March 17, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Driver leaves bike-riding woman to die alone in violent Riverside crash; 8th fatal SoCal bicycling hit-and-run this year
It never stops.
Yet another Southern California bike rider has been murdered by a hit-and-run driver.
According to LA’s FOX-11, Riverside police found a woman lying dead on the side of the roadway early Wednesday morning, her bike and belongings strewn for a full block behind her.
The officers discovered the victim, who has not been publicly identified, while responding to a call at Orange and Center streets in Riverside a few minutes before 2 am.
There was no sign of the driver, and no description of the suspect vehicle. It’s not clear if she was riding or walking the bike at the time of the crash.
The lengthy debris field suggests she was either struck at high speed, or she and her bike were dragged under the vehicle for at least a block.
There’s no way of knowing at this time how long she had been there, or if she could have survived if the driver had stopped and called for help, as both the law and basic human decency requires.
When and if the driver is found, they’ll face a maximum of just four years for felony hit-and-run resulting in death under California’s overly lenient hit-and-run statute.
The roadway will be reduced to a single lane for construction work from 9 am to 2 pm, with traffic allowed through in alternate directions, while the bike lanes will be completely blocked.
However, there’s no word on what road conditions will be like if you arrive before or after that five-hour time period.
It’s also questionable whether bikes can be prohibited from using PCH during those hours, since California allows bicycles on any public road where cars are allowed, with the exception of limited access highways in most urban areas.
Whether it would be smart to put yourself in that situation is another matter.
Los Angeles is installing bright red bus lanes in East Hollywood and DTLA, with others coming soon on Alvarado and La Brea; LA interprets state law as allowing bike riders to use bus-only lanes, though some other cities may disagree.
An Atwater Village elementary school is working with the PE Learn-To-Ride program sponsored by All Kids Bike to teach the youngest students how to ride using balance bikes, after a teacher discovered no one really wanted to win a bicycle as a reward for good behavior.
Hermosa Beach police used bait bikes to bust a pair of bike thieves, while making sure the bikes had a value of more than $950 so it would count as felony theft. Which serves as yet another reminder that the LAPD still doesn’t use bait bikes to cut high theft rates, thanks to a misguided opinion from the city attorney’s office concluding they could be seen as entrapment; meanwhile, that same city attorney wants your vote for LA mayor.
Cycling Newsexamines how bikes get made, starting from iron ore or a vat of petrochemicals to the finished bicycle in your garage. Although you’re better off keeping it inside your home, since garages are often easy targets for thieves.
When Metro re-industrialized the downstream end of Taylor Yard, siting a Metrolink yard there, community groups sued Metro for not following environmental law. In a 1992 settlement Metro agreed to pay for several community benefits, including a pedestrian bridge. For decades, the promised bridge project suffered from false starts. Ultimately Metro paid for the $25 million dollar bridge, which was built by L.A. City’s Public Works Department’s Bureau of Engineering.
Never mind that three decades of delays meant it ended up costing over five times the original $5.3 million estimate.
And no, Linton didn’t get an invitation, either, despite reporting on the bridge even longer that we have. But he ended up crashing it on a bicycle, ignoring both the lack of invitation and the admonition to arrive by car.
No, really. The city wanted everyone to drive to the opening of a bike bridge.
The good news is, the bridge is open at last, providing safer and more convenient access between Frogtown and Elysian Valley to the south, and Glassell Park and Cypress Park to the north.
A previous public opening was cancelled at the last minute, with the city doing such a crappy job of getting the word out that would-be attendees who showed up anyway were left wondering where everyone else was. No explanation was ever given for the cancellation.
Maybe they were afraid people from the bike community might actually show up.
Because this is how Linton ended his piece.
Cedillo and O’Farrell have histories of being hostile to bicyclists. O’Farrell’s bike antipathy has been more subtle, other than his notoriously snide anti-bike safety tweet in 2018. Cedillo’s anti-bike stance has been more overt. Both have canceled approved bike safety projects in their districts: Cedillo on North Figueroa Street and on the North Spring Street Bridge, and both colluded on the cancelling of a Temple Street road diet. Both are Democrat incumbents facing elections this year, with challengers to their ideological left. It is a sad state of affairs that it now appears that they fear allowing the public – including the press and those pesky cyclists – to celebrate the opening of a really great thing they have done for bicycling in L.A.
