents working under the misnomer Safe Streets for All are demanding that the lanes be redesigned and parking restored, and want bike riders to be required to carry ID.

A New Jersey paper says the state’s new governor should embrace multi-use bike and pedestrian trails.

 

International

A Mexican TV executive was shot to death on Sunday when a group of thieves attempted to steal his bicycle on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Forget Everesting. A Vancouver bicyclist climbed one million feet by riding up a local mountain every day for a year to raise funds to fight pancreatic cancer.

Toronto drivers appear to be adjusting to the presence of bike lanes after initial anger. Which is usually what happens if authorities can resist the urge to rip them out before they have a chance to succeed.

A new survey shows four out of five people in the UK want protected bike lanes in cities.

Good question. The Guardian’s Peter Walker asks why cyclists are the one minority the BBC is okay with demonizing. Although there’s no point in limiting it to the Beeb, as media outlets around the world are perfectly okay with attacking people who ride bikes in ways they wouldn’t anyone else. Including right here in LA.

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson says Britain’s streets aren’t big enough for buses and bikes, and one of them has to go.

The Guardian asks if Copenhagen has hit peak bicycle, as ridership dips and more drivers take to the roads.

Not surprisingly, the best way to tour Soweto, South Africa is by bicycle. Like pretty much any other city you could name.

An Aussie cyclist was deliberately run off the road by a road raging driver after attempting to intervene in his dispute with another motorist. Meanwhile, an Australian councilor calls for an ad hoc committee to find solutions to road rage between motorists and cyclists. Never mind that most of the anger comes from the people in the cars. And they’re the ones with the four-wheeled weapons.

A new Australian study confirms that people who ride bikes are better drivers.

Singapore’s largest organized bike ride draws 6,500 riders, including many dressed as superheroes.

An industrial design student wins an Asian award for his wooden children’s bicycle that converts from a balance bike to a pedal bike as the kids get older.

 

Competitive Cycling

Britain’s Team Sky is accused of gaming the system for therapeutic exemptions that allow riders to use otherwise banned medications.

Fabian Cancellara challenges fellow retired pro Phil Gaimon to beat him in one of Fabian’s fondos, after Gaimon’s new book repeated accusations that Cancellara was motor doping, somehow thinking it would be no big deal. And no, this isn’t beginning to sound the least like a cycling soap opera.

The Daily Beast remembers Italian cycling legend Gino Bartali and his top secret work to save Jews in WWII, as the Giro make plans to start in Jerusalem next year.

VeloNews calls 16-year old Katie Clouse the next star of US cyclocross.

 

Finally…

If you’re riding while already on probation, probably best to leave the meth and dope at home. Your next bike helmet could have an airbag.

And this is why you don’t Instagram while riding.

 

Category: Morning Links, Streets and Infrastructure / Tags: , , , , , , ,

Man riding motorized bicycle killed in San Bernardino collision; 12th bike death in county this year

November 18, 2017 / / 3 comments

A San Bernardino man has been killed in a crash while riding his bike.

According to the Fontana Herald News, 24-year old Michael Brian Brownstein died after he was struck by a vehicle where North E Street turns into Kendall Drive in San Bernardino around 5:49 pm on Thursday. 

He was taken to a local hospital, then transferred to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 7:50 pm.

The San Bernardino Sun fills in some of the missing details, reporting that Brownstein was riding north on E Street when he was struck from behind by a vehicle driven by a 70-year old woman, who remained at the scene.

She was not suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

The Sun also reports that Brownstein was riding a motorized bicycle, though it doesn’t clarify whether he was on an ebike or a gas powered bike.

A street view shows an undivided roadway with two lanes in each direction, with no shoulder or parking lane, forcing bicyclists to ride in the traffic lane.

This is the 58th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 12th in San Bernardino County. That compares with seven in the county for all of last year.

My deepest sympathy and prayers for Michael Brian Brownstein and all his loved ones.

Category: Bicycle Safety, Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: , , ,

Morning Links: Stumbling on a Compton bike crash, bike events, and fixing a bike path with duct tape

November 17, 2017 / / 6 comments

Mike Wilkinson forwards a reminder to always ride safely.

