A bike rider lost his life in Carson this evening, for no reason other than he was there.
According to KTLA-5, a man was riding his bike on Santa Fe Avenue near Warnock Way around 5:05 pm Tuesday evening when a shipping container fell off a flatbed truck and landed on him.
He was pronounced dead at the scene; he has not been publicly identified.
To make matters worse, the victim was not even riding in the street. KTLA says he was on the sidewalk when it fell on him, most likely as the truck was passing him.
Based on the limited description, there was absolutely nothing he could have done to avoid it. The only question is whether the driver struck a support, or if the load was too high to pass under the bridge.
This is the 65th bicycling fatality in Southern California, and the 26th in Los Angeles County.
Update: KABC-7 reports that the coroner’s office has identified the victim only as an Asian male, and confirms that the truck was passing the victim when the load fell off.
According to a witness, a similar wreck occurred the previous day; fortunately, no one was hurt in that one. He blames trucking companies for cutting corners because truck drivers are on strike at the ports of LA and Long Beach.
As a result, the companies are hiring flatbed truck drivers who simply strap the containers on, and who are paid by the load, rather than the hour, encouraging them to take chances.
Today, it may have cost a man his life.
Update 2: The LA coroner’s office has identified the victim as 51-year old Long Beach resident Robert Castorena.
Meanwhile, the LA Times fills in details about shipping companies and how the collision occurred; the truck apparently scraped the underneath of the railroad underpass, breaking the cables that secured the container.
No word on whether the driver, or the company he worked for, will face charges.
Update 4: Police report the driver may face charges depending on the outcome of the investigation; they appear to be looking into whether the load was too high for the bridge.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Robert Castorena and his loved ones.
For once, there was a cop around when he was needed.
Unfortunately, it came too late for a bike rider in West Covina last night.
Multiple sources are reporting that a bicyclist was killed in a high-speed hit-and-run just before midnight, and the allegedly drunken driver arrested moments later just a few blocks away.
Forty-four-year old La Puente resident Jose De Jesus Ruiz-Villanueva was riding his bike north on the 1100 block of South Valinda Avenue, just above Merced Avenue, at 11:49 pm when he was hit from behind by a car traveling at a high rate of speed.
According to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, a second officer went back to the scene, and found Ruiz-Villanueva dead at the scene.
The paper reports he had been on his way to work when he was killed.
Police arrested 25-year old Presley Danielle Rodriguez of Glendora on suspicion of felony driving under the influence causing great bodily injury or death and felony hit-and-run. She was booked on $100,000 bail.
Unfortunately, this occurred in Los Angeles County, where cases like this are usually plea bargained away, leaving the drivers to face little or no jail time.
This is the 64th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 25th in Los Angeles County.
Eight of those 25 deaths have been hit-and-runs.
Update: The driver, Presley Danielle Rodriguez, faces up to 15 years in prison on charges of hit-and-run and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. And for a change, the court appears to be taking this case seriously, increasing her bond to $150,000, $50,000 more than prosecutors requested.
The SGV Tribune reports Ruiz-Villanueva was on his way to work at A-1 Power Sweeping Co in Baldwin Park; his bicycle was his only form of transportation.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Jose De Jesus Ruiz-Villanueva and his family.
An Orange County jury has found Neil Storm Stephany guilty of second degree murder in the heroin and Ativan-fueled hit-and-run death of cyclist Shaun Eagleson as he rode on the East Coast Highway just over a year ago.
And despite his attorney’s bizarre argument that Stephany can’t be held responsible because he was so high he had no idea what he was doing behind the wheel.
Stephany had been warned following a previous DUI conviction that he could face a murder charge if he killed someone while driving under the influence. Instead he shot up, got behind wheel and did exactly that; he was reportedly found incoherent with fresh needle marks at the time of his arrest.
He faces 15 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced on January 15th.
Thanks to Edward M. Rubinstein and our anonymous OC source for the heads-up.
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Hats off to REI.
While other retailers are forcing their employees leave their families and work on Thanksgiving Day, the Seattle-based co-op will not only be closed on Thanksgiving, but will be shutting their doors on the following day, aka Black Friday. And telling their employees to go outdoors and enjoy themselves.
