This time it’s personal. And yes, I’m mad as hell.
Once again, someone riding a bicycle has been murdered by a hit-and-run driver, this time in West Hollywood.
And this time, at an intersection I’ve passed through literally thousands of times, on foot, on bike and in a car.
It was about 10 pm last night when a notification on the Ring app said someone had been struck by a driver at Fountain Ave and Gardner Street; video from the scene showed sheriff’s deputies had blocked the entire street in both directions, which is never a good sign.
That was confirmed today, when we learned the victim didn’t make it.
The victim was taken to the trauma center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he died of his injuries. He has not been publicly identified.
Investigators are looking for a white, older-model BMW sedan, which will likely have a shattered windshield on the passenger side. There is no description of the driver at this time.
And if that’s not a problem, I don’t know what is.
Fountain is also a designated bike route, where bike riders are encouraged to ride by the presence of sharrows, regardless of experience. And despite drivers who frequently exceed the posted 25 mph speed limit, sometimes by two or three times.
Plans have been in the works for at least two years now to fix Fountain, but have been held up by the usual endless series of public meetings and redesigns, as if residents concerned about parking somehow know more about designing safe streets than the people trained to do it.
Anyone with information related to the collision is urged to contact traffic investigators at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station at 310/855-8850. Anonymous tips can be called into Crimestoppers at 800/222-TIPS (8477), or by texting 274637 (C-R-I-M-E-S on most keypads).
This is at least the 24th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the eighth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
This was also at least the eighth SoCal bike rider killed by hit-and-run drivers since the first of the year.
But at least the Sheriff’s Department told us about it right away, unlike the LAPD.
Anyone who knew Blake was lucky to call him a friend. Many of his friends became an extension of his family. Blake and his family welcomed everyone with open arms, into their home, their gatherings, and their family dinners. No matter who you were, you were always welcome.
Blake was full of limitless potential. He lived well and accomplished so much in his all-too-short years. He was a born leader, he served as student-body president and vice president at Beverly Hills High School, undergraduate vice president at USC, senior articles editor for the Loyola Law Review, and president of Loyola’s Surf & Ski Club. He also co-founded a human-rights advocacy group dedicated to prison-to-school education.
Prior to graduating law school, Blake externed for Judge Autumn D. Spaeth of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. In 2023, he earned his J.D. from Loyola Law School, then clerked for Judge Clyde J. Wadsworth of the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals in Oahu, where he met his soulmate, Torie. Together they moved back to his hometown of Los Angeles, and Blake joined Morgan Lewis as a litigation associate. Even in his busy professional life, Blake’s caring heart extended to pro bono work, he arranged one final matter to help someone in need, and his firm has honored to carry it forward in his memory.
As of this writing, the page has raised over $126,000 of a $150,000 goal.
July 11, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Homeland Security labels bicycling a “violent tactic,” and someone please buy Malaysia some time trial bikes
Day 192 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
Threat bulletins issued during last month’s “No Kings” protests warn that the US government’s aggressive immigration raids are almost certain to accelerate domestic unrest, with DHS saying there’s a “high likeliness” more Americans will soon turn against the agency, which could trigger confrontations near federal sites…
Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even “on foot” are framed as potential “scouts” conducting reconnaissance or searching for “items to be used as weapons.” Livestreaming is listed alongside “doxxing” as a “tactic” for “threatening” police. Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters—or as participants in “surveillance sharing.”
At least DHS knows there’s a “high likeliness” they’re going to piss a large segment of Americans off, if they haven’t already.
But if you’re not outraged by that warning, read on.
Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, says the government has no business treating constitutionally protected activities—like observing or documenting police—as threats…
“Exercising those rights shouldn’t be justification for adverse action or suspicion by the government,” Eidelman says. Labeling something as harmless as skateboarding at a protest as a violent threat is “disturbing and dangerous,” she adds, and could “easily lead to excessive force against people who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Whether you’re on the right or left, or — like me — somewhere in between, we all have a 1st Amendment right to protest the actions and policies of our government.
We also have a right, under state law if not the Constitution, to ride a bicycle on a public street, as long as you don’t create a disturbance. Even if you’re riding it to or at a protest, or while filming the police.
I took the local cops to court as editor of my high school newspaper to establish that we did, in fact, have the right to photograph them in public, as long as we didn’t interfere with their actions.
