A commenter says she knew the victim, identifying her as a “beautiful, young, athletic, wife, mother,” while other comments confirm it was the person on the bicycle who was killed.
There’s no word on the condition of the motorcyclist.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know right now; hopefully we’ll get more information soon. If you know something, let me know if there’s anything you can share.
This is at least the fourth bicycling fatality in Southern California this year. And it’s already the third that I’m aware of in San Bernardino County, which is off to a very bad start to the new year.
Update: No word yet on how this crash occurred, but now we know who the victim was. And why so many in the local bicycling community were so upset when they got the news.
VeloNews is reporting that 42-year old retired pro endurance mountain biker Monique “Pua” Parmelee was the woman killed in Wednesday’s collision.
Parmelee, known as Pua Mata before her marriage to Chris Parmelee, was described as a “fierce and ferocious competitor” on the bike, but quiet, kindhearted and compassionate off it.
A native of Oahu, Hawaii, Monique Parmelee rose to prominence in the U.S. mountain bike scene in the early 2000s as a top cross-country rider on the National Mountain Bike Series (NMBS) circuit. A tenacious and focused racer, Parmelee was known best as both Monique Sawicki and Pua Mata. She excelled at cross-country races that stretched beyond the typical hour-and-a-half duration, and began winning ultra-endurance and Marathon-length MTB events on the budding U.S. circuit. Parmelee also blossomed into one of the top 24-Hour solo MTB racers on the planet.
She claimed three U.S. titles in 24-Hour solo racing and seven national Marathon MTB titles. In 2009 Parmelee finished seventh place at the UCI Marathon MTB World Championships. Parmelee also won Costa Rica’s grueling La Ruta de los Conquistadores mountain bike race in 2012 and 2013, and finished second at the U.S. cross-country mountain bike national championships in 2013.
She leaves behind her husband and two young children, boys aged just six and four. A fundraising campaign for her family has raised over $36,000 of the $150,000 goal in just 24 hours.
I’m told the park near where she was killed is a popular exit point for mountain bikers coming off the local trails.
Correction: I initially spelled the victim’s last name as Parmalee, based on the spelling in the VeloNews story. However, I’m told by a family member that the correct spelling is Parmelee, and have corrected it throughout this story, including within the VeloNews quote.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Monique “Pua” Parmelee and all her family and loved ones.
Thanks to Victor Bale, Zachary Rynew and Cani for the heads-up.
Today’s common theme is elderly bike riders and drivers.
Although your definition of elderly may vary, most likely depending on how old you are.
A road raging, 70-year old Tiburon, California driver faces charges for following a bike rider in his car before getting out and threatening him with a knife, because he believed his intended victim had hit his car with his hand; the bike rider teamed with a nearby witness to hold the man down until police arrived.
No bias here. A long-running BBC host agrees with an anti-bike tweet, saying “Too much testosterone squeezed into slightly too little Lycra tends to prove explosive.” Then again, so do broadcasters who are full of shit.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Police in Santa Monica will be conducting yet another bike and pedestrian safety operation on Thursday from 6 am to 8 pm, ticketing any traffic violations that could endanger bike riders or pedestrians, regardless of who commits them. Standard protocol applies — ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limit lines, at least for that one day, so you’re not the one who gets a ticket.
That’s more like it. A new bill in the Montana legislature would clarify that ebikes are not motor vehicles, mopeds or off-highway vehicles, and should be allowed anywhere regular bicycles are allowed.
This is why people keep dying on our streets. We mentioned yesterday that an alleged drunken hit-and-run driver was sentenced to up to 15 years behind bars — actually 20 — for killing a 13-year old boy riding his bike; now it turns it he had five previous DUIs, yet could still walk after less than one year with good behavior. Just another example of authorities keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late.
Road.cc revisits some of the best, worst and weirdest bicycle patents, from Shimano’s 14-speed sprocket to Google’s human flypaper designed to prevent serious injuries by making bike riders and pedestrians stick to the cars that hit them. No, really.
A new study from the UK shows as little as six to nine minutes of vigorous activity — like riding your fast or uphill — is enough to keep your brain working at peak efficiency.