With pay.
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A reader forwards this moving piece from a former bike racer suffering from an incurable, untreatable and progressively degenerative kidney disease, and her first tentative step back into cyclocross racing just for fun.
Definitely worth taking a few moments from your day to read.
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Local
KCRW’s Which Way LA looks at the reactions to LA’s Mobility Plan 2035 in South LA and around Rowena Ave in Silver Lake, but can’t seem to find any bike riders to discuss it with.
A trio of USC students are working on a Bluetooth-enabled bike lock that will be permanently mounted on your bike, and lock by clamping around the rear wheel.
The LA Explorers Club is hosting an LA Noir Bicycle Tour this Sunday, taking riders back to the classic Los Angeles of the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s.
A La Jolla mountain bike rider was the victim of a brutal assault while visiting New Orleans, leaving him paralyzed from the shoulders down. And neither the police or the Big Easy press seem to give a damn. When I lived down that way, it too often seemed that rather than the City That Care Forgot, it was the city that forgot to care.
San Diego will begin work on the next link in the Bayshore Bikeway around the first of the year, the first of $200 million in new bike projects in the region over the next decade.
Uber’s new Uber Rush delivery service is using a fleet of bike messengers to make deliveries in New York City, San Francisco and Chicago in an hour or less.
Maybe he didn’t want to miss his favorite show. An Iowa rider loses three teeth when he was mugged by a group of men who wanted the TV he was carrying on his bike.
A St. Louis writer says bicycling can be bliss in the city originally built for horses and trolleys.
Science takes a backseat to football at the University of North Carolina, where bikes are banned from parking in front of the Genome Science building on game days.
Go ahead and have that drink. A new study shows that while a third of injured cyclists have been drinking, drunk riders are less likely to get in wrecks and are no more likely to be injured than sober riders.
A Montreal bike messenger poetically says the key to survival is to float like a ghost into the spaces no one else is occupying.
The BBC looks at the legal loophole that allows Syrian refugees to cross the Russian border into Finland only if they are on a bike, and the absurd trade in flimsy children’s bikes it has spawned. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the link.
If you’re carrying 64 tabs of Lorazepam, aka Ativan, on your bike, put a damn light on it and stay off the sidewalk. Talk about casting a big shadow; a little ingenuity and elbow grease, and you, too can frighten the neighbors into thinking a rogue elephant is on the loose.
They also intend to go beyond education by offering bike repairs and rentals of donated bicycles. Along with serving as a central point for bike advocacy in the San Gabriel Valley.
The SGVBEC is open Saturdays from 9 am to 1 pm inside El Monte’s Jeff Seymour Family Center, 10900 Mulhall St.
In a heartbreaking piece, the tragic and needless death of a local rider makes a Pittsburgh woman examine her own mortality, and the real-world costs of our dangerous streets.
A Long Beach cyclist is finishing a seven-month, 3,000-mile trip to the other Long Beach in New York to raise funds for Alzheimer’s research.
State
The Victorville city council agrees to cover a $274,000 shortfall to construct a key connector in a proposed regional bike path network.
Oxnard police will conduct a bike and pedestrian safety operation Monday afternoon. Someone should tell them that bicyclists aren’t required to wear helmets unless they’re under 18, though.
Police decide a Milpitas high school student was somehow at fault for a minor collision, even though he was in a crosswalk and the driver admitted he didn’t see him.
The US Bicycling Hall of Fame in Davis is preparing to induct its newest class of honorees next month.
A San Francisco writer insists on pitting Millennials against Baby Boomers, saying the city does not consider the needs of older people, and that it’s hard to ride a bike safely when you get older. Even though countless older people do exactly that every day, and if they can’t manage to pedal uphill, an e-bike provides an effective alternative.
National
A Portland bike rider finds a hit-and-run driver who injured another cyclist. This is why police need to release information even on hit-and-runs that don’t qualify for a Yellow Alert; we have a lot more eyes on the street than they do.
Casper WY responded to the death of a bicyclist by creating a new bike master plan calling for over 100 miles of street improvements; the city’s first road diet, with bike lanes on either side, opens this week.