About 10:30 Thursday morning my wife saw the aftermath of a crash involving a bicyclist near Alameda and Alondra in Compton. Such a scene would be hard for most people to stomach, but it was especially tough for her, because we are both avid riders.

The bike was broken in half, which may indicate the force of the collision, but what really got to my wife was the rider’s screams as the first responders tried to help him. The whole scene is going to haunt her for a while.

Despite her shock, she felt it was important to note that most riders she sees in this area ride terribly. They run stop lights, ride on the wrong side of the road, cross from one side to the other in the middle of the block and worse. That makes it hard for even careful drivers like her to avoid collisions. It’s a reminder that following the rules of the road at least means that you are more likely to be where drivers expect you to be.

Be careful out there!

It’s important to note that there is nothing to suggest that the victim in this crash broke the law or rode recklessly in any way.

But it’s valid to say that our safety as bicyclists depends on riding in such a way that drivers know what to expect. Which means riding with traffic, observing traffic signals, and signaling turns. Even if they don’t.

In other words, ride like your life depends on it.

Because it does.

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This weekend marks the World Day of Remembrance to honor the victims of traffic violence.

Finish the Ride is marking the occasion with a memorial ride in honor of Jeff Knopp this Saturday; Knopp was killed while riding on Foothill Blvd in Sunland last November. Meanwhile, Streetsblog talks with Finish the Ride and S.A.F.E. founder Damian Kevitt.

The Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition, SoCal Families for Safe Streets, Day One, Streets are For Everyone, and Los Angeles Walks will hold a late afternoon ceremony at Pasadena city hall on Sunday.

In other events,

LACBC is hosting a ride marshal orientation on Saturday.

Also on Saturday, Walk ‘n Rollers is kicking off their Fall Fundraising campaign with their first CycleGiving ride in Culver City.

Bike SGV is leading an SGV Greenways bike train ride this Sunday.

Helen’s Cycles is hosting a number of rides over the next three days.

Los Angeles Bike Rebels is (are?) hosting a solo art show by Carolin Keweer on the 25th.

And CicLAvia returns to Wilshire Blvd on December 10th.

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It’s often said that if you can’t fix it with duct tape, it ain’t broken.

Which is amply demonstrated by this video, where people in the Dutch city of Nijmegen fixed a dangerous intersection on a bike path with a simple application of the aforementioned adhesive.

Thanks to David Wolfberg for the heads-up.

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An Irish pundit loses it on a live TV show, accusing bike riders of being actual brown shirt-wearing Nazis, and giving the Nazi salute to drive the point home.

Unfortunately, most of the story is hidden behind a paywall. However, British bike scribe Carlton Reid comes through with the full stomach-turning story.

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Local

A Mar Vista restaurant owner says the road diet implemented as part of the Venice Blvd Great Streets project put him out of business. If reducing a six lane street down to four lanes, with no loss of parking, is enough to kill your business, your problems go a lot deeper than that.

Speaking of Mar Vista, a dermatologist and Mar Vista Community Council member says Vision Zero is a great idea, but the Venice Blvd road diet was rammed down their throats and won’t save a single life. Because everyone knows that dermatologists are experts in traffic safety, unlike the people who actually get paid to do it. Never mind that it was the result of a two-year, community-driven process, and wasn’t rammed up or down any part of anyone’s anatomy. 

Emmy-winning Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany is one of us; you have to respect someone who rides her bike to an interview with the LA Times. Colin Farrell’s kid is now one of us, too.

Maybe things will get a little safer in Pasadena, which received $112,000 grant from the state to improve bicycle safety. And the Santa Monica police received a $300,000 traffic safety grant of their own.

 

State

One thousand bikes were found in a hand-built dirt bunker after a homeless camp was evicted from the Santa Ana River. If you had a bike stolen anywhere in the Fountain Valley area, now would be a good time to check in with the OC Sheriff’s Department.

A handful of Thousand Oaks residents object to a proposed road diet, while the majority who attended a meeting apparently didn’t have an opinion.

Amgen does more than just sponsor a bike race. They’re also helping to give new bikes to kids in the Conejo Valley.