An unidentified 16-year old is facing life in prison after he was convicted of stabbing a Perth, Australia man to death in a dispute over a stolen bicycle; the victim was attempting to reclaim a bike taken from a ten-year old boy.
January 24, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on CicLAvia releases calendar of 8 events across LA, more from Saturday’s City Hall Die-In, and LA hip hop history bike tour
April 15: Mid-City Meets Pico Union presented by Metro
May 21: CicLAmini – Watts presented by Metro
June 18: South LA – Vermont Ave presented by Metro
August 20: Koreatown Meets Hollywood presented by Metro
September 17: CicLAmini – North Hollywood
October 15: Heart of LA presented by Metro
December 3: South LA – Leimert Park Meets Historic South Central presented by Metro
The group also announced an additional event on February 10th, when Los Angeles Ale Works will release their new seek-la-VEE-ah West Coast India Pale Ale at a CicLAvia season launch party and fundraiser at Ivy Station Complex, Culver City, during the 5-10 pm Night Market.
So now you can drink CicLAvia while you ride, walk, scoot, skate or roll it.
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As we mentioned yesterday, Saturday’s die-in at Los Angeles City Hall, hosted by a long list of advocacy groups, protested the worst year on LA streets in recent memory, with 312 people needlessly killed in the City of Angels.
Although you’d think this city would have made more than enough angels by now, since even one death from traffic violence is one too many.
Here are just a few faces and images from the day.
Organizers distributed 312 white flowers to symbolize the 312 lives needlessly lost to traffic violence.
Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE) Founder Damian Kevitt, holding the three flowers on the left, led the day’s events.
From center to right, California Assembly Member Laura Friedman, LA Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, state Senator Anthony Portantino, and Streets For All’s Michael Schneider; my new friend Max reclines at lower right
Participants lay still for 312 seconds of silence in honor of the 312 lives needlessly lost
California Assembly Member Laura Friedman, LA Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, state Senator Anthony Portantino stand above Damian Kevitt at the mic
Although apparently, you can also do the tours by car, if you insist.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A New York columnist says the city could make a fortune just fining bicyclists for moving and equipment violations, including riding backwards — which is physically impossible — and insists that ebikes somehow aren’t bicycles. Just wait until someone tells him about cars and the things their operators do, including driving backwards. And I suppose electric cars aren’t real cars, either.
No bias here, too. A British Columbia man who claims to be a bike rider blasts what he calls the city’s most disruptive protected bike lanes, blames “woke” politicians for them, and claims no one ever uses them. So a columnist went out in the middle of the day and counted 13 bicyclists in just ten minutes.
Axiosexamines the ever-expanding American pickup truck, which has continued to increase in size, power and capacity over the past four decades, even as buyers use it more for shopping and dropping the kids off at soccer practice, and less for hauling anything but ass. And which presents ever increasing danger to anyone outside of them.
Streetsblog reports that more children under 18 were killed on New York streets last year than any other time since Vision Zero was adopted 2015; the site also reports the NYPD is a lot better at solving hit-and-runs in white neighborhoods than in communities of color.
Police in Charlottesville, Virginia say charges against a driver in a fatal crash will depend on whether the victim was riding his bike across the street or walking it; one means the victim was operating a vehicle and had to obey the rules of the road, while the other makes him a pedestrian who the driver had to yield to. Yet either way, the victim is still dead and the driver still killed him.
Seriously? Key West, Florida has put a proposed ebike ban on hold in hopes the state will take action. Because the risks posed by ebikes are so much greater than the ones from cars, evidently.
Sad news from the UK, where the two bike riders killed by a hit-and-run driver we mentioned yesterday turned out to be a father riding with his 16-year old son; the 37-year old alleged driver was arrested after abandoning his car.
It was a split verdict in the trial of two men charged with robbing Mark Cavendish and his family at knifepoint in a brutal 2021 home invasion; one of the defendants was found not guilty, while 31-year-old Romario Henry was convicted on two robbery counts. A third man had previously pleaded guilty, while two others remain at large. As usual, read the story on Yahoo if Bicycling blocks you.
January 23, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Die-in driven from news by mass shooting, LA Vision Zero a “totally unfunny self-parody,” and voters say no to De León
Three-hundred-twelve lives needlessly lost to traffic violence.