So I’m pretty well versed on that one.
Just riding your bike at a protest like the one above could invite an aggressive police response.
They need roughly an additional $140,000 to match the latest tech employed by regional rivals Thailand and the Philippines, but only have about $38,000 left in the budget after competing in the Asian Cycling Championships earlier this year.
He urged the government to protect bike riders from death threats on the road, as well as on social media, following a viral confrontation between bus drivers and a group of bicyclists.
It would be nice to be protected from that here, too.
And a writer for Cycling Weekly says the only earbuds she’ll wear while riding, because they allow her to be aware of her surroundings, are on sale now for Prime Day, which enters it’s final day today.
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Sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Hats off to 23-year old Floridian Alisa Cade, who stopped at 2 am to help a total stranger who had been knocked out following an ebike crash, and could have been there for minutes or hours; the victim ended up hospitalized with multiple brain bleeds, a broken skull and a fractured pelvis. But she’s alive, thanks in part to a Good Samaritan who wasn’t afraid to help.
Seriously? A British Columbia letter writer says she and her husband are very concerned about the “dangerously high speeds” of ebikes on a local trail, while noting that the bikes have a top speed equivalent to just 18 mph, which most people can do on a decent road bike without any electric boost.
Police in the UK say they’ve seized over 500 illegal electric bikes, scooters and motorbikes so far this year, claiming they’re cracking down on their use in serious crime, reckless criminals and antisocial behavior, rather than law-abiding bicyclists.
Dutch pro Lorena Wiebes won her second Giro Donne stage of the week, beating Marianne Vos and Liane Lippert in a sprint to the finish, after crosswinds blew the peloton apart, as Marlen Reusser held on to the pink leader’s jersey.
July 10, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on San Francisco embarrasses LA with speed cam warnings, and last remaining US Tour winner gets Congressional Gold Medal
Day 191 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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In news that should surprise absolutely no one, a new report from San Francisco shows just how many motorists drive at dangerous speeds.
As California’s first city to install speed cams, San Francisco issued almost 132,000 warnings to people caught on camera driving 11 mph or more over the posted speed limit since the cams were installed in March; actual speeding tickets will start being issued next month.
That’s just four months, and in just 50 locations throughout the entire city of over 800,000 people.
Which suggests that there are a hell of a lot of people who didn’t get caught — or maybe didn’t get caught yet — simply because they did their speeding in some other location.
But that’s still about 132,000 more warnings than Los Angeles has issued, since the City of Angels continues to drag its feet on installing speed cams.
After all, we don’t want to interfere with anyone’s God-given right to use a heavy right foot on an open stretch of roadway.
He’s also just the tenth athlete honored with the Congressional medal, joining such sporting notables as Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Billie Jean King and Jack Nicklaus.
LeMond became the first American to win the Tour in 1986, then came back to win twice more in 1989 and 1990, after overcoming a near-fatal shotgun blast to the gut.
Conspicuously not honored were ex-Tour de France winners and notorious dopers Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis, the latter of whom has largely been forgiven after owning up to his actions, and the former who just refuses to go away.
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Amazon Prime Days continue to dominate the news, as numerous sites urge you to buy more bike stuff to help pay off Jeff Bezos wedding and buy his new wife another new yacht or two
Seriously? A beauty salon owner in San Diego’s Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood called for the removal of a new bike lane, saying the loss of curbside parking will put her customers in needless danger by making them walk cross the street. Never mind that the bike lanes are there to improve safety for everyone. Or that if it’s not even safe to cross the damn street, the problem isn’t the bike lanes.
Streetsblogexamines the GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” and finds what it calls five of the ugliest transportation policies, including the unceremonious death of the bike commuting benefit, along with just about every a number of other green policies.
The US version of The Sun says “certain road users” in a “major US state” no longer have to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Except they’re actually talking about bike riders in the “major state” of New Mexico, which ranks all the way down at 36th in population. And it’s not like many motorists come to a full stop, anyway. Or any, for that matter.
A new report from a Denver attorney group revealed that most of the city’s bicycling collisions occurred between 8 am and 9 am, and 4 pm and 5 pm, and on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
A Colorado attorney and cycling safety educator tries to clear up confusion over that state’s Stop As Yield Law, which allows bike riders to treat stop signs as yields and red lights like stop signs, as long as it’s safe to proceed. Count me among the confused, since I didn’t think Colorado had adopted the red light portion of the law.
