Update: Man riding bicycle killed by two hit-and-run drivers in Northridge; nearly 40% of all 2024 SoCal bike deaths hit-and-runs

September 21, 2024 / / 12 comments

Once again, a heartless coward left a helpless bike rider lying injured in the street for someone else to kill.

And someone did.

And that one fled the scene, too.

Multiple sources are reporting that a person on a bicycle, publicly identified only as a man in his early 50s, was struck from behind by the driver of a gray Honda around 9:15 pm Thursday on Lindley Ave near Napa Street in LA’s Northridge neighborhood.

He was thrown into the street, landing back in the right lane, where he was hit again by the driver of a gray pickup.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Both drivers fled the scene without stopping to render aid or identify themselves, as required by law.

Witnesses reported that several vehicles had struck the victim, but video from the scene showed only two drivers actually hit him, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

Anyone with information is urged to call the LAPD’s Valley Traffic Division at 818/644-8025 or 818/644-8117, or call 877/527-3247 after hours or on the weekend.

As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for any fatal hit-and-run in the City of Los Angeles, which presumably would apply to information leading to the conviction of either of these drivers.

This is at least the 37th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 11th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; it’s also the sixth that we know about in the City of Los Angeles.

Fourteen of those SoCal deaths — over 38% — have now come at the hands of heartless cowards who didn’t have the basic human decency to stick around afterward.

According to the Los Angeles Times, nearly one third of all traffic deaths in Los Angeles last year were hit-and-runs; no word on how many of those drivers were eventually arrested and charged, let alone convicted.

Update: The following was posted to Nextdoor in Northridge Village on Friday. 

Did anyone last night after 9 pm possibly see a man on a bike get killed by a hit and run driver near Lindley at Parthenia? That was my friend Dan. They didn’t stop. He was coming back from the Dollar store. He was a father and son and a good friend. He was on his bike. Please if anyone saw anything or knows anything. At least he deserves some justice. Just to hit him and leave him to die is too much.

Update 2: The victim has been identified as Danny Oerlemans. 

My deepest sympathy and prayers for Danny Oerlemans and his loved ones.

Thanks to Glenn Bailey for the heads-up. 

 

Category: Injuries and Fatalities / Tags: , , , , ,

Move along, nothing to see here — giving up on the week edition

September 18, 2024 / / 4 comments

I give up.

After waking up the morning after my fall with extra added pain and stiffness, and a barely functional right arm, I’m giving up and shutting things down for the rest of the week.

Hopefully things will improve and I’ll be back next week.

Category: General /

Move along, nothing to see here — Emergency Room edition

September 17, 2024 / / 4 comments

No new post today.

I took a bad fall while walking yesterday, landing on my surgically repaired shoulder and banging my head against a concrete wall.

All of which led to a six hour stint in the emergency room from hell.

They tell me I’m okay, but I’m in a lot of pain and not up to working tonight. Hopefully I’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep, and we’ll be back tomorrow to catch up on what we missed.

And yes, I’m getting damn tired of this.

Category: General /

“Silent majority” claimed to oppose WeHo’s planned Fountain Ave bike lanes, and San Diego makes street safety top priority

September 17, 2024 / / One comment
Just 105 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

……..

No bias here.

WeHo Online’s Steve Martin — no, not the comedian — continues his campaign against the planned safety improvements on Fountain Ave through West Hollywood, insisting there is a “silent majority” rising up in opposition to the plan, despite an informal online survey showing it was supported by two-thirds of respondents.

Then again, he complains that people from outside the city were allowed to respond to it, as if only people who live on Fountain Ave ever use the street.

He also takes issue with a perceive lack of outreach, even though those of us who were paying attention were aware of the plan to remove traffic lanes and street parking to widen sidewalks and add protected bike lanes at least two years ago. As were all those people who took the time to respond to that online survey he disparages.

But they don’t count, evidently.

Then there’s his complaint that Bike LA, formerly the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, will assist with outreach to prepare residents for the changes, calling them “hardly an unbiased party.” And adding that the group will work in conjunction with Streets For All, and “will be able to skewer whatever conversations take place.”