A Santa Barbara woman says yes, you can go grocery shopping by bike. Although riding to class at the local university appears to have its issues. Note: As Andy S points out below, the shopping piece is a rerun of an article that appeared earlier this year.

Bakersfield received a $30,000 grant from the state for bicycle and pedestrian safety education programs, as well as distributing bike helmets.

Caltrans held a public workshop to discuss their nine-county Bay Area bike plan.

 

National

Trek is getting sued for trademark infringement, accused of stealing the name of the late plus-sized comedian Chris Farley for its popular Farley fat bike. And no, I don’t even want to consider that implication.

Now that you’ve mastered all the other bike skills, learn how to do an upside down flip over an open loop.

Bicycling explains how to survive your next attack by a wild boar or wildebeest. Or an angry dog.

The Aspen CO sheriff has recovered the stolen bike Lance Armstrong gave him, after it was found chained to a tree. Maybe now he’ll have enough sense to lock his bike up like everyone else.

It takes a real schmuck to steal a ghost bike; fortunately, it was recovered at a Kansas scrap yard.

Can he give it back? A 19-year old Michigan man rode his bike to work every day, regardless of the weather, so his coworkers pitched in to buy him a car for his birthday.

New York officials knew the bike path where eight people were killed recently was vulnerable to a terrorist attack, but did nothing to prevent it. Just like LA officials know the risk of a similar attack on Hollywood Blvd, but haven’t done anything about it.

WaPo invites six triathletes to race DC’s bikeshare bikes.

A Virginia Navy vet plans to ride a stationary bike until he’s raised enough money to buy 100 bikes and helmets for local kids.

 

International

Rouleur takes a look at the concept collaborations between bike and auto makers.

A Toronto cyclist says bike lanes aren’t for experienced riders like him; they’re for people who might not otherwise get on a bike.

I want to be like her. An 11-year old girl raised the equivalent of nearly $8,000 for a mental health charity by riding the length of the UK, inspired by a cousin with anorexia.

A bike-riding British purse snatcher is behind bars after grabbing nine purses from elderly women as he rode by, including one theft caught on security cam.

Brit cyclists say software developers and owners of autonomous cars should be held criminally responsible for any crashes.

After a 79-year old English rider was pushed off his bike by a group of teenagers, he refused to press charges because he doesn’t want them to have a criminal record.

A grieving Irish woman says “selfish drivers are oblivious to the huge devastation they could cause,” after losing her entire family in a crash with a suicidal cab driver.

Why bother with water bottles when you can strap a couple half liters of Spanish wine to your bike?

An Indian woman is riding solo across the country to prove that the nation’s roads are safe for women.

Life is cheap in Australia, where the negligent death of a bike-riding doctor isn’t worth a single day in jail.

One of China’s leading bikeshare companies is on the verge of going belly up; Quartz says China’s bikeshare startups will have to merge or die.

 

Competitive Cycling

Now that the Fabian Cancellara motor doping controversy has died down a little, Road.cc reviews Phil Gaimon’s new book Draft Animals.

A British Parliament member says Bradley Wiggins and British Cycling weren’t exonerated by the end of the recent doping investigation.

 

Finally…

Maybe cut back on the meth a bit if you want to outrun a 74-year old man on his stolen bike. Why fly the coop — literally — when you can ride a bike?

And if you’re dismantling a pair of bikes in an alley, while in possession of burglary tools — and already on probation for grand theft — you might want to have an explanation ready in case the cops show up.

Just saying.

 

Category: Bicycle Safety, Morning Links / Tags: , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Don’t take your right-of-way for granted, Union Station Bike Hub opens, and give a bike thief a hug

November 16, 2017 / / One comment

It’s a pretty light news day. Which means you should be able to read all of today’s post, and still get out to enjoy a ride in this beautiful LA weather.

Unless you live in Northern California, in which case you’re screwed.

Today’s photo shows the WeHo Pedals bikeshare dock outside Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where I’ve been spending way too much time lately. 

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Eric Fleetwood forwards this video reminding riders not to take their right-of-way for granted.