This is why people keep dying on our streets. A Birmingham, Alabama man is facing reckless manslaughter charges for killing two people in separate collisions, first crashing his car into an ATV ridden by a 13-year old boy, followed by fatally running down a 30-year old woman riding a bicycle just five months later.
International
A new London campaign is urging elected officials to make bicycling more accessible and inclusive, under the banner Dare to Dream: A Bike for Every Londoner, even as the city has some of the UK’s most dangerous streets for bike riders.
Defending champ Tadej Pogačar won the day on Wednesday by finishing second in the time trial, 16 seconds behind winner Remco Evenepoel; the second-place finish was enough to put Pogačar in the yellow jersey with a 42-second lead over Evenepoel, with Frenchman Kévin Vauquelin third in the GC standings, 59 seconds behind.
“Both [walking and biking] are impacted by the availability of transit, because transit makes it possible to get to your destination on a trip that could involve both walking and transit,” (Martin) Morzynski (of Streetlight Data) said. “The availability of transit will impact this data. The availability of access to transit.”
What is clear is that 9 out of 10 U.S. counties with the highest levels of active transportation — walking and biking — have a population density of at least 4,000 people per square mile. For example, New York County, N.Y., which includes Manhattan, has the highest level of active transportation, where 48 percent of trips are taken via walking, 11 percent are taken by bicycle and 41 percent in an auto.
But while biking and walking as seen as key transportation elements that can benefit from density, those aren’t the only benefits.
Increasingly, walking and biking are seen as key pieces of the overall transportation ecosystem in a region spurring the development of infrastructure like bike lanes, mobility hubs and the advancement of micromobility programs for sharable bikes and scooters. And indeed, public transit is viewed as an enabler of active transportation, since if it were not an option, a number of biking and walking trips would simply become car trips, Morzynski said…
Increasing density can accomplish more than converting car trips to walking or biking. It can also help to solve housing shortages, urbanists have said. Researchers with the Urban Institute have cited studies showing increased density, coupled with reduced parking requirements, help to bring down the cost of housing, while also making smarter use of transit investments.
Metro is choosing parking spaces over a protected bike lane!
Metro is seeking feedback about the North Hollywood to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Project. The BRT will add 19 miles of faster and more reliable transit and 22 bus stations between NoHo and Pasadena, connecting Burbank, Glendale, and Eagle Rock.
But…the latest design completely removed the protected bike lane on Glenoaks throughGlendale because it would have required removal of 30% of the on-street parking spaces.
Tell Metro that it’s unacceptable to choose parking over safety, and demand they restore the protected bike lane through Glendale!
There are six Metro community feedback meetings, attend as many as you can, and make your voice heard!
Meeting Details:
Virtual
Thursday, July 10, 2025
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Call-in: 213.338.8477
Webinar ID: 849 6832 2391 Link to Join
Pasadena
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Pasadena City College, Circadian Room
1570 E Colorado Bl, Pasadena, CA 91106
Glendale
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Adult Recreation Center
201 E Colorado St, Glendale, CA 91205
North Hollywood
Saturday, July 19, 2025
10:00am – 11:30am
East Valley High School
5525 Vineland Av, North Hollywood, CA 91601
Eagle Rock
Monday, July 21, 2025
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Yosemite Recreation Center
1840 Yosemite Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90041
Burbank
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Buena Vista Branch Library
300 N Buena Vista St, Burbank, CA 91505
Thank you for fighting for a safe, sustainable, and equitable future for Glendale and beyond!
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In case you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, it’s Amazon Prime Days, giving you the opportunity to help pay off Jeff Bezos’ recent Venice wedding.
He then tried to walk away from the crash in his bare feet, offering cash to other drivers to give him a ride before flipping them off when they refused.
He was finally taken into custody at gunpoint by CHP officers, reportedly incriminating himself with his own statements afterwards.
Officers wrote a total of 34,548 during the enforcement period that began Wednesday evening and ran through Sunday night, 21,328 of those for issues related to speeding.
And no, I have no idea what “issues related to speeding” means, as opposed to just violating the damn speed limit.
