It’s been a bad two days for Southern California bike riders.
According to the Orange County Register, a woman was killed as she was riding her bike in a crosswalk in the city of Orange Sunday evening.
The unidentified victim was crossing the street at the intersection of West Chapman Avenue and North Flower Street shortly after 6 pm when she was struck by a man driving a full-size pickup. She was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where she passed away nearly 45 minutes later.
The paper reports the driver cooperated with investigators, and was sober at the time of the collision.
There’s no word on who had the right-of-way or which street the victim was crossing, or what direction the truck was traveling. A satellite view shows a two-lane street with a left turn lane on Fowler and six lanes with a left turn lane on Chapman, with crosswalks in each direction.
He goes on to explain that as she rode in the crosswalk against traffic, she would not have had enough time to make it across all seven lanes if she didn’t push the button for the pedestrian crossing signal. In addition, the sun would have been facing the oncoming traffic close to sunset, making her difficult to see.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Kathleen Walker and her family.
The San Diego Union Tribune reports the 63-year old victim, who hasn’t been publicly identified, was riding west on Flanders Drive at Camino Ruiz around 5:30 this morning when he went through the light and was struck by a car headed south on Camino Ruiz.
Police don’t suspect drug or alcohol use contributed to the collision. However, it’s possible that heavy fog in the area may have been a factor, as the cyclist and driver may not have been able to see each other until it was too late.
No word on whether the victim had lights on his bike an hour before sunrise; video from the scene shows no sign of lights on the badly mangled bike, though it’s possible they could have been damaged in the collision.
Given the early morning hour, and the fact that the driver had to leave the scene to find a phone, it’s unlikely that there were any independent witnesses to the wreck, which suggests that police had to rely on the driver’s word that he had the green light.
The heavy fog and severe damage to the bike also suggest that the driver may have been in violation of California’s basic speed law; CVC 2250 says that no one may drive “at a speed greater than is reasonable or prudent” with regard to a number of factors, including weather and visibility.
This is the 53rd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 10th in San Diego County; it’s also the sixth in the city of San Diego.
Lately the bike news that seems to be increasing at an exponential rate, while find myself fighting to focus despite a change in medications that has me working at half speed.
Sunday it all caught up with me.
So let’s hit the reset button, to steal a phrase from our former Secretary of State. I’m taking today off in order to get some rest, and try to function like a normal person again.
According to KESQ.com, a 57-year old bike rider was killed in a collision after turning into traffic in Cathedral City Sunday morning.
The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was riding east on the north sidewalk at 69120 Ramon Road around 9:20 am. Police report he suddenly turned to his right and rode directly into the path of westbound traffic, where he was hit by a car.
He died after being taken to a regional medical center.
However, it’s hard to understand why the victim would have turned out into traffic when he should have been able to clearly see the cars coming.
The station implies that he may have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol. It’s possible that he may have somehow thought he had more time to cross the street than he really did, particularly if the driver was traveling at a high rate of speed.
This is the 52nd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth in Riverside County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
Nothing like getting buzzed by an impatient jerk to ruin a ride on a beautiful day.
Richard Bidmead forwards video of what happens when a bike lane ends, and riders are forced to take to the traffic lane. Especially when you’re being followed by someone in a Corvette who knows how to use his horn, but can’t figure out how to change lanes to go around.
Instead, My News LA reports Reynaga will serve just one year in county jail, thanks to a very generous judge.
Even though a witness saw him get out of his semi after hitting Rodriguez, look at the victim lying in the roadway, then drive off, leaving him unprotected in the darkness, only to be hit by another car a few moments later.
No one will ever know if Rodriguez might have been saved if Reynaga hadn’t shown such a callous indifference to human life.
Despite that, the judge indicated that he will sentence Reynaga to just two years, and put off sentencing until next January to allow him to serve his time in county lockup. And he’ll end up doing just one year behind bars.
One lousy year for intentionally leaving a man to die in the street.
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Apparently, life isn’t worth any more in Alameda County, as a San Francisco attorney could serve just 30 days behind bars for the hit-and-run death of a Chinese tourist.
Bo Hu was walking his bike when a car driven by Spencer Freeman Smith slammed into him from behind, and fled the scene without ever applying the brakes. Prosecutors were prevented from introducing evidence that he had been drinking that night.