Most of them bike riders and pedestrians, many lower income, as Los Angeles set a record for the most traffic deaths in at least the last two decades.
Yet almost as heartbreaking as the lives lost to traffic violence in the City of Angels last year was the way Saturday’s die-in at City Hall to protest the deaths was shoved out of the headlines by yet another mass shooting.
The protest, which drew around one hundred participants, appeared to be covered by a number of news outlets.
And even they couldn’t be bothered to identify California Senator Anthony Portantino as the prone bicyclist shown gripping his handlebars in the story’s top photo.
Oops.
When your lead photo shows a state senator participating in a large protest, maybe it would be nice to identify him. Just saying.
The brief story attempts to put LA’s unacceptable rate of traffic deaths in perspective.
Yet somehow fails to mention that even one death is one too many.
How does that compare to other cities across the state, or even nationally? LA’s 312 traffic fatalities equate to just over eight deaths per 100,000, nearly twice that of San Francisco (4.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2022), but fewer than San Diego, which saw just less than nine traffic deaths per 100,000 people in 2022. In Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago, there were roughly 7.8 traffic deaths per 100,000 people in 2022.
It ends with an all-too-brief mention of just what the assembled protestors were demanding.
Protesters organizing Saturday, want the city to do more to help curb traffic deaths in LA. They’re asking Mayor Karen Bass to declare a state of emergency on traffic violence; for more funding for the LA Department of Transportation and initiatives like VisionZero; and the passage of legislation that would allow for automated speed enforcement on dangerous roads.
“Throwing only $50.6 million at road safety issues in a city this big, especially considering how many lives are being lost, is a joke,” SAFE’s report concludes.
All of which was great.
But in addition to failing to identify Portantino, the station also failed to mention that Assembly Transportation Chair Laura Friedman took part, as did CD3 Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.
Not to mention leaders from Streets Are For Everyone, Families For Safe Streets, Streets For All, LA Walks and BikeLA — formerly the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition — among others.
Even then, the story was gone by morning, as LA’s news outlets went with wall-to-wall coverage of the Monterey Park shootings.
Leaving the reaction to the city’s horrendous death toll forgotten on the newsroom floor, just a blip in the weekend news.
I’ll have more tomorrow, after I have a chance to sift through all the many photos I took of the event.
At center is this photo, with the red bandana, is very good boy Max, who joined his owner in playing dead along with everyone else.
The top photo shows Assembly Member Laura Friedman addressing the crowd, flanked by state Sen. Anthony Portantino; behind her are LA Councilmember Bob Blumenfield and Streets For All founder Michael Schneider.
Correction: Apparently suffering a major brain cramp, I somehow originally misidentified Streets For All’s Michael Schneider in the above caption as Michael MacDonald, evidently mistaking him for a member of the Doobie Brothers. He is, to the best of my knowledge, not a Doobie nor a rock star, but a street safety star instead. My apologies.
………
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times Letters Editor Paul Thornton introduced responses to LA’s rising toll of traffic violence with a headline calling the city’s Vision Zero failure a “totally unfunny self-parody.”
All along, the city’s primary tool to achieving its Vision Zero goals has been redesigning roads to reduce vehicle speeds and allocate more and safer spaces to cyclists and pedestrians. What we’ve gotten since 2015 are bike lanes removed from street widening projects, quashed “complete street” proposals, a thriving Lincoln Heights street market shut down by the city, and a reopened 6th Street Viaduct used as a drag strip. Something tells me we’ll be much worse off on Vision Zero in 2025 than we were in 2015.
Although naturally, one letter writer felt the need to remind us that streets are for cars, and everyone and everything else doesn’t belong there.
The LA Times is reporting that CD14 voters have turned sharply against incumbent Councilmember Kevin de León in the wake of his comments on a racist and otherwise offensive recording that has already led to the resignation of the former council president and one of LA’s most powerful labor leaders.
The turnaround comes just two years after those same voters overwhelmingly installed De León to replace disgraced Jose Huizar, who pled guilty to racketeering last week.