As if merely explaining a project that has already been approved by the city council requires any actual “skewering.”

The city council was scheduled to vote last night to accept a $5 million grant from the California Air Resources Board, aka CARB — and yes, he even gets that name wrong in his sputtering anger — to help pay for the life-saving changes on Fountain.

Let’s hope they had the sense to say yes. And that the approval will finally put an end to this nonsense.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

Graphic for a virtual workshop to discuss plans for Fountain Ave from October, 2022.

 

………

That’s more like it.

The San Diego City Council passed a resolution making street safety the city’s highest transportation priority. Which means it will finally outweigh other considerations, such as street parking and level of service.

Or should, anyway.

Which would no doubt cause apoplexy to the afore-mentioned “silent majority” in West Hollywood. Not to mention in here Los Angeles, where the ability to go “zoom zoom” to your heart’s content is taken as a God-given right, consequences be damned.

Except for all those people who voted for Measure HLA by a similar — wait for it — two-thirds margin, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, that online survey wasn’t so wrong after all.

………

Los Angeles opened a nearly five-mile segment of a bike path paralleling San Fernando Road in the east San Fernando Valley.

The new segment combines with an existing pathway to provide nearly ten miles of continuous off-street riding from the Burbank Airport to Sylmar.

………

It’s now 271 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 39 full months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

………

Local  

Streetsblog offers an open thread and photos from Sunday’s Lincoln Heights CicLAmini.

Los Angeles Magazine says Venice’s “Bike Whisperer” is just one of the many Los Angeles street vendors benefitting from the city’s new rules.

 

State

Congratulations to Streetsblog California on their 10th anniversary.

A pilot project will allow bikes on seven miles of trails on Marin’s Mount Tamalpais, regarded as the birthplace of mountain biking, after being banned for four decades.

The steady drumbeat of sad news from Northern California continues, where a 53-year old Ukiah man was killed when he hit something on the trail he was riding and was thrown from his ebike, striking his head; police say he was wearing a helmet, but didn’t have it secured properly.

 

National

Good question. Velo says that good bike parking is inexpensive, easy to implement and encourages more bicycling, so why is it so hard to find?

Rivendell Bicycle Works founder and bicycle designer Grant Petersen celebrates the joys of riding slowly and leaving your spandex at home.

It’s been seven years since someone shot Colorado mountain biker Tim Watkins, leaving his body next to the trail he was riding near the town of Monument, and police still haven’t found his killer or figured out why he was shot.

Safety efforts in Chicago are paying off, as the city has seen just one bicycling death this year — which advocates correctly note is still one too many.

Vermont opened a new 39-mile adaptive trail offering 6,000 feet of vertical gain and loss, the first leg of a planned 485-mile mountain bike trail stretching from Massachusetts to the Canadian border.

New York’s Washington Bridge will get a new bus lane and two-way protected bike lane connecting Upper Manhattan to the Bronx over the Harlem River.

Miami motorcyclist Kadel Piedrahita was found guilty of shooting and killing Alex Palencia in 2019 as Palencia rode in a peloton with several other bicyclists; prosecutors argued that the shooting stemmed from a feud that had developed days earlier.

 

International

British active transportation nonprofit Sustrans called for an end to bicycling inequality, after a recent report found that 38 percent of low income or unemployed UK residents want to ride bikes, but are priced out by high costs and a lack of discount offers. Even though you can buy a decent used bike for around a hundred bucks on ether side of the Atlantic.

The London Evening Standard recommends the best pedal systems for roadies.

British bicyclists raised the equivalent of more than $264,000 with a 390-mile ride from Paris to Suffolk in honor of the 18 members of an English rugby team killed in a plane crash outside Paris 50 years ago.

 

Competitive Cycling

The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will conflict with the final week of the Tour de France, forcing the world’s premier stage race to move from its traditional July date, or making the sport’s top riders choose between the two.