Negotiations have hung up on acquiring a railroad right-of-way that will be part of a Maine to Massachusetts bikeway, eventually lead to a coastal pathway stretching from Maine to the Florida Keys.
A man was critically injured in a collision with a bike rider on the University of Delaware campus. Ride carefully around pedestrians; they’re the only one more vulnerable on the streets than we are, and less predictable.
The CBC investigates whether cyclists should be required to have licenses. Must have touched a nerve; at last count, there were over 450 comments in less than 24 hours. Although being Canadian, many were excruciatingly polite.
Caught on video: A British bike rider captures a helmet-cam view as he’s hit by a right-turning car. Although rather than slowing down as he approaches the intersection, he forces a couple of jaywalking pedestrians to run out of his way. And he probably wouldn’t have been hit by the car if he had waited for them to cross.
A 71-year old English woman has died after going over her handlebars in a collision with another cyclist while riding on a bike path. Another tragic reminder that bike paths can be dangerous places, even if there aren’t any cars.
Dutch racer Theo Bos expresses his gratitude to the United Arab Emirates woman who not only paid for his medication after a fall, but drove him back to his hotel, and stopped at a restaurant to buy him food on the way; she said any Emirati woman would do the same.
Talk about not getting it. A Santa Monica coffee shop owner strikes gold by having a Breeze bikeshare station placed directly in front of her business, and freaks out over the loss of one or two parking spaces. If people aren’t using the bike racks next to her business, despite the city’s boom in bicycling, that should tell her something. But probably won’t. Thanks to David Huntsman for the heads-up.
There may still be time to get to Santa Barbara for its third annual Open Streets event today, offering two miles of beachfront boulevard free from cars.
An Oakland bike rider gets a $2.5 million settlement after she was hit by a left-turning bus just after escaping from another one.
National
Can a little green paint improve the lowly and much maligned sharrow? Probably not.
A Spokane city councilman claims it costs $63,500 to paint one mile of bike lanes; he’s right, as long as you include all engineering costs and expenses to repaint the entire roadway after repaving. In other words, it’s impossible to break out the relatively minor cost of bike lanes from roadwork that would have been done anyway.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A Boston researcher killed while riding her bike this past August was part of a team that just announced a major breakthrough in using stem cells to grow a new thyroid.
Streetfilms looks at DC’s protected bike lanes, while African American churches in DC are joining in a fight to preserve 75 street parking spaces used primarily on Sunday. Instead of bike lanes that would be used every day, and could help fight obesity in the community.
A group of international scientists will run and bike to Paris from both poles to demand action on climate change; although people coming from the South Pole have a hell of a lot further to go.
A 19-year old Brit career criminal stole a car, blocked the path of a bike rider, then get out and attacked him before intentionally ramming two taxis as he made his getaway; he got three years for his efforts.
Perth, Australia is about to get its first bike boulevards. Although for some reason, the rendering still shows cars tailgating the bikes.
Life is cheap in Singapore, as a speeding taxi driver gets a whopping two weeks behind bars for killing a slow-speed salmon cyclist; at least he’s banned from driving for the next three years.
Reversing their usual north to south route, next year’s Amgen Tour of California will start in San Diego and end in Sacramento; the race will also include four women’s stages as part of the UCI WorldTour this year. Other SoCal legs include South Pasadena to Santa Clarita, and Thousand Oaks to Santa Barbara.
Word has it bike riding former UCLA and NBA star Bill Walton is particularly stoked about the San Diego start.
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Our anonymous Orange County correspondent reports the Stephany DUI murder trial went to the jury today, but no word on whether they reached a verdict; if not, deliberations will resume next week.
She adds,
In closing, Stephany’s lawyer was adamant and clearly believed his own words, but his argument just wasn’t very compelling. Plus I think Juror #11 wanted to smack him.
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She also offers a few uncensored thought on the state of bicycling in Santa Ana.
Civic Center Drive has fresh new stripes for, I suppose, a buffered bike lane. The “buffer” is skinny and there are no bike graphics yet, and the placement of the dashed lines is so random I don’t even know if it can possibly conform to the MUTCD.