…By a wide margin, voters said De León puts his own political self-interest ahead of the people he represents. Even reliable supporters who voted for him in the past have lost faith, the poll found.
Only 23% of the voters surveyed approved of the job De León is doing, compared with 48% who disapproved, the poll found. Just over half think he should resign, compared with fewer than a quarter who want him to stay in office and 18% who were undecided; 9% did not answer the question.
If a recall were to qualify for the ballot — an effort to qualify one is currently circulating petitions — 58% would support recalling him from office, compared with 25% who would be opposed and 17% undecided, the survey found.
That comes after De León was heard on the leaked recording comparing the Black adopted son of former Councilmember Mike Bonin to a Luis Vuitton purse, and discussed how Latino councilmembers could mute the influence of their Black peers on the council, as well as their constituents.
Yet De León continues to ignore calls to resign, apparently thinking there is some pathway that will allow him to rehabilitate his image before facing the voters again in 2024.
Or sooner, if the recall petitions currently circling in his district qualify for the ballot.
De León had shown promise when it came to supporting bike and safety improvements in his district, including selecting the resident-designed Beautiful Boulevard option for the NoHo to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit route through Eagle Rock.
It’s time for De León to read the writing on the wall — and in the pages of the Times — and resign.
CD14 deserves a leader who can more effectively represent all the people, including those of us who travel on two wheels.
………
This area has long been one of the most unforgiving areas for bicycling in all of the Los Angeles areas.
Although the long-delayed Mark Bixby Memorial Bicycle Pedestrian Path over the new Long Beach International Gateway Bridge, better known as the replacement for the Gerald Desmond Bridge, should help.
Once they finally get around to opening it.
Meanwhile, this video of trying to find a safe route around the Port of Los Angeles plays like a one-man Marx Brothers routine.
Proving that corruption allegations extend far beyond LA City Hall.
Not surprising people who oppose street safety (if it would inconvenience drivers) are not honest in other areas@StreetsblogLA@CalBike@bikinginla Maybe the CA Bar Assn can help us remove someone who blocks bike/ped safety. https://t.co/5y1U4J5DVl
Streets For All is calling for more support for the heavy rail option to extend the Metro train system through the Sepulveda Pass, including a Metro station on the UCLA campus, at an in-person meeting on Tuesday and a virtual meeting on Thursday. Bel Air residents are demanding an impractical monorail through the center of the 405 because it wouldn’t, you know, inconvenience the rich people.
VeloNewshas more on the nonprofit Bahati Foundation, formed by Compton’s own former national crit champ Rahsaan Bahati to change the lives of underprivileged kids through bikes.
Happy Lunar New Year, whatever language you celebrate in! And my sympathy and prayers to all the victims of the Monterey Park shooting and their loved ones. May the new year finally bring an end to both traffic and gun violence.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
If you’ve been reading this site for awhile, you probably know I’m not a fan of sharrows.
I’ve described them in the past as an attempt by city officials to thin the bicyclist herd, with the arrows there simply to help drivers improve their aim.
The only benefits I can ascribe to the damn things are a) they show bike riders where to position themselves to control the lane — if they’re positioned correctly — and b) as a wayfinding device to help guide people on bicycles to a given location.
But in terms of safety and protecting bicyclists’ right to the road, they’re less than worthless.
But he became disillusioned when he saw how they worked — or rather, didn’t work — in practice.
I was wrong.
It turns out that motorists really don’t like to wait behind someone on a bike, regardless of the paint on the street. Even Oakland’s experiment with the so-called “super sharrow,” where the bicycle path of travel is painted solid green, isn’t enough to get people on bikes to comfortably “take the lane.” Sharrow or no sharrow, most people on bikes dangerously hug the edge of the roadway, squeezing themselves into the door zone to avoid blocking car traffic.
Simply put, sharrows don’t do what we hoped they would. Studies back up that claim.
It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the while thing.
Because maybe now we can finally drive a stake through the bike infrastructure from hell.
The LA Times reports Huizar is admitting to extorting at least $1.5 million in bribes from developers. He has agreed to a sentence of between nine and 13 years behind bars.
Huizar was a driving force behind many of the bike and safety improvements in Downtown Los Angeles, and was a favorite of the bicycling community before his downfall after his offices were raided by FBI agents in 2018.
