No new post today

November 29, 2017 / / 2 comments

My apologies once again.

I’ve struggled to keep up with this site while my wife remains in the hospital long after we expected her be home, due to complications from her surgery. Today’s test results will determine whether she needs another operation, which would mean at least another week in the hospital.

Tonight it caught up with me, falling asleep mid-sentence almost as soon as I sat down to write.

I’ll do my best to be back tomorrow, and catch up on anything we missed today.

Meanwhile, thanks to J Patrick L, Michael Y, Jeffrey F, Mark J, and Joel S for their generous donations to the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. And a belated thanks to Robs M for being the first to donate using Zelle, which I somehow missed until today.

I can’t begin to tell you what that support means to me right now.

 

Category: General /

Morning Links: LA Times says stop killing pedestrians, and Metro plans LA River bike path through DTLA

November 28, 2017 / / 2 comments

A writer for the LA Times says it’s time to stop killing pedestrians, and calls on the city to invest in smart infrastructure — including road diets — to “protect motorists, cyclists and pedestrians from each other and from themselves.”

Which is exactly what Vision Zero is supposed to be about.

But so far, isn’t.

At least not in Los Angeles.

Thanks to Stanley E. Goldich for the heads-up.

………

Metro unveils plans to extend the LA River bike path eight miles through DTLA between Elysian Valley and Vernon.

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LA County will host a community meeting on December 5th to discuss the proposed Complete Streets project for Rosemead Blvd.

The County of Los Angeles is hosting a community meeting for the Rosemead Boulevard Complete Streets Improvement (CSI) Project – Phase I. Stop by any time during the community meeting on December 5 to learn about the proposed complete street enhancements, share your ideas on a vision for Rosemead Bl and talk to Project team members. Spanish interpreters will be available.

  • Tuesday, December 5, 2017 – 6:00 – 8:00 p.m., Pico Rivera Municipal Golf Course, 3260 Fairway Dr., Pico Rivera, CA 90660

For more information, contact Martin Reyes, Principal Civil Engineering Assistant, at 844-588-8877. Please visit the webpage for more information at www.dpw.lacounty.gov/go/rosemeadCS.

………

As we’ve noted before, the war on cars is a myth. But the war on bikes is all too real.

A San Bernardino driver allegedly used his car to murder a bike-riding acquaintance.

A British driver is charged with slapping a bike rider, then driving up on the sidewalk and confronting him again.

French pro cyclist Yoann Offredo was fined the equivalent of $833 for an altercation with a road raging driver and her passenger, even though he claimed he was just defending himself; they were fined, as well.

A road raging New Zealand driver jumped a curb and drove onto a sidewalk to run down a bike rider, then got out of his car and told the victim his broken leg serves him right; police arrested the driver thanks to the victim’s photo of his license plate.

………

Then again, sometimes bike riders are the bad guys.

A Fresno bike rider was caught on video stealing from a donation box.

A road raging San Francisco bicyclist was arrested for allegedly boarding a bus to attack the driver.

And a Wisconsin man is facing charges for a sexual assault spree while riding his bike.

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Don’t make the Corgi beg. Your donation will help keep this site online, and keep her in kibble.

This is day five of the 3rd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. Your support helps keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.

You can donate with just a few clicks by using PayPal. Or by using the Zelle app that is probably already in the banking app on your smartphone; send your contribution to ted @ bikinginla dot com (remove the spaces and format as a standard email address).

As always, any donation, in any amount, is truly and deeply appreciated.

And thanks to Wesley R, Harvey W, Fred D, Patrick M, Guillermo A, Todd R, Bernard B, Elizabeth T, Anne M and Andrew F for their generous donations to help support this site.

………

Local

An allegedly drunk driver in North Hills was arrested after plowing into six parked cars and killing a mother as she carried her infant son. Once again, authorities managed to keep a dangerous driver with a previous DUI conviction on the roads until he killed someone.

A Mar Vista tattoo artist says the Venice Blvd Great Streets project has caused a drop-off in business, and forced him to ride his bike to work because there’s never any parking. Or as the great Yogi Berra once said, “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”

A former South Pasadena public works commissioner says it doesn’t matter if a road diet and bike lanes are feasible on Monterey Road, because the public won’t stand for it. Sadly, given the toxic atmosphere in the LA area these days, he’s probably right.