Once again, despite a callous indifference to human life, Smith was sentenced to just five years probation and one year in county jail; he can apply to finish his sentence in home detention after serving just one month.
Talk about hard time.
Let’s just hope he’s not scarred for life by being forced to watch the Giants and 49s on his flat screen from the comfort of his own den.
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Yet another bighearted cop replaces a stolen bike, this time for an Indiana girl whose bike was apparently taken by neighborhood bullies just one day after she got it for her eighth birthday.
Evidently, cops aren’t the only ones in Indiana with big hearts. A tattoo artist raised $1,800 to buy a new bike for an Indiana boy who was hit by a car outside his shop.
And a stranger bought a new bike for a Tampa Bay girl after she collided with a car driven by an elderly woman; the driver asked if she was okay, gave her $20 and drove away.
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Looks like the US is building a women’s cycling dynasty, as Chloe Dygert and Emma White take first and second in the under-23 road race; they finished in the same order in the U23 time trial earlier this week.
They must have made a good impression. A British pro cycling team signs three riders off the New Zealand U23 team from the world championships.
Africa’s first and only pro cycling team to compete in the Tour de France will now be known as Team Dimension Data.
And the head of pro cycling’s governing body says they’ve made great strides to restore credibility in the post-Armstrong era, despite the continuing drumbeat of cyclists banned for doping.
Bike friendly UCLA gets even friendlier with a new traffic light and a bike lane on the uphill side of Charles E. Young Drive North.
Boyonabike looks at transit developments and bike parking in the San Gabriel Valley, and finds the bike racks at the Monrovia Metro station both artsy and impractical.
Long Beach gets $23 million in grants for bike, pedestrian and transit improvements, including a bikeway over the LA River connecting with the bike path on the coming replacement for the Desmond Thomas Bridge.
There will be a press conference at 11 am Monday at City Hall to support AB8, aka the Hit-and-Run Yellow Alert Bill, currently awaiting Governor Brown’s signature after he vetoed a similar bill last year.
State
No bias here. The auto-centric CHP concludes that bicyclists are at fault in 61% of collisions, and drivers only at fault in 20%. Which says more about the department’s lack of training in bike law and a bias towards those on four wheels than it does about bike riders. As does the lack of enforcement of the state’s three-foot passing law.
Things were calmer in Bagdad by the Bay this month, as riders in the San Francisco Critical Mass were on their best behavior, and no one beat on cars with U-locks.
Las Vegas decides maybe it’s time to start enforcing Nevada’s three-foot passing law, including putting plain clothes cops on bikes to catch drivers passing too close.
An Iowa judge rules it’s okay to buzz bike riders and roll coal in their faces from a diesel pickup.
The bikeway network in Dallas TX grows to 39 miles, a big improvement over the eight miles of on-street bike lanes just three years ago. Although 32 miles of that are sharrows.
A new Minnesota parking lot opens near a bike trail, allowing people to remove bikes from their cars without fear of getting hit by passing cars; the project fulfills the dream of a former Eagle Scout who was later killed in action in Afghanistan.
Sad news from Ohio, as a second bike rider has died as a result of a collision when an apparently driverless truck left crossed a group of five riders; thankfully, the other three have been released from the hospital. Update: The victim was identified as Jim Lambert, an alternate on the US cycling team for the ’84 Los Angeles Olympics.
An Arkansas rider is on track to beat the 76-year old record for riding the most miles in a single year; two other riders, one in England and the other in Australia, are also attempting the same thing this year.
A Philadelphia woman faces a host of charges, including vehicular homicide, for running down a high school football player as he was riding his bike, then removing her plates and hiding in her SUV in a failed attempt to avoid arrest.
A Canadian bike rider faces charges after reaching into the car that hit him, grabbing the keys, and dropping them into a storm drain. Maybe we should take up a collection to pay his fines.
An Irish charity gives a recumbent hand-bike to a wheelchair-bound teenage boy suffering from a degenerative neuromuscular disease, to provide him with more independence.
Belfast will transform into a bicycle paradise for a whole three hours and 45 minutes when they hold their first ciclovía next weekend.
Abraham Lincoln had a habit of writing angry letters to let off steam, then placing them in his desk, unsigned and unsent.
Maybe LA Times Capitol Journal columnist George Skelton should take the hint.
