A Port Hueneme man will spend at least the next 27 years behind bars after he was sentenced for intentionally plowing his car into a group of seven bike-riding teens, killing one and injuring four others, before speeding away.
Thirty-three-year old Samuel Rocha was sentenced to 15 years to life for the second-degree murder of 16-year old Pedro Valdez in April, 2021, and 12 years total for five counts of assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of battery.
The incident began when Rocha spotted a man he mistakenly thought he knew from his past, punching the man in a laundromat parking lot, then intentionally driving into another man who tried to take a picture of his license plate.
Rocha’s public defenders had argued that he never saw the bicyclists, and even if he did, he wasn’t mentally stable and sober after a “long and documented history of mental illness, including delusions and hallucinations,” and wouldn’t have had time to stop, anyway.
Clearly, the judged didn’t buy it, imposing the maximum sentence on each count.
One bit of good news, as the Ventura County Star reports the Oxnard Fixie Crew, the bike club Valdez started before his murder, is still active.
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Congratulations, South Los Angeles.
You’re home to not one, but two of the deadliest intersections in California, at Obama and La Cienega boulevards in Baldwin Hills and Central Aveand 89th Street, with both seeing three traffic deaths over a six-year period.
But before the rest of Southern California rests easy, the remainder of the top five are also in SoCal, with Hesperia, Costa Mesa and Compton showing two deaths each.
The study, compiled by a personal injury law firm, also showed that Los Angeles was by far the state’s deadliest county for pedestrians, with exactly four times as many people killed while using crosswalks as the number two county, with 80 deaths in Orange County, compared to 356 in LA Countyover the same period.
San Diego, Santa Clara and Alameda counties rounded out that top five.
Which means that Los Angeles, city and county, are number one in both categories. Which should make us all feel like number two.
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Talk about missing the point.
In an article that appeared online over the weekend, a writer for the LA Times wonders if maybe we’re overreacting about young teens on high-powered ebikes.
According to staff writer Jack Dolan,
If you live in any California city, surely you’ve seen them: groups of boys at that painfully awkward and insecure stage of early adolescence riding around on e-bikes trying — and almost always failing — to look cool.
Especially memorable are the ones who cover their faces like Stormtroopers or ICE agents, hoping to seem more intimidating than their not-yet-filled-out frames would otherwise allow.
The whole thing would be just another cringeworthy display of teenage rebellion if the potential consequences weren’t so serious; many of those bikes are equipped with powerful electric motors and can go up to 60 mph.
After discussing the a) problem and b) reaction to the problem, including the Orange County DA’s recent ebike buyback program, as well as charging the parents of teen ebike riders, Dolan talks about how he felt safer on his motorcycle during his 20-mile commutes, despite the reactions of motorists.
For more than a decade, I made the 20-mile commute to work at the Los Angeles Times on a motorcycle. Given what sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic does to my blood pressure, the motorcycle seemed like the safer option. And, yes, I remember the startled, sometimes angry, expressions on drivers’ faces as I cruised by at twice their speed…
Maybe that’s why, when I look at those kids on their e-bikes, I don’t see Public Enemy No. 1. I know they’re trying to look tough — maybe even trying to scare me — but all I can see is how vulnerable they are. I hope we don’t start treating them all like criminals.
But here’s the problem. Or rather, problems.
Clearly, the kids aren’t Public Enemy No. 1. But they’re kids. They don’t have the training, skills or fully developed cerebellums to handle anything that fast or powerful. And yes, their parents — not the kids — should be held accountable for buying them in the first place.
Which brings up the second problem.
These aren’t ebikes. Ebikes are clearly defined by the state — and even more clearly, after the passage of recent legislation — as having a maximum speed of 28 mph. And even that requires that the riders be over 16 years old.
The kids Dolan talks about are actually riding e-motorcycles, aka e-motos, electric dirt bikes that can’t legally be ridden on the streets, with or without a license, or ebikes that have been — wink wink, nudge nudge — illegally hacked to increase their power and speed beyond what is legal under state law.
So while kids will be kids, parents should act like parents, and keep their children off illegal, overpowered e-motos, because that’s what they are — on both counts.