Pasadena plans to install new bike racks in Brookside Park.

Pasadena considers alternatives to the most likely cancelled 710 Freeway extension, including building bike lanes to help mitigate traffic.

 

State

California regulators finally released updated CEQA rules, which will no longer require developers and planners to consider a proposed project’s effects on traffic congestion. Which should make it much easier to build bike lanes by removing a frequent tool used by opponents. That was the basis for one of the lawsuits filed against the Vista del Mar lane reduction, which helped force the removal of the project; hopefully there will be a different result next time.

A San Diego talk radio host has started a petition to repeal California’s recent gas tax hike intended to repair the state’s broken roads. Anyone who signs it should be permanently prohibited from complaining about traffic or bad streets.

 

National

Fast Company considers what it will take to get more women on bicycles.

Bicycling looks at the best bags for bike commuters.

Chicago is working to separate bicyclists and pedestrians along the entire 18-mile length of the popular Lakefront Trail.

People playing Pokémon Go while driving caused two deaths and up to $25 million in damages in one Indiana county alone last year.

New York could be the next city to hop on the dockless bikeshare bandwagon. Unless Houston beats them to it.

A witness says a New York driver ran a red light at a high rate of speed before fatally plowing into a 14-year bike delivery boy. So naturally, the NYPD will give the driver a pass.

Life is cheap in the Big Apple, where an allegedly stoned driver walks without a single day behind bars after pleading guilty to vehicular manslaughter in the death of a bike rider.

 

International

Thieves stole 27 test bikes, as well as high-end wheels, worth the equivalent of nearly $200,000 from British bike magazine Cycling Weekly; the gear was on hand to be photographed for the magazine’s Editor’s Choice awards. Speaking of the magazine, it was included in the $2.8 billion sale of Time Magazine and other publications to a company partially financed by the conservative Koch brothers.

An English university paper offers seven bike safety tips for students, only three of which actually have anything to do with safety. And apparently they couldn’t come up with a picture of a bike helmet.

A British bicyclist describes a crash last week where a driver plowed into him and three other cyclists, including his wife, as they rode single file; fortunately, none were seriously injured.

An English woman is riding around New Zealand on a DIY bamboo bike to spread an anti-plastic message.

The Guardian writes about the challenges of riding in the winter and how to overcome them. Although Britain’s Cyclist Magazine offers more practical advice for riding in wet weather, much of which even applies here in usually sunny SoCal.

Iran faces the challenge of getting women off bikes, not on them, as the country’s supreme leader issues a fatwa prohibiting women from riding bicycles in public, or in the presence of strangers or non-family members.

Aussie researchers are shocked! shocked! to discover people on bicycles actually ride in the traffic lanes on regular streets.

 

Competitive Cycling

Everything you always wanted to know about the Tour de France, but were afraid to ask.

The board of the Polish cycling federation has been asked to resign over charges that cyclists and staff members had been drugged, raped and molested by a high-ranking official.

 

Finally…

Yes, cycling has benefits for fitness, even if they can’t seem to decide which kind they’re talking about. Evidently, you can have satisfying sex with your bike.

And maybe it’s not the best idea to jump from a moving bicycle onto an ATV to make a bust.

Or try to, anyway.

 

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

Driver uses car as weapon to murder San Bernardino bike rider in intentional hit-and-run

November 27, 2017 / / 2 comments

Once again, a bike rider has been killed in a San Bernardino crash.

But this time, it was not an accident — in any sense of the word.

According to a press release from the San Bernardino Police Department, 52-year old San Bernardino resident Elroy Preston was riding on the 1400 block of E. Date Street around 6:27 pm Sunday when he was struck by a driver, who fled the scene.

Preston was taken to a local hospital, where he died later that night.

Witnesses reported he was struck by a black Dodge Magnum driven by 34-year old Dominic Deshaun Simmons of Fontana; the two men had been at the same home just before the crash.