Nice to see the new CD13 councilmember taking traffic violence in the City of Angels seriously.
That's why last month, our team introduced a motion to:
1⃣Identify the top 10 most dangerous locations for pedestrians in CD13 2⃣Order a list of bike projects that can be completed within 18 months 3⃣Find new ways to improve our bus network and sheltershttps://t.co/WQ2aXuk8yL
Italian filmmaking great Federico Fellini was one of us.
Born on this day, January 20: Federico Fellini (1920-1993), considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, shown here riding on the set of Amarcord (1973). Happy #bicyclebirthday, Federico!#BOTDpic.twitter.com/gFfjGhMNJs
Life is cheap in New Zealand, where an off-duty cop who killed a man riding a bike in a drunken crash was sentenced to a nine-month vacation at home home detention. Although the website seems to think her real punishment will be a lifetime of shame and humiliation. Uh, sure. Let’s go with that.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Hermosa Beach plans barricades to force bike riders to walk near the pier, as speed data shows that people ignore the ridiculously low 8 mph speed limit on The Strand, riding at an average speed of 11 mph. I can attest that it’s difficult to ride that slowly through there on a road bike. And how do they expect people to obey the law if they don’t have speedometers on their bikes?
Bicycling asks if certified pre-owned bikes are worth the extra cost. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t appear to be available on Yahoo if the magazine blocks you. Which it probably will unless you’re a subscriber.
Road.cc takes a look at the iconic yet bizarre Flying Gate bike frame, with its upright stay post and severed seat post; the British-made steel frame has been in continuous production for nearly 90 years.
January 19, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Reseda bike rider dies of apparent natural causes; and eligibility reduced for CA ebike rebates, still no start date set
Despite initial reports of a traffic collision, authorities believe the victim collapsed on their own, and was beyond medical help by the time paramedics arrived.
Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, calls for volunteers for Saturday’s big die-in at LA City Hall to protest traffic violence and deaths in the City of Angels.
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But it there was a bike path there, it would be closed.
Born on this day, January 19, 1946: Dolly Parton, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actress, author, & humanitarian. And, judging from this photo, she's someone who's not worried about her dress getting caught in her spokes. Happy #bicyclebirthday, Dolly!#BOTDpic.twitter.com/FvcpxiI1I5
CS4 is a game changer! Hats off to @willnorman@TfL for pushing this through. Was Baltic yesterday but great to see so many still braving the cold. pic.twitter.com/TeXlzr5QCg
WeHoVille encouraged “residents and renters who’ve voiced their dismay” over proposed bike lanes on Santa Monica Blvd and Fountain Ave to make themselves heard at last night’s meeting to present a feasibility study on the bike lanes. Because evidently, their belief that the bike lanes are infeasible should outweigh whatever the study shows.
Cycling Tipsprofiles Compton’s own Rahsaan Bahati, after the Black former national cycling champ founded his Bahati Foundation to get more people on bikes who look like him.
They get it. The Houston Chronicle says it may seem counterintuitive to slow traffic and remove lanes on a major Houston street, but it makes perfect sense when you consider the purpose is to save lives. Hint: Try stopping the page as soon as it loads to get around the paper’s paywall.
Mark Cavendish will get one more chance to set the record for most stage wins at the Tour de France after signing with Astana-Qazaqstan; the 37-year old pro from the Isle of Man is currently tied with the legendary Eddy Merckx at 34 stage wins. As it turns out, I have something in common with Cav, since the Isle of Man is my family’s ancestral home, as well.
Although the fact that they were riding against traffic wouldn’t matter if the impatient driver hadn’t decided to use the bike lane as an illegal traffic bypass lane.
The victims, identified only as a 41-year old man and a 33-year old woman, both from Upland, were riding in the bike lane on Foothill Blvd and Etiwanda Ave around 8:20 pm.
That’s when 23-year old Fontana resident Robert Gubany allegedly swerved into the bike lane to bypass backed-up traffic, apparently without checking to make sure it was clear, and slammed head-on into the two victims.
The woman died at scene; her companion died after being taken to a local hospital.