And yes, I was the one on the receiving end of that snide O’Farrell tweet.
Today’s photo is the invitation you didn’t get to the bridge opening, even though you — and the rest of us — paid for it.
Ryane Linehan pled guilty to negligent homicide, admitting she was texting when she killed the man and seriously injured his wife and adult son.
Yet she still got just an 18-month suspended jail sentence, along with six months of home confinement, three years of probation and 100 hours of community service.
Maybe it’s just me, but a lousy six months sitting at home watching TV and eating bonbons seems more like a staycation than punishment.
The only good news is she won’t be allowed to drive for the next 15 years. Which isn’t nearly long enough.
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Good question.
If LA streets had facilities like this, how many more people would choose to bike over drive, especially for 50% of trips <3 miles in LA? https://t.co/46bQFr6aKT
That’s more like it. A 19-year old Florida man got 15 years behind bars for the hit-and-run death of a seven-year old boy riding his bicycle. Although anyone so heartless they could leave a little kid to die alone in the street deserves a lot more than that.
No irony here. Toronto NIMBYs are demanding the removal of a protected bike lane by claiming it makes it too hard for ambulances to respond to injured bike riders, because all the cars get in the way.
Life is cheap in Wales, where a 71-year old man walked with probation and a 15-month driving ban for yelling racist comments at a group of bike riders and telling them to go back to England, before backing his car up and crashing into them; fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
March 14, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Help raise funds for memorial to fallen bicyclist, and money for fallen cross-country rider benefits Navajo children
Let’s get this one over the top today.
Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, is working in conjunction with the family of fallen bicyclist Jeff Knopp to raise funds for a permanent memorial where he was killed on Foothill Blvd.
If the sight of a rideout with a hundred or so wheelie-popping bike riders taking over Sunset Blvd doesn’t put a smile on your face, I don’t know what will.
anyone know what this was? Big group of cyclists biking down Sunset Blvd in Hollywood pic.twitter.com/gKYzYnCgnB
Help fight Alzheimer’s while you shake off some of the stress of recent weeks with a 100% carfree ride on the San Gabriel River Trail.
Ride the River & Help Ride Against #Dementia – Join ALZLA & our friends at @ActiveSGV on SAT 3/26 for a morning bike ride along one of the most scenic stretches of the San Gabriel River. This free ride is completely off-street & car-free Register: https://t.co/G6F7n6qDiE
— Alzheimer's Los Angeles (@AlzheimersLA) March 11, 2022
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How to tell when bikes are just being used for marketing purposes.
Upper Crust: “let’s deliver pizza by bike, use a bicyclist as our logo, and *checks notes* oppose bike lanes” pic.twitter.com/OX49HQecom
A Wisconsin letter writer says move bike lanes off main streets onto quieter side streets. Because evidently, bike riders don’t need to go to those places where all those apparently more important people in cars need to go. And don’t need red lights or otherwise safe crossings to get across busy streets.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
In a story that makes no sense, an Oceanside cop was injured in a fight with a bike rider, who crashed while fleeing from the officer, who wasn’t even trying to make a stop, then attacked the cop when he stopped to help after the crash.
Talk about not getting it. The editorial board of the Seattle Times says dropping the county’s mandatory bike helmet law was a wrong-headed decision — even though it disproportionately targeted people of color and disadvantaged riders who couldn’t afford to pay. And even though studies show helmet laws depress bicycling rates.
New York is exploiting a loophole in city regulations by installing secure bike parking pods for just 29 days before moving them to other locations, to get around a requirement for review and approval by a city commission for periods longer than that.
UK government ministers are being urged to promote ebikes, after a study shows they could result in the equivalent of $2.61 billion in health savings and cut a million tons of emissions every year. Not to mention reduce dependence on Russian oil.
This is why people keep dying in the streets. Former Manchester United star Chris Eagles is now one of us, albeit unwillingly, after he was banned from driving for three whole months when he was found in his car partially undressed, and nearly three times over the legal alcohol limit. Maybe he would have gotten four months if he was four times over the limit.
Turns out CD1 Councilmember Gil Cedillo is just misunderstood.
At least, that’s what he says.
A concerned resident reached out to the councilmember, who earned the sobriquet Roadkill Gil for his opposition to street safety projects, to ask what he has against bike lanes.