Also, a fucktard swooping into the semicircular driveway in front of the courthouse and CUT ME OFF and when I yelped, he was all, “What? I didn’t hit you!” Well, true, and the ONLY reason he didn’t hit me while he was failing to yield, failing to signal, and failing to make a proper right turn from the correct lane position is because I have three separate braking mechanisms, all of which I immediately engaged so that his criminal maneuver wouldn’t put me on a goddamn gurney. Maybe all the new visual clutter induced vertigo in his head?
During the 2-hour lunch recess, I rode around and despaired at the wobbly sharrowed path on 3rd Street. And the complete absence of sharrows on, say, narrow-laned Broadway, or anyplace they’d actually be useful on. And the insufficient bike racks. (Ya wanna rack in front of, or at least anywhere near, City Hall? Well, TOO BAD FOR YOU, PAL).
It’s like Santa Ana is just slapping bike & ped infrastructure down wherever it happens to fit, whether it will be functional or not. Kinda like the way God slapped together the platypus from leftover spare parts He had lying around, except that critter works just fine, whereas the hodgepodge of bike stuff in Santa Ana is nothing but frustration.
Downtown Santa Ana makes downtown LA look like a dream world.
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More big hearts out there.
A Texas boy gets a new bicycle from a local bike shop after his was destroyed in a collision; $1,000 that was raised to replace his bike will now be given to the crossing guard who was injured saving his life.
Or more precisely, had one, since it’s no longer listed on their website.
Looks like the Corgi will have to keep waiting for her first bike ride, dammit. Then again, I’m not sure how well I could ride with 30 pounds of doggie ADD on my back, anyway.
LADOT Bike Blog looks at the Mobility Hubs planned for the LA Area, with 13 primary hubs at major transit stations in Hollywood, DTLA and Long Beach, and 85 satellite in the same areas. Now what we need are safe routes to ride to and from those hubs.
A San Diego county supervisor discusses his vision for a barrio to barrio bike path due to open next year that will connect to another new bikeway circling San Diego’s South Bay.
A Carlsbad writer questions whether the city went too far in installing 100 bike racks in the downtown area. Chances are, he didn’t raise the same question when car parking went in.
Both people suffered major injuries when someone on a motorized bike hit a pedestrian in Desert Hot Springs Thursday evening.
Twenty children will get recycled bicycles as part of a giveaway program to encourage cycling in bike-friendly Davis.
National
Turns out using hands-free devices is even more distracting than we thought; it takes as long as 27 seconds for a driver to turn his concentration back to the road after sending a text using voice commands.
A man sets off on a cross-country bike ride after being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, just two months after he participated in the ALS Challenge. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
Phoenix calls on drivers to look twice for bikes. Forget twice; it would make a huge difference in safety if every driver just looked at least once.
Construction begins on the final link in an off-road bike path along I-70 from Denver to Glenwood Springs, 160 spectacular miles away through the Colorado Rockies.
A Michigan bike rider was found partially submerged in a ditch after a witness had earlier seen him walking his bike bleeding from a head wound, though the rider assured him he was okay.
It’s a sad commentary on today’s world when a Minneapolis Krav Maga studio feels the need to offer a three-hour course in bicycle self-defense to ward off attackers. Even sadder that I want to take it.
International
An Ontario writer argues against allowing cyclists to ride abreast, citing studies showing cyclists are more aggressive in groups. Note to the clueless: human beings are more aggressive in groups, whether they’re riding bikes, driving cars, or watching a football game. And it’s still possible to ride in a group without riding abreast.
An Irish writer says Dublin cyclists are lawless to the point of sheer arrogance. Except for her, of course.
A New Zealand professor says lower speed limits won’t solve everything, but they will improve safety, while also increasing livability and encouraging people to walk and bike. Lets hope our local officials are listening.
Finally…
For all you doubters out there, here’s proof Lance didn’t have to dope to win races; he admitted under oath that he won a $1 million bonus after the Coors Light team was paid off to let him win in 1993. This is not what Twitter is for, as a Florida driver tweets that he just killed a man after hitting a 16-year old pedestrian — complete with a photo of the body.