In his Thursday column, Skelton reported that his planned trip to Lake Tahoe with his daughter over the weekend was derailed when they ran into a road closure to accommodate an Ironman triathlon — not a bicycle race, despite how he characterized it. And was so incensed he responded by calling for a tax on all bike riders.
Which is like demanding that joggers and pedestrians pay for the sidewalks and crosswalks they use just because the LA Marathon keeps you from crossing the street, as Keith Pluymers pointed out.
Except they already do.
In fact, we all do. Just as we all pay for the roads Skelton seems to think are exclusively financed by motorists.
Even gas taxes and auto registration fees, which he seems to think bike riders don’t pay — even though the overwhelmingly majority of people who ride bikes also own and drive cars — only cover a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining our streets and highways.
The rest comes out of the same income and sales taxes we all pay, whether we travel on two wheels or four.
Or none.
He also seems to forget about those similarly freeloading electric car drivers, who don’t pay a penny more in gas taxes than bike riders do. And hybrid owners, whose relatively high mileage means they pay a fraction of the taxes other drivers pay when they fill up.
Then there’s the simple matter of why drivers are expected to pay for those roads.
It’s not for the privilege of driving on them, as Skelton seems to presume. It’s because those multi-ton vehicles cause exponential wear and tear on the roadways every time they’re driven on them.
Bicycles don’t. Period.
Even at the peak of my out-of-shape weight following my father-in-law’s stroke, when I packed 220 pounds onto a 15 pound bike, my impact on the road was infinitesimal compared to even the lightest motor vehicles. Never mind the massive SUVs so common in California they should replace the grizzly on the California flag.
It’s true that bike lanes aren’t free.
But striping lanes costs just pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of building a roadway to accommodate cars and trucks. Let alone the more than $1 billion — that’s billion, with a b — it cost to put HOV lanes on the 405 through the Sepulveda pass.
And as anyone who’s driven there lately can attest, that’s barely made a dent in the infamous 405 traffic congestion. If that.
Skelton doesn’t address the question of who would have to register their bikes with the state. Does the toddler on her trike have to pay the same fee as the roadie slicing curves on Mulholland?
What about the immigrant worker who can’t afford a car or public transportation? Do we slap him in leg irons if he rides an unregistered bike on the streets of our fair state?
Finally, there’s the question of who would administer the fees he calls for.
The DMV has already said they don’t want the job. The sort of small fees he suggests — such as the $3 licensing fee charged in Long Beach — wouldn’t begin to cover the millions required to administer and enforce a program to register every single bicycle in the late, great Golden State.
And any fee high enough to cover the costs would only serve as yet another barrier to bicycling, at time when we should be lowering those barriers to encourage more people to bike to improve their health, and the health of the cities they live in.
Let alone removing a few more cars from our overly congested streets.
In fact, a recent study showed that every mile traveled by bike results in a net economic gain of 42 cents to society, while every mile traveled by car results in a net loss of 20 cents.
Which means we should be getting a rebate, not charged extra taxes on top of those we already pay.
Skelton should have known better.
And probably would have if he’d just taken long enough to cool off; even a few minutes with Google could have corrected his misassumptions before they ever got into print.
Instead, a respected reporter who usually offers valuable insights into the inner workings of our state government apparently let his anger get the better of him.
And instead of taking it out on the Ironman sponsors, Caltrans or the local governments who permitted the race, he chose to take it out on you and me.
This is one column that should have been placed in his desk drawer. And left there.
Just in case you needed a reminder — which is highly unlikely if you ride LA streets — this is what a too-close pass looks like, courtesy of On My Bike in LA.
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LA area cyclists are about to lose one of the few safe places we have to ride thanks to the never-ending drive to increase capacity for cars.
A one-mile section of the La River bike path will be closed for two full years between Riverside Drive and the 134 Freeway.
Yes, two years.
All because Caltrans is adding carpool lanes to a section of the 5 Freeway. The construction will impact a section of the bike path that runs nearby, and the closure is for our own safety, according to the notice.
Thanks for looking out for us. No, really.
Bike riders will be diverted onto Zoo Drive and Western Heritage Way, near where Finish the Ride founder Damien Kevitt was struck by a hit-and-run driver who dragged him onto the 5, nearly taking his life.