This is the eye opening response they got.
Hi there! We are not against bike lanes. We support safe bike lanes and public safety is a top priority for us. When putting in bike lanes, we want to make sure that we are taking into consideration the safety of vehicular traffic as well as pedestrian traffic so that cyclists can cycle safely. For example, I’ve been advocating for the LA River Bike Path, a bike path that is able to connect from one end to another, safely, along the River on the Arroyo.
His was one of just two votes against the plan, the other coming pseudo-environmentalist Paul Koretz. Even though many of the immigrants in his district that he claims to champions rely on bicycles as their sole source of transportation.
Never mind all the kids who need to get to and from school without getting killed.
That’s a lot of unsafe bike lanes he courageously halted to protect our safety, and all those poor, suffering drivers.
But at least he supports the LA River bike path. Which, coincidently, moves bike riders off the road and doesn’t inconvenience people in the big, dangerous machines in any way.
But clearly, he’s just been misunderstood in his many efforts to keep us safe by keeping us off the streets.
I mean, he said so himself.
Or someone in his office did. It’s hard to say just who’s on the other end of an electronic conversation.
And he certainly wouldn’t lie to get our votes as he runs for re-election.
GCN offers a brief lesson on five skills every bike rider should know. Riding one-handed is particularly important so you can use the other one to gesture at drivers.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Police in Sacramento are looking for a bike rider who slapped three women on the ass in separate sexual assaults on two local college campuses; police believe it may be the same man in all three attacks, though two victims described a cruiser bike, while the other said it was a BMX. As we’ve said before, that’s not a prank, it’s not flirting and it’s not funny. It’s a crime.
Beverly Presstalks with CD5 city council candidate Scott Epstein, the former chair of the Mid City West neighborhood council, about his commitment to help the homeless and make streets more bike and pedestrian friendly. I’ve known Epstein for over a decade, and he’s definitely the bike-friendly voice we need after an unlucky 13 years of Paul Koretz.
After police concluded an English man was killed when he rode bicycle into a tree, a top lawyer insists he was the victim of a too-close pass, while his boss said called him an expert cyclist, and said the idea that he simply lost control of his bike while taking a swig from his water bottle just isn’t credible.
Ever get the feeling your issues are taking a backseat in local politics?
In a year where all of the leading candidates for mayor of Los Angeles are focusing their campaigns on crime and dealing with the homeless — one way or another — providing safe alternatives to driving hasn’t even been an afterthought.
No mention of Vision Zero. Not a single word about building out the mobility plan to fix traffic congestion and fight rising gas prices. And nothing about investing in clean transportation to fight climate change.
So let’s hope they all get around to addressing safe streets and alternatives to driving, however belatedly, as the campaign goes on.
Otherwise, it could be a very long four years, regardless of who wins.
Correction: Someone representing Mike Feuer reached out to me directing me to the page on Sustainability on his website, which contains one whole sentence about improving transit and building protected bike lanes, but only in the context of reducing greenhouse gases.
Which, sadly, makes him the leader at this point.
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Today’s photo shows Los Angeles City Hall awaiting its next, hopefully bike friendly, occupant, with a little more commitment and follow-through than the current one.
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Today’s common theme is people turning to bicycles to fight high gas prices, even though Los Angeles had a decade to get ready for this moment. And didn’t.
Seems like a good time for a reminder that many, if most, Los Angeles car trips could easily be done by bicycle.
If they had a safe way to get there, that is.
HALF of Los Angeles car trips are under 3 miles. (< 18 minutes by bike)
1 of every 5 car trips is UNDER 1️⃣ MILE.
A surprisingly-high number of car trips are surprisingly short and can easily be cycled — if there are safe, separated #bike lanes where people live, work and shop. pic.twitter.com/EA8LN5gOhf
Thought to be an offshoot of Britain’s Extinction Rebellion, Tyre Extinguishers — the spelling points out their roots in the UK — punctures the tires on SUVs, with a goal to “make it impossible to own an SUV in the UK’s urban areas.”
And leave behind a politely worded note explaining their actions, while telling aggrieved drivers not to take it personally.
Which is kind of hard to do when someone leaves you feeling literally deflated, to put it mildly.
The group has targeted vehicles in London’s upscale Chelsea, Chiswick, Notting Hill and Belgravia neighborhoods, where they are colloquially known as Chelsea tractors.