 

Finally…

If you were planning to ride London’s biggest annual charity bile ride next year, your 2025 calendar just opened up. When you’re carrying a baggie of coke on your bike, put a damn light on it, already.

And that feeling when you catch bicycle while magnet fishing.

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

City Council unanimously orders report on cleaning protected bike lanes, and killer of Gaudreau brothers had .087 BAC

September 16, 2024 / / Comments Off on City Council unanimously orders report on cleaning protected bike lanes, and killer of Gaudreau brothers had .087 BAC
Just 106 days left until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

……..

I neglected to thank Erik G and Robert L last week for their generous donations to help out with my shoulder issues, and keep this site coming your way now that I’m back to work. 

Donations of any amount are always welcome, whatever the reason. 

And thank you both.

Photo by Richard Rosenthal; no word on whether the city will clear this type of debris. 

………

The Los Angeles City Council did what it does best, ordering LADOT and the city administrative officer to report back on what it would take to sweep protected bike lanes on a regular basis.

Which doesn’t mean they’ll ever actually do it, of course.

The motion, which was passed unanimously, requires them to report on both the equipment and staffing required to sweep the city’s protected bike lanes every other week. The agencies were also ordered to report on the best practices to maintain protected bike lanes, and what the city does now.

Which clearly ain’t much.

In fact, the city has just two street sweepers designed for protected bike lanes, and only uses them on a quarterly basis — as anyone who rides them regularly can probably tell.

If that sounds cynical, it’s because we’ve been here before. The city has a habit of ordering reports that never come back, and never get acted on if they do.

In fact, we’re still waiting for the city’s “much better” version of Measure HLA, which was supposed to come back to the council long before HLA was overwhelmingly passed by the voters.

So it’s a positive step forward — but only if we stay on top of them and make sure the city follows through on it.

………

The driver who killed the hockey playing Gaudreau brothers as they rode their bikes on a rural New Jersey highway was legally drunk after the crash. But not as drunk as he made it sound.

Despite telling cops he had five or six beers before getting behind the wheel, and had an open container in his car, 43-year old Sean M. Higgins had a blood alcohol level of .087, just above the .08 legal limit.

And even though his attorney described Higgins as an “empathetic individual” and “a loving father of two daughters” who just made a horrible decision that night, prosecutors said he had history of alleged road rage and aggressive driving.

Higgins is being held without bail, charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle.

He faces up to 20 years if he’s convicted, and would have to serve at least 85% of his sentence.

………

Megan Lynch forwards a crowdfunding campaign for an Australian father who’s at risk of losing his leg after he was hit by a red light-running driver while riding an ebike.

Yet the original article inexplicably ends with a section on the rising rate of ebike injuries — even though his injuries had nothing to do with the kind of bicycle he was riding.

………

It’s now 270 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 39 full months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

Meanwhile, Pasadena is back with its second round of ebike vouchers, offering city residents up to $1,000 to buy an ebike from local dealers.

And that deafening silence you hear is Los Angeles not even considering a similar program.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.

A man in Rochester NY was critically injured when he was intentionally run down by a driver while riding his bike, after he argued with the driver.

A proposal in the British House of Lords would require visible license numbers for all bike riders and take points off their driver’s licenses for any moving violations, while others compared bicyclists to a plague of mosquitos, and want to chip riders — or at least their bikes — like their cats.

A British man was pushed off his bicycle while riding to work by a “yob” who leaned out of a passing van to attack him, suffering facial injuries, bruised arms and legs, and a swollen knee.

An Aussie parliamentarian wants to make wearing hi-viz mandatory for all bicyclists and scooter riders, rather than just requiring drivers to put their damn phones down and pay attention. And there’s no similar requirement to make drivers dress up like clowns

………

Local  

Streets Are Fore Everyone, aka SAFE, reports Glendale narrowly approved major traffic lane configuration and bicycle infrastructure improvements to La Crescenta Ave.

The co-captain of the WeHo East Neighborhood Watch Association is denying that a letter purporting to come from his organization, which was used to obtain more than $8 million in funding to fix sidewalks and install protected bike lanes on Fountain Ave from the California Air Resources Board, was actually written by the group and represented their wishes.