Police spotted a vehicle matching the description at a gas station in Rialto, and arrested Simmons on suspicion of murder. He is currently being held without bail.

Simmons has an extensive criminal record, as well as several outstanding warrants for failing to appear for hearings on various charges.

Preston also had a record, though no details are available; no word on what the relationship was between the two men, if any.

Anyone with information is urged to call Detective Oldendorf at 909/384-5619 or Sgt. Kokesh at 909/384-5613.

This is the 59th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 13th in San Bernardino County.

My deepest sympathy and prayers for Elroy Preston and all his loved ones.

Category: Injuries and Fatalities, Violence & Crime / Tags: , , , , , , ,

Morning Links: Annual Holiday Fund Drive under way, Brits go bike helmet mad, and Mike Bonin recall debate

November 27, 2017 / / 3 comments

This is day four of the 3rd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. Your support helps keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.

You can donate with just a few clicks by using PayPal. Or by using the Zelle app that is probably already in the banking app on your smartphone; send your contribution to ted @ bikinginla dot com (remove the spaces and format as a standard email address).

Any donation, in any amount, is truly and deeply appreciated.

………

Today’s common theme is uproar that arose when the Times of London apparently decided to create a controversy, by asking Britain’s transportation minister if the government would consider requiring all bike riders to wear helmets.

Then bizarrely took his non-answer as confirmation that a helmet law was in the offing, when he said nothing of the sort.

Unfortunately, the original story is hidden behind a paywall. Although they did at least change the headline to say the policy was under review.

But even that isn’t true.

It’s a sad decline on the subject for the paper that led the campaign to improve safety for bicyclists just five years earlier.

And it didn’t take long for the rest of the Fleet Street newspapers to jump into the fray.

The Telegraph said bike safety advocates — or campaigners in Brit parlance — warn against mandating helmets, while hiding a column behind a paywall that said helmets and hi-viz would shackle the freedom of bicycling.

The Guardian cites safety campaigners as saying there was no justification in making helmets compulsory, while columnist Peter Walker writes that you don’t make bicycling safe by forcing everyone to dress like urban warriors.

Britain’s Chris Boardman says a mandatory helmet law won’t make bicycling any safer.

A columnist for the Daily Mail says requiring everyone to wear a helmet will put more lives at risk by discouraging people from riding.

Meanwhile, official stats show that bicycling is about to surpass driving in London. But forcing everyone to wear a helmet could drive them back into their cars.

And an Aussie columnist jumps in, saying nanny state or not, bike helmets save us all. Even though the decline in head injuries after Australia instituted mandatory helmet laws can largely be attributed to a decline in ridership.

Which is not to say you shouldn’t wear a helmet. I never ride without mine.

But it should always be your choice.

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Local

This week’s Bike Talk features longtime advocate Don Ward debating Mike Bonin recall leader Alexis Edelstein.

Membership in UCLA’s bikeshare program exceeded projections for the first year in just the first two months.

Mark your calendar for LA’s most challenging hill climb race, Feel My Legs, I’m a Racer, on December 17th.

South Pasadena asks Metro for funding for bike lanes after parents say it’s too scary to ride a bike with their kids in the city.

Long Beach restaurant owners are already worried about losing business due to the start of the Amgen Tour of California returning to the city for the first time in 11 years.

 

State

A San Diego bike rider suffered a broken shoulder in a crash with another rider on a steep hill; no word on how the crash occurred.

Cyclists call on Moorpark to encourage more bike-friendly businesses, which are currently lacking in the city.

Palo Alto is set to approve construction of a $16 million bike bridge, settling for a simple design after a previous attempt at an iconic crossing turned out to be too expensive.

 

National

Earlier this year, we mentioned the woman who was riding over 4,000 miles across the US to photograph people she met along the way; the Daily Beast shares some of her best photos.

It takes some serious chutzpa — or maybe just stupidity — to steal a police bike from a Cheyenne WY squad car.

I want to be like him when I grow up. A Wisconsin man rides 80 miles to celebrate his 80th birthday.

A New Hampshire town tears up a multi-use path and tells bicyclists to ride in the street after 91-year old woman was killed in a crash with a bike rider last month.