Tragic news from Minneapolis, where a man died a year and a half after he was paralyzed by a driver with a revoked license while riding his bike on the sidewalk. The driver, who had two previous license suspensions, was sentenced to a lousy year in county jail in a plea bargain; if prosecutors had waited just six six weeks, the charge could have been vehicular homicide. Just one more example of allowing dangerous drivers to stay on the road until it’s too late.
The advantage of a rebate, rather than suspending the state gas tax, is that it won’t affect critical funding for road repair and improvements, according to Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.
However, a rebate targeting only people who own motor vehicles will miss everyone who choses not to contribute to the problem, by riding transit, riding a bike or walking. Even though everyone pays higher gas prices in the form of climbing prices for food, and everything else that’s transported by truck.
As he suggests, it would be interesting to see just what people actually choose. And getting people out of their cars would reduce some of the demand forcing prices up.
Although I want to see who people blame for high gas prices when oil companies start reporting record profits in a few months.
Meanwhile, blame once again falls on LA’s failed leadership, or the lack thereof.
Los Angeles has had a full decade to build out the city’s bike and mobility plans, which should have been 40% complete by now if city leaders plan on meeting their self-imposed deadline of 2035.
Instead, both plans are gathering dust in some dark corner of the city servers, instead of providing the safe, convenient alternatives to driving that Angelenos were promised a decade ago.
So if you or your loved ones feel like you don’t have any practical alternative to driving, despite the rising prices, you know who to thank.
Evidently trees are out to get us, too, with today’s photo of fallen tree limbs attacking the Metro Bike dock at Runyon Canyon. And a dog, too.
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Maybe Octavio Mendoza will see justice, after all.
It’s not yet clear whether this was a random case of road rage, or if the men knew one another.
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Apparently, if Obama hadn’t worn a bike helmet, Ukraine might not be under attack today.
BoingBoing looks back to the good old days of 2014, when Fox News blamed the then-president for Putin’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas by insisting his bike helmet made him look weak.
No, really.
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For some reason, I still can’t embed tweets on here, so we’ll have to settle for a few semi-decent descriptions.
Really disappointing that we can’t embed this one, since it features a really cool short video of a 1956 handcycle, with the hand crank awkwardly mounted on the crossbar of a standard bicycle frame.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Mountain View police are looking for a suspect who slapped a pair of women on the butt as he rode past them on his bike, while making suggestive comments. And for anyone unclear on the concept, that’s not flirting, it’s not a prank, and it’s definitely not funny. It’s sexual assault. Period.
Someone stole a teenage boy’s ebike in a strong-arm robbery on a La Jolla bike path, shoving the victim off his bike and taking off with it; police are looking for multiple high school-aged kids, including the primary suspect who rode off on the victim’s bike wearing a full motorcycle helmet and moto goggles.
Wiredtalks with the woman who was behind the wheel, but allegedly watching videos on her phone, when a self-driving car prototype killed a bike-riding woman in Tempe, Arizona four years ago.
Cambridge, Massachusetts will intentionally miss a deadline to build out quick-build separated bike lanes by May 1st, saying they need more time to engage local stakeholders. Evidently, they don’t understand the concept of “quick-build.” And somehow couldn’t manage to engage those stakeholders in the six years since a bike rider was killed there.
In an all-too familiar story, the Colorado Classic women’s stage race is on life support, unless a sponsor steps up with $3 million to keep the race alive; otherwise, it will follow the late, lamented Tour of California, Tour of Utah, and the USA Pro Challenge into the “ever-growing graveyard of American pro cycling races.”
Which isn’t going to make any real difference on LA’s mean streets, where speed limits often reach 45 or 50 mph. Let alone the other 6,323 miles of streets in the city.
But at least it’s a step in the right direction, reducing speeds on streets where they had recently been raised, thanks to a new state law amending the deadly 85th Percentile Law.
What’s really needed is a cut to 20 mph in business and residential areas, as has already been done in other cities around the world to reduce crashes and improve survivability.
Because a drop from 45 mph to 40 just ain’t gonna do that.
Like just about everything else, though, that will take another change in state law. Which isn’t likely to be coming anytime soon.
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In a big win for bike riders and pedestrians — or just people in general — a new report from San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department and the Municipal Transportation Agency recommends that JFK Drive through Golden Gate Park be kept carfree.