According to The Daily Bulletin both victims were homeless; the paper also reports that the woman is 42-years old, rather than 33.
Gabney continued driving without stopping, until he was involved in another crash later that night.
He was arrested at the scene of the second crash on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving under the influence of alcohol.
Hopefully, prosecutors will add a charge of felony hit-and-run resulting in death.
Anyone with information is urged to call San Bernardino County Sheriff’s investigators at 909/477-2800.
This is just the second and third bicycling fatalities in Southern California this year, and the first two that I’m aware of in San Bernardino County.
They’re also the first two bike riders killed by a hit-and-run driver in Southern California in 2023.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victims and all their loved ones.
At least until you reach the bottom of the story, by which time most Times readers have already moved on to Marmaduke.
Instead of reporting objectively, the paper settles for reprinting the long list of complaints from Orange County’s anti-ebike crowd, who seem to consider them the worst tech advance since Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Here’s how the paper frames the story, starting with a longtime Newport Beach resident who compares the local boardwalk to the 405 Freeway.
Three decades ago, Levine moved to what some refer to as the city’s “war zone,” a nickname given not because of crime but for the reputation of summertime rowdiness along the boardwalk, which now includes an abundance of electric bicycles. The strip’s 8 mph speed limit means nothing to some of these people, he said.
He’s watched people get mowed down, dogs hit and too many near misses to count, he said. City leaders for years have studied how to manage the proliferation of e-bikes along the route but have stopped short of banning them.
It’s been a war zone for decades. But ebikes have somehow ruined everything.
Sure, that makes sense.
Then the paper moves on to repeating the same tired and previously discredited stats we’ve been hearing for months from PR staffers at the local hospital trying to fan the flames of an anti-ebike pyre.
During the first 10 months of last year, staffers at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo documented 198 e-bike injuries. Doctors saw 113 injuries in 2021 and just 34 in 2020, according to data provided by the hospital.
Between January and October of last year, 78 of the 198 people who suffered an injury on an e-bike were not wearing helmets and 99 suffered some type of head injury, data show.
“My feeling about the whole situation with e-bikes is that we got a device a little bit too fast, and the culture is not completely set for it,” said Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital…
Where to begin.
Evidently, some people who got injured riding ebikes weren’t wearing bike helmets. But most were.
And half of the people who were injured riding an ebike suffered a head injury. Which may or may not have been the 40% who weren’t wearing helmets.
It may come as a shock to the kind and caring people at Providence that some people who ride regular bikes don’t wear helmets, either. And some of them get hurt, too, though not always with head injuries.
Which is just one of the great, inexplicable mysteries of bicycling, that some people who don’t wear bike helmets don’t suffer head injuries, and some who do, do.
Then there’s the exponential increase in ebike injuries. Which just happens to coincide with the exponential increase in ebikes.
That doesn’t mean ebikes are dangerous. Just that a lot of people are using them now.
In fact, I’d consider 198 injuries a relatively small amount, given the untold thousands of Orange County residents who’ve adopted them.
Lastly, let’s consider the question of speed, which has apparently gotten “a little bit too fast.”
Under California law, which has been copied in most states, Class 1 and 2 ebikes, whether ped-assist or throttle-driven, are limited to 20 mph.
Which virtually anyone could top with a decent effort on a decent road bike. Never mind today’s lightweight, technological marvels engineered for every higher speeds.
The bikes, I mean, not the riders. Though some of them have been engineered for speed, too.
Yet somehow, those bikes aren’t considered too fast. And no one has banned 27 speed carbon-fiber bikes or their spandex-clad riders from the boardwalk.
And just wait until the good doctors at Providence learn how fast cars can go, and the damage they cause.
In fact, my stats show 12 people were killed by drivers while riding bikes in Orange County last year, a drop from the obscene 17 killed in 2021.
Ebike riders killed somewhere around zero in Orange County over that same time period, to the best of my knowledge.
So which of these is actually dangerous?
Then there’s the way the paper takes about halfway through the story, after fanning the flames of ebike haters, to even mention that there are different categories of ebikes, and dozens of different types.
And even then, fails to mention that the faster Class 3 ebikes are banned from bike trails that aren’t attached to roadways, beachfront or otherwise.