Here’s how he describes it,

As I approached the curve to the left, I signaled left to alert the driver of the Mini Cooper, even though I had the right of way and a pulsing amber headlight.  Early in the video it became apparent that he was not going to yield (you can see the back of the Yield sign and the graphic on the pavement), I veered to the right side of the road and let him pass by on my left. It appeared that he might be on a cell phone.

Incidentally, many riders down here feel that San Clemente has the worst drivers in South Orange County. I have many experiences with errant drivers, not all of which are on video. From last year: Picture the letter K with the bike route being the backbone of the K. A driver wanting to go from the right arm to the right leg of the K did so by turning left down the wrong side of the main street and then left onto the leg of the K, looking right at me and my Dinotte 400A pulsing 400 lumen amber light.

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Local

Metro has officially opened a $2.5 million, 3,000 square foot Bike Hub at Union Station, providing space for nearly 200 bicycles. Bike SGV offers photos from the event.

Los Angeles Walks is joining with the LA Vision Zero Alliance, and SoCal Families for Safe Streets to remember the victims of traffic violence at City Hall this Friday.

The president of the Eagle Rock Association pens an open letter calling for safety improvements, including bike lanes, on Yosemite Drive. Thanks to Walk Eagle Rock for the heads-up.

 

State

California Streetsblog looks at the recent report The Surprising Promise of Bicycling in America, calling it a brief history of recent advocacy gains, with a look at the future.

After a thief rode off on a San Diego man’s bamboo bike, he tracked the thief down, gave him a hug, and took his bike back. And felt so good, he started a crowdfunding campaign to buy bikes for kids whose bicycles were stolen.

San Francisco pledges nearly $150,000 to figure out how to fix a popular bike lane that’s frequently blocked by delivery vehicles.

 

National

Cycliq has updated their popular Fly 6 and Fly 12 bike cam/light combos.

A Chicago weekly asks if dockless bikeshare could disrupt the city.

Good read from a New York cyclist who complains about the chaos on the streets, saying cars — and road-raging drivers — scare the shit out of him.

 

International

A men’s website lists four of the best international cycling trips for foodies.

A Toronto writer says the permanent adoption of a trial bike lane means bicycling is finally getting recognized as a legitimate form of transportation in the city. Even if the photo shows the same sort of wheel-busting crappy pavement we have here.

A columnist rightfully ridicules a proposal to fine pedestrians for distracted walking, noting that all of the pedestrians killed in traffic collisions in the city were killed by crashes with motorists, not texting walkers.

A British car thief gets a well-deserved nine and a half years after smashing into a bicyclist while fleeing from police; fortunately, his victim is recovering.

An Irish schoolgirl left a nice, polite note asking the person who “borrowed” her bike to bring it back.

Celebrity chef Mario Bartali’s Eataly may have just opened in Century City, but it’s just a fraction of the size of the one opening in Bologna, Italy; so big that Bianchi stocked it with adult tricycles just to get around the 20-acre food complex.

Cycling in the South Bay’s Seth Davidson tries riding in ostensibly bike-friendly Vienna, Austria, and finds it not to his liking. At all. And says that does not bode well for Los Angeles.

There’s a special place in hell for someone who’d try to get away with a hit-and-run by pretending to be a Good Samaritan helping the victim, rather than the heartless driver who ran him down, like this jerk in India.

Caught on video: A Vietnamese boy just barely avoids a far too close call after he topples over on his bike directly in front of a truck.

 

Competitive Cycling

Bradley Wiggins complained about a “malicious witch hunt” after the doping investigation into British Cycling ends with no charges, but without completely clearing Wiggins or anyone else involved.

UCI’s new president says there’s no place in professional cycling for former dopers. Which as Lance and others point out, doesn’t leave too many people with sparkling clean resumes who’ve been around the sport very long.

 

Finally…

Who needs a plot of land when you can have your own bike farm? Don’t bother with traffic when you can just pedal your way down the river.

And prevent bike crashes by just buying a car like a normal person.

Yes, it’s a joke.

But you’ll find the same thoughts in the comment section virtually anytime bicycling gets mentioned online.

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Thanks to David Veloz for his generous contribution to help support this site, and bring you SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy every morning my laptop is working.

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , , ,
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