The street was shut down during the pandemic to provide a safe place for San Franciscans to walk and ride their bikes, and many residents like it that way.
Just try to name any similar street in Los Angeles that has been pedestrianized in recent years — especially during the pandemic, when there was every opportunity and reason to do it.
For some reason, this isn’t letting me embed tweets tonight, so you’ll have to click through to see this one, and the one below. But it’ll be worth it.
That’s a picture of me signing the petition to get the Healthy Streets LA measure on the ballot at Pan Pacific Park yesterday, with Streets For All founder Michael Schneider.
With my four-footed intern somehow managing to upstage us both.
As we’ve mentioned a fewtimes before, the ballot measure is a pretty simple proposition.
It would require Los Angeles to build out the city’s mobility plan, which is currently collecting dust on the city’s servers, whenever a street gets repaved. Which isn’t often enough, as anyone who’s had to fix a pothole flat can attest.
That’s it. If the street is included in the mobility plan — whether it calls for a bike or a bus lane — the city would be obligated to to stripe it.
The beauty of this approach is that the costs are minimal, since the street would have to be restriped anyway.
And every bus lane, bike lane and bicycle friendly street in the plan has already been formally blessed by the LA Planning Commission and the Los Angeles City Council, so it’s pretty damn hard to argue against.
But before that can happen, it has to qualify for the ballot, which will take around 93,000 signatures.
This is the moment for the State to help LA finish this project. It is transformative, equitable, and a long time in coming. I will do my best to bring the resources to the San Fernando Valley to bring the path to life. https://t.co/hoK7WsY6A7
But it pales in comparison to the $1.6 billion flushed down the toilet to install HOV lanes on the 405 Freeway through LA’s Sepulveda Pass, which only resulted in more congestion and slower travel times.
At the very least, it would provide a healthy alternative to driving for those who can use it for a commuter corridor, as well as a safe place to ride recreationally.
I included a link to the Daily News story from Friedman’s tweet, but it’s up to you to find a way around the paper’s paywall.
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Here’s your chance to work for a safer street for bike riders and pedestrians on Hyperion.
Folks working to make Hyperion Avenue (in Los Feliz/Silver Lake) safer are seeking stakeholder endorsements of their Avenue Plan – slide show here: https://t.co/JquvpBvrPb
Horrifying thread from a New York bike rider, who was chased down and attacked by a driver and their passenger — for the crime of touching their car to get by after the driver illegally parked in a bike lane.
It’s worth a click to read the whole thing.
Came to a car parked in the bike lane, which is only "protected" by paint for much of the area btw 1st and 6th Streets. Dark license plate cover to fool speed cameras/tolls, talking to another driver in the parking lane. I should have ridden out into traffic to get by, but… 3/
An e-scooter rider was murdered by a hit-and-run driver in LA’s Koreatown early Saturday. He was struck by a minivan driver, then run over and dragged nearly 20 yards by a second driver as he lay in the street; the first driver stayed followed the crash, but the second driver, who likely did the most harm, fled the scene.
Residents along Shannon Road in Los Gatos say they support a proposal to add bike lanes and sidewalks, they just want to make them less safe, inviting and comfortable to “preserve the rural feel” of the community. Although they do have a point about adding trees along the route. Thanks to Robert Leone for the heads-up.
March 5, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Fullerton man riding DIY ebike killed in possible hit-and-run; 5th Southern California bike death this week
Please make it stop.
After a terrible start to the year — and one of the worst weeks in memory — yet another bike rider has lost his life on the mean streets of Southern California.
Borstens was discovered suffering from serious injuries, next to a mountain bike that had been converted to an ebike.
He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police are investigating the crash as a possible hit-and-run, but acknowledge it’s possible that Borstens may have fallen off his bike for some reason.
Officers stressed that Borstens’ bike had been modified to add an electric engine, rather than manufactured as an ebike. There are any number of conversion kits on the market that can turn any bike into an ebike.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Fullerton Police Department at 714/738-6812.
This is at least the 23rd bicycling fatality in Southern California already this year, and the sixth that I’m aware of in Orange County. It’s also the fifth SoCal bicycling death in just the last week.
If this turns out to have been a hit-and-run, it would be the eight fatal bike hit-and-run since the first of the year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Ivars Borsteins and all his lived ones.