Or that even people on regular bikes struggle to meet those ridiculously low 8 mph speed limits without falling over.
But once again, no one is seriously suggesting that regular should be banned.
The key, as they finally get around to mentioning just before the end of the story, is behavior.
Someone who is a jerk in a car — or on a skateboard, or with a shopping cart — is just as likely to be a jerk on an ebike.
And a kid who has never been taught to ride a bike safely — electric or otherwise — is going to ride a bike or bike like a, well, kid.
Just what they’re riding doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
So let’s put away the torches and pitchforks, and learn to live with all those scary ebike monsters. Because really, they’re not bad, just new and different.
If you’re a pedestrian or cyclist in Los Angeles, you’re probably used to hearing about traffic fatalities in our community. But 2022 was a record-breaking year — in the worst way. Last year, there were 309 traffic fatalities in LA, breaking the 300 mark for the first time in more than twenty years. This is a staggering increase of almost 30% from 2020.
These statistics are tragedies in and of themselves, but they’re made even worse by the fact that pedestrians and cyclists are impacted the most by every measure. Cyclist fatalities alone went up 40% between 2020 and 2022.
We can’t keep living like this. Join us on the steps of City Hall on Saturday, January 21st at 9:30am for a die-in protest. It’s time for our electeds to start paying attention.
They make the same argument I’ve been making for years — bike helmets are designed to protect against relatively low speed falls, not high impact crashes with motor vehicles.
Which is not to say you shouldn’t wear one.
The overwhelming majority of bicycling injuries result from falls, not crashes. Which is exactly what they’re made for.
I still credit my helmet with saving my grey matter, and possibly my life, during the Infamous Beachfront Bee Incident, and never ride without one.
But they should always be considered the last line of defense when everything else fails.
You’re a lot better off not getting hit by a car and its driver in the first place, rather than count on your helmet to save your life if you do.
An alleged drunk driver in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood backs through a crowd of people trying to stop him from getting behind the wheel, then takes off, leaving injured bystanders strewn in his wake.
Drunk driver in Tesla nearly runs over crowd of people and takes off in Silver Lake pic.twitter.com/DZbw54h50E
An South LA man apparently angry about his pending divorce decided to take it out on his wife’s house, and all the cars in the neighborhood.
But sure, tell us again about those OC ebikes.
1/2 Violent video shows when a man in South LA crashes a dump truck into his wife's home. Patricia Dunn said the driver was her husband and they are going through a divorce. The story today at 4 p.m. @ABC7pic.twitter.com/4XRaP1T6L0
@roadcc Here's a longer version, nothing happened between us before, overtake was good, I was just a bit disappointed in the MGIF before the junction. Did think about not telling him about the rolling car but not fair to involve anyone else. pic.twitter.com/h0sU65NMGk
Apparently, not even Congresspeople are safe from traffic violence, as Oregon Representative Suzanne Bonamici and her husband were struck by a driver as they were crossing a Portland street Friday evening. Although CNN somehow manages to get through the entire story without mentioning that there was someone behind the wheel.
This is who we share the country with. Wyoming, the state where even Liz Cheney wasn’t considered conservative enough, continued its race to the bottom when state legislators proposed banning electric vehicles in a childish tantrum to protect the gas and oil industries.
Young Miami bike riders conducted their annual MLK Day Wheels Up Guns Down ride. But somehow, all the local press could focus on was the usual heavy-handed police response, and the 58 felony and 11 misdemeanor arrests — not the hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful riders and their message of hope.
Sad news from the Netherlands, where 40-year old retired Dutch pro Lieuwe Westra was found dead, after suffering from depression for several years; nicknamed The Beast, Westra won stages at Paris-Nice, the Tour of California and Critérium du Dauphiné, as well as winning the Tour of Denmark and Driedaagse De Panne.
UCI is telling team cars to back off, instead of giving their riders an extra boost during time trials by changing the airflow behind the rider.
Former Team Sky and British Cycling doctor Richard Freeman has formally lost his medical license as a result of his involvement in a doping scandal, when he was caught ordering testosterone gel for an unnamed male cyclist.