WeHo Online complains that no one who actually lives on Fountain is on the bike lane steering committee.

 

State

A 1.8-mile section of the Ventura River Trail between Ventura and Ojai got a $5 million makeover, including a spiffy new frog mural.

Sad news from Visalia, where a man riding a mountain bike was killed when he was rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver.

More sad news comes from Fresno, where a 41-year old man was killed in a collision while riding salmon on Highway 41.

And still more sad news, this time from Sacramento, where a woman riding a bicycle died in the hospital after she was found lying in the roadway; police don’t know yet if she fell or was the victim of a hit-and-run.

About damn time. Sacramento is considering declaring a road safety state of emergency to free up more resources to confront the rise in pedestrian and bike rider deaths. Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles, we had a record level of pedestrian and bicycling deaths last year, and no one in city government seems to give a damn.

 

National

That 1970’s era drop bar bicycle in John Deere green could actually be one.

Gear Patrol considers whether the new bespoke, 3D-printed titanium bike now taking orders from No. 22 Bicycle Company is the future of bicycling.

Kindhearted Colorado cops surprised a girl with a new bicycle for her seventh birthday, after officers tried and failed to fix her old one.

 

International

Momentum offers a guide to buying your first foldie, and says cargo bikes are better than minivans for the perfect family vehicle.

The leader of a London borough council is tired of abandoned dockless ebikes littering the streets and teenagers zooming along the sidewalks, and wants to have all Lime bikes crushed. Just wait until he learns about all the cars blocking sidewalks and bike lanes, and drivers zooming down the streets.

The owner of a bespoke London bike shop complained about brazen bike thieves targeting the shop with four “Mission Impossible-style” burglary attempts in just the last seven months.

The overwhelming majority of Londoners support the city’s Low Traffic Neighborhoods, but also believe it should be mandatory to use a bike lane if one is available.

Bicyclists in Scotland are complaining that the “birthplace of the bicycle” isn’t exactly bicycle friendly. Then again, there’s also some question whether it’s really their birthplace.

A Welsh woman will spend a well-deserved 45 months behind bars for fleeing the scene after running a bike-riding man down from behind, and selling her car days later to cover up the crime; the victim had to have his leg amputated due to his injuries. And yes, that sentence should have been a hell of a lot longer.

The Guardian’s Peter Walker describes the “five pedaling perils” every UK bicyclist has to watch out for. Which pretty much apply to every bike rider, almost everywhere.

A quartet of British and Dutch marines rode their bikes 360 miles from England to the Netherlands to celebrate the 360th anniversary of the Royal Marines.

More proof that bike riders deal with the same problems everywhere, as bicyclists in Baku, Azerbaijan are complaining about the “incomprehensible” design of the city’s bike lanes, arguing that they weren’t professionally installed.

In a truly heartrending story, someone stole a New Zealand man bike after he rode it the length of the country to raise money for charity; now he’s dying of cancer, and just wants to find it again so he can ride it one more time before he dies.

 

Competitive Cycling

Three-time Tour de France champ Tadej Pogačar prepared for next week’s road world championships by winning the 13th Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal with a dominant solo breakaway.

Samoa named its first-ever national cycling team, with a goal of competing in the 2027 Pacific Games in Tahiti; the country’s new riders range in age from 17 to 53. Yes, 53.

 

Finally…

We may have to deal with swerving LA drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about dive-bombing birds. Who needs spandex to ride a tandem — or any clothes at all, for that matter?

And why just ride a moving train when you can jump your bike over it?

Instagram post

………

Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin

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

Move along, nothing to see here — end of the week edition

September 12, 2024 / / One comment

My apologies.

I am reluctantly throwing in the towel on Friday’s post. I was really hoping to make it through my first week back, but after trying, and failing, to write tonight, I’ve just got nothing left to give.

As usual, we’ll be back on Monday to catch up on what we missed. And hopefully by then my aching shoulder and I will both be rested and ready to work.

Category: General /
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