Especially since all you have to do to catch a speeding driver in California is pick one and point a speed gun at them.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A Singaporean man filed a pair of formal complaints, alleging that reckless bicyclists and e-mobility users are endangering his pregnant wife by the way they ride on walkways, and leave their bikes blocking the way. Although when I look at the photos he submitted, all I see are hundreds of bicycles safely and considerately parked along the sidewalk, while leaving space for people to pass.
Calbike says don’t believe the misinformation coming from Big Highway — aka companies who profit from highway expansion — about mitigating Vehicle Miles Traveled, or VMT, offering a detailed explainer of why the highway builders are wrong.
Vista will remove berms and bollards from protected bike lanes, just months after they were installed, due to complaints from bicyclists who said they made them feel less safe. Although they don’t seem to have bothered to gather safety stats to determine whether they actually increased or reduced injuries.
The youngest of the four kids who killed an Albuquerque nuclear scientist as he biking to work by — allegedly — intentionally driving into him with a stolen car has been charged with murder, despite being just 12 years old; he was 11 at the time of the crime, and suspected of being involved in a string of burglaries dating back to when he was just ten.
Meanwhile, women are still racing, even if they’re overshadowed by the Tour, as Dutch pro Lorena Wiebes took a crash-filled stage three of the Giro D’Italia Donne, while Britain’s Anna Henderson retained the pink leader’s jersey after a late crash that involved all but 10 riders, resulting in almost the entire peloton receiving the same time.
July 8, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Bicyclist killed by driver in early morning Pomona hit-and-run, police wait over a week to inform the public
Once again, someone riding a bicycle has been murdered by a heartless hit-and-run driver.
And once again, police were in no hurry to tell us about it.
He was taken to a hospital suffering from serious injuries, but died shortly later. He has not been publicly identified.
Police are looking for the driver of a gray four-door sedan, possibly a Nissan Altima or similar make and model.
There’s no word on the how the crash occurred, or any description of the driver at this time. However, there are sharrows in both direction on Monterey, which may have contributed to the crash.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Pomona Police Department at 909/620-2156.
This is at least the 23rd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County. This was also at least the seventh SoCal bike rider killed by hit-and-run drivers since the first of the year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
July 8, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Ventura woman carrying bike loses arm in train collision, and alleged red light-running Escondido bike rider injured in crash
Day 189 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
The victim was reportedly carrying her bike in one arm as she crossed the railroad tracks near Seward Ave when her bicycle somehow got caught in the tracks, and was struck by a southbound Amtrak train as she was still holding it.
Her arm was located near the crash site, and was taken with her to the hospital; however, there’s no word on whether doctors were able to reattach it.
Anyone is urged to call the Ventura Police Department at 805/650-8010.
This is yet another tragic reminder to never attempt to cross railroad tracks when a train it approaching, or once a crossing gate closes and the warning lights start flashing.
More bad news, this time from Escondido, where someone riding a bicycle suffered “significant injuries” when they were struck by a driver.
The victim, who hasn’t been publicly identified, was reportedly riding against a red light while crossing North Centre City Parkway at Mission Ave Friday evening.
And yes, the driver stuck around afterwards this time.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A San Diego letter writer calls on police to ticket lawbreaking bicyclists who ride through stop signs and red lights, while complaining about bicyclists riding two and three abreast in the traffic lane on the coast highway. Yet somehow fails to also call for ticketing all the speeding and/or distracted drivers who pose a far greater danger to the public.
An Irish city counselor who claims he was a “keen cyclist” before a recent injury now opposes a planned bike lane, claiming his opposition is evidence based, and he will defend it even if “cycling zealots bombard” him with emails. Proving once again that it’s always the ones who claim to be cyclists that you have to worry about.
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is planning another bicycle and pedestrian safety operation in West Hollywood this Thursday. The standard protocol applies, ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limit line, so you’re not the one who gets ticketed. Thanks to David for the heads-up.
A Las Vegas man faces a murder charge for fatally shooting a 27-year old man in a dispute over a stolen bicycle; he was just released from prison in 2023 after serving a year behind bars for another alleged attempted murder, after pleading to a reduced charge for participating a double shooting.
A Nova Scotia woman wants answers about her father’s death days after hitting a culvert on his bicycle while possibly being chased by a pack of dogs; he managed to walk home, but no one realized how badly he was injured until hours later. A tragic reminder to always get checked out by a doctor after any hard crash, especially if you hit your head. And keep your damn dogs under control and on your property.