Children, and illegal. Not to mention dangerous.
It’s better to have your kid mad at you because you won’t buy them one, than to bury them because you did.
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Sky News reports on two women who escaped occupied Ukraine by bicycle, riding over 1,200 miles through Russia and Belarus while “braving mines, Russian soldiers and a drone attack.”
Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. The press is attacking a new protected bike lane in Salt Lake City, while the Utah legislature passed a bill banning new bike lanes in the city without approval from the state department of transportation. Because no one understands the safety needs on local streets better than a bunch of state bureaucrats.
No bias here, either. The conservative Times of London complains that “bad cycling has been decriminalized” as the number of tickets issued to bicyclists dropped to its lowest level in five years — even though more people in the UK are killed by cows every year than by bicyclists. Although the cops seldom ticket scofflaw cows, either.
Or here. The east London borough of Havering scrapped fully funded plans for a new bikeway, despite the recents deaths of two bike riders, prompting complaints that the Reform Party has “decided there’s not enough dead people.”
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The New Haven, Connecticut academic community is morning a local professor who was killed in a hit-and-run collision with someone on an ebike.
The British tabloids are claiming that bicyclists are riding “willy-nilly” through the newly pedestrianized Oxford Street, without fear of penalty or retribution.
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Local
Vanity Fair says LA mayoral candidate Nithya Raman is too moderate for the radicals, and too radical for the moderates. But at least she’s wearing a CicLAvia P-22 tee shirt in the accompanying photo.
Los Angeles now finally has speed cams in 25 locations throughout the city, although it will be another three months before they actually begin issuing tickets. Meanwhile, San Jose has their network up and running, too.
As expected, the LA City Council voted unanimously to ask LADOT to report back on what resources would be required to replace the city’s infamous plastic car-tickler bollards with Toronto barriers. Which is the city’s usual method of appearing to take action without actually doing anything.
Redondo Beach now has bike lanes along the entire, albeit brief, length of Palos Verdes Blvd through the city, including nearly half a mile of “top-notch curb-protection.”
State
When you’re riding in Vista while carrying meth and brass knuckles, put a damn light on your bike and stop for the red lights.
San Diego’s annual Bike the Coast ride saw more than 1,300 participants raise over $10,000 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
National
A writer on Substack argues that the bicycle industry is drowning in its own red ink as it fights over the same pot of customers, while ignoring an ocean of potential new bicyclists. Thanks to Ken for the link.
An 18-year old New Jersey man is facing a murder charge for the hit-and-run death of two girls sharing an ebike, while he was allegedly doing 70 mph in a 25 mph zone.
Schmucks. A 71-year old New Jersey man was found lying dead in the street after he was struck by two separate drivers while riding his bicycle, both of whom fled the scene.
A 26-year old road-raging Virginia man faces up to 23 years behind bars after pleading guilty to shooting — yes, shooting — a 26-year old man riding a bicycle, after cutting the bike rider off with his car; he also agreed to a lifetime protective order prohibiting him from contact with the victim as part of the plea deal.
International
Momentum offers a mostly recycled list of bicycle-themed costume ideas.
Um, sure. The attorney for a hit-and-run driver accused of murder for dragging a 56-year old British bike rider over a mile to his death told the jury his client was selfish and thinking only of himself, but certainly wasn’t a murderer.
A district in Seoul, South Korea, recently wrapped up a bicycling festival designed to “ease social isolation among single-person households and encourage healthy leisure activities.”
Japan could consider revising a ban on child bicycle seats for kids after they enter elementary school.
The family of an Australian girl who disappeared while riding her bike to school in 1972, when she was just 14, are now offering a $1 million reward for the arrest and conviction on her killer, 52 years after a piece of her skull was found. Although the chances of finding a living person to convict get slimmer with every year.
Finally…
That feeling when the morning TV news hosts somehow falsely claim — not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times (frice? fource?) — that Dutch bicyclists are required to have license plates and insurance. Just a suggestion, but maybe don’t hold a gravel race during hunting season.
And seriously, when there’s literally jellyfish floating in the street, don’t ride your bike there.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