A Pittsburgh bike rider plans to once again tackle the city’s steepest hills on a 37-pound bikeshare bike after failing to finish the 12-hill competition last year.

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is one of us, riding 17-miles along a DC canal every morning.

In a truly sickening case, a Louisiana man faces multiple charges for the hit-and-run death of a bike rider; he had to pull the victim’s body out of his windshield before dumping him on the side of the road and driving away.

 

International

A woman writes about riding a bicycle to overcome an eating disorder. And yes, it is possible to live too cleanly.

Caught on video: A Vancouver driver confronts an “aggressive” bike rider who swerves around a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Yes, the rider was a jerk; he should have stopped to wait for the woman to cross the street. But I’m just as concerned about the vigilante driver who felt a need to confront the cyclist himself, then followed the rider for several blocks.

Speaking of Vancouver, the city set an ambitious goal of making 50% of all trips by bike, walking or transit by 2020 — and met it five years early. Thanks to Ralph Durham for the heads-up.

Toronto bicyclists push to make drivers at least partially responsible for dooring bike riders, and teach the Dutch Reach on driver’s exams. Meanwhile, a Toronto columnist says it’s time to realize that the killing and maiming on our streets isn’t normal, and the law needs to change when driving in your sleep isn’t considered dangerous.

Caught on video: A rugby coach chases down a London thief riding off with a stolen bike slung over his shoulder.

The war on bikes continues, as a road raging English driver deliberately knocked a man off his bike. And will apparently get away with it unless more witnesses come forward.

Britain considers a national code of conduct for dockless bikeshares. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea here, at least on a statewide level.

The UK’s bike-riding Labour Party leader says bike safety is a social justice issue.

Over 1,100 people from 57 countries took part in Qatar’s largest cycling event.

A New Zealand man plans to finish the last 23 miles of a 108-mile bike trip home from boarding school that he abandoned 50 years ago as a teenager.

A Malaysian paper talks with the Swedish ambassador to provide a primer on Vision Zero.

Where Chinese bikeshare bikes go to die.

Now that’s a fat bike ride. British track cycling legend Sir Chris Hoy will attempt to ride his bicycle 400 miles across Antarctica in record time.

 

Competitive Cycling

A British woman gave up her career as a veterinarian to train for the country’s cycling team.

 

Finally…

No, delivering food by bike does not mean you get to ignore traffic laws. Seriously, don’t run red lights — and if you do, don’t do it in front of a cop.

And now you can own your very own cycling team bus.

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Thanks to David R, Calla W, Gil S, Terrence H, Theodore F, Penny S and Felicia G for getting the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive off to a roaring start.

 

Category: Morning Links / Tags: , , , ,

Morning Links: Unidentified bike rider in Mission Hills hospital; minor changes made to Foothills Blvd bike lanes

November 24, 2017 / / 5 comments

Today marks the first day of the third annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive. Your support helps keep SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.

Or nearly every day, the way this year has gone.

As usual, you can donate with just a few clicks using PayPal.

Or now you can also donate in just seconds using the Zelle app — which is probably already in the banking app on your phone — by sending your contribution to ted @ bikinginla dot com;* you can download the app for iOS or Android if you don’t already have it.

Any amount is truly and deeply appreciated.

*Remove the spaces and format as a standard email address.

………

Officials at a Mission Hills hospital are attempting to identify a bike rider who was injured in a crash in Van Nuys last Saturday.

The victim is described as a Latino man who appears to be in his early 30s, 5 feet, 9 inches tall, and 173 pounds. He has brown eyes and short black hair, a short mustache and beard, with Maritza tattooed on his ring finger and Jade on his right forearm.

Anyone with information is urged to call Providence Holy Cross Medical Center at 818/365-8051 and ask for the nurse supervisors’ office.

Let this be yet another reminder to always have some form of ID with you when you ride.

………

After residents made questionable claims about traffic chaos and emergency vehicles unable to get through on Foothill Blvd during the recent La Tuna fire, the city agreed to make changes.

But unlike Playa del Rey, the bike lanes will remain on the road.