So if anyone happens to get hit by a car while bypassing the construction zone for the next two years, I’d suggest getting a good lawyer who can reach into the deep pockets at Caltrans.
And yes, I can recommend a few.
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Mike Wilkinson forwards advice on what to do if you’re the first on the scene following an injury collision. It’s written from a motorcyclist’s perspective, but the advice holds true for non-motorized riders.
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Welcome to the US. An unidentified cyclist training for the world championships was hit by a car that was somehow allowed to cross the course; fortunately, the victim was not seriously hurt.
Bicycling talks with U23 silver medalist Emma White; the 18-year old is the first American woman to podium in the world junior time trial since 2007.
The latest podcast from Streetsblog’s Damien Newton is a talk with new CicLAvia Executive Director Romel Pascual.
A man is under arrest for murder after shooting another man near West 6th and Lafayette Park, then stealing a bicycle at gunpoint before being captured by police.
Los Angeles Magazine offers five tools to make shopping by bike easier. Although they somehow forgot messenger bags, which were developed by bike messengers for a reason.
State
An anonymous tip has led San Diego police to the car used in a hit-and-run that seriously injured a woman riding her bike last week; it was found at a repair shop, apparently getting fixed to hide the damage. Although the local NBC station seems to think the car was acting on its own.
Trial began on Thursday for the wrong-way, allegedly high driver who slammed into 10 riders on San Diego’s Fiesta Island, leaving one permanently disabled.
The San Diego Union-Tribune puts the Coronado anti-bike hysteria in context, saying it’s part of a backlash against increased tourism on the penisula. Maybe tourists should respond by taking their money somewhere else.
Bittersweet story from Camarillo, as a woman is spending her final days touring California by bike with her boyfriend; she was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer shortly after kicking a two decade addiction to meth. Camarillo’s US Bike Company gave them new bicycles after theirs were stolen in Big Sur.
Caught on video: The San Francisco police captain who ordered a crackdown on scofflaw cyclists rolls a stop himself while on his bike. Maybe he was just trying to fit in.
Evidently, San Francisco cyclists will be on the Critical Mass to Hell this weekend.
Sad news from Shingletown, near Redding, as a bike rider was killed Thursday evening when a 17-year old driver drifted onto the shoulder where she was riding.
National
The National Bike Challenge hit 35 million miles 10 days before the scheduled end of the program, a whopping 50% increase over last year.
You can now ping your bell to tell you where you parked your bike. Although if you can’t find where you parked your bike, it’s usually a sign it may not be there anymore.
The standard controversy erupts over a road diet in my hometown, with drivers complaining about traffic backups and unused buffered bike lanes, which riders avoid because they don’t connect to anything and dump them back into traffic with no warning.
Denver tries on a protected bike lane for size; for a change, local merchants joined safety advocates in pushing for changes on the busy street.
That’s one way to steal a bike. A woman walked into an Ohio Wal-Mart, set a rack of pajamas on fire, and walked out with a new bike.
Some schmuck stole a 1980 Schwinn 12-speed from a 92-year old WWII vet in Troy NY; he only rode it twice before hanging it up in his garage.
Now those are some serious choppers. A New York bike thief imitates the city’s infamous rats and uses his teeth to gnaw through a bike lock. Yes, his teeth.
That Delaware DuPont exec on trial for killing a man on a bicycle in a hit-and-run last year claimed he thought he hit some tree branches. And yet his young sons saw the bike spinning away and asked if he’d just killed a cyclist. Schmuck.
By his account, a 70-year old Georgia driver was doing everything right when those crazy bike riders started yelling at him, and he accidently ran into one trying to get away. Sure, that sounds credible.
FL police blame a teenage bike rider for not riding in the crosswalk after he’s injured in a collision. Of course, if he had been in the crosswalk, they would have blamed him for that.
No bias here. The CBC apparently thinks the value of a victim’s bike has something to do with why a left turning driver ran him down in the bike lane and fled the scene.
Serious injuries among British bike riders are going up three times faster than the increase in miles ridden.
Evidently, the key to success as a champion lumberjack is riding a bike. Regardless of what the Standard thinks, a combination breathalyzer/bike lock is not a blow to bike-riding boozers as long as its use remains voluntary.
And this gnome-lookalike perv should be locked away until he’s 87. But you’ve got to admire his bike handling skills.