………

Local

KCET profiles a day in the life of carfree, single-speed bike-riding chef Will Marquardt, Chef de Cuisine at Petit Trois, regarded as one of America’s best restaurants. Although someone might want to explain the difference between Hollywood and West Hollywood to them.

LA Weekly looks at a bike-riding guerrilla street artist who turns discarded furniture into sad clown faces.

Santa Clarita sheriff’s deputies arrested two bike riders on drug and DUI charges.

 

State

Orange County sheriff’s deputies are looking for the owners of the 1,000 bikes they recovered after clearing out a homeless camp, even though most have been stripped and are considered beyond repair.

A San Luis Obispo columnist says the city is engaged in social engineering in an attempt to force people to ride bicycles. Never mind that every decision made by government at any level is a form of social engineering. Including past policies that have lead us to this auto-centric dystopia.

Next City looks at San Francisco’s Vision Zero rapid response teams. As opposed to Los Angeles, where they usually get around to doing something about dangerous streets eventually. Or not.

Sad news from Stockton, where a bike rider was killed in a hit-and-run as he was riding home with food to make his family’s Thanksgiving meal.

 

National

Maybe driverless cars won’t run over us after all; Apple claims to have made a major breakthrough in detecting bike riders and pedestrians on the road.

Wired says if you want to see the future of cities, you need to keep an eye on the curb.

A young man connects with his Cherokee heritage through the annual Remember the Removal Memorial Bike Ride.

Austin TX has doubled the rate it’s building bikeways by employing three key steps, including finishing designs onsite.

A New Hampshire woman was shot by a hunter aiming for deer as she rode her bike near a park; naturally, no charges were filed.

A Queens deli owner says a new bike lane is murdering his business. Change is inevitable, for any business. You can waste your time trying to fight it, or embrace it and flourish.

It takes a major scumbag to steal a five-year old Florida girl’s bicycle and scooter right in front of her.

 

International

Ontario cyclists vow to return after authorities bulldoze an illegal mountain bike course.

A new Canadian study says bike commuting could be damaging your hearing.

Caught on video: A British bike rider captures the hit-and-run collision that knocked him off his bike on a roundabout.

The UK doesn’t require license plates for bicycles, so a school decided to do it themselves.

A Belfast newspaper says it’s time to invest in moving people through the city, rather than cars. Which is a lesson Los Angeles desperately needs to learn, but clearly hasn’t yet.

A Limerick, Ireland bike rider was busted for riding salmon with no hands; he ended up paying the equivalent of $142 in fines.

Evidently, the US isn’t the only country that doesn’t adequately instruct cops in bike law, as an Irish police chief gets the law wrong on riding abreast.

BMW envisions a world where ebike riders get their own sun-protected double-decker roads. Just not here in the US.

Italy’s Pinarello apologizes for the bike industry’s latest tone deaf ad.

A sports website looks at how bicycling has worked in conjunction with language to shape Italian culture.

A South African letter writer says greater tolerance would stop the cycle of cyclist abuse.

Caught on video too: An Aussie truck driver appears to be trying to see just how close he can pass a bike rider without actually hitting him.

In a bizarre crash, a Chinese boy had to be rescued after the brake handle on his bike somehow ended up jammed up his nose.

 

Competitive Cycling

Starting in January, pro cyclists will be able to use marijuana products, as long as they don’t contain any THC. Which is odd, since no one would say Snoop Dog or Willie Nelson would have an unfair advantage. Except maybe in an eating contest.

The new head of pro cycling’s governing body says maybe it’s time for a salary cap on cycling teams to improve competitiveness.

Nice story from the LA Times about a 16-year old Columbian rider who returned to cycling after his family struggled to buy him the bike he needed to compete.

 

Finally…

Seriously, anyone can do cyclocross on a cross bike. Go ahead and have that extra cup of coffee after your next ride.

And nothing like teaching your kids to steal bikes at an early age.

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Don’t forget to support your local bike shop today on Black Friday, and especially tomorrow on Small Business Saturday. Just stop in and buy something, anything.

And take a moment to read a pair of guest posts we featured last year from bike shop owners explaining what that matters.  

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

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.

………

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.

………

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.

………

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.

………

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.

………

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: , , , , ,
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