Day 178 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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Happy anniversary to, um, us?
It’s been 17 years since I started this site, back when I had no idea what the hell it was going to become.
And to be honest, I still don’t.
But I look forward to sharing another 17 years with you, and see where that will take us.
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Today’s common these is bicycling lawsuits and the people who love them.
Et tu, Brute? The family of a top staffer to San Diego’s mayor is filing suit against the city after a serious bike crash on one of the city’s semi-protected bike lanes.
A Reno, Nevada man is suing Caltrans and the city and county of San Luis Obispo after he was injured when his bicycle hit an unmarked crack in the roadway.
A Kansas man is suing a security guard and the company the guard works for, alleging he was injured when he was roughly thrown off his bicycle.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
As soon as someone says they’re a cyclist, you know you’re in trouble. A Halifax, Nova Scotia city councilor insists he’s one of us, before calling for a review of the city’s spending on a half-finished All Ages and Abilities bike network.
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Local
Tomorrow is the annual Culver City Pride Ride.
The Easy Reader takes a very brief look at French ebike reseller Upway’s new refurbishment and sales center in Redondo Beach.
State
Calbike is pushing Caltrans to get more serious about the state’s Complete Streets requirement.
No surprise here, as a majority of Santa Cruz bike riders don’t feel safe on the county’s roads, and are growing impatient about the slow pace of construction on the Coastal Rail Trail.
A San Francisco TV station takes one last look at the last AIDS/LifeCycling fundraising rider from San Francisco to Los Angeles, after 31 years and over $349 million raised.
Good news for Angelenos for once, since Los Angeles doesn’t even show up on a list of the ten most dangerous California counties for bike riders, at least on a per capita basis; sparsely populated Plumas, Mono and Inyo counties lead the list, even though they have a combined total of just eight bike crashes.
National
Outside goes shopping at the big sale at Competitive Cyclist.
Bicycling celebrates the “surprising practical benefit” of having a rear-facing radar on your bike to warn you about oncoming drivers. But they don’t want you to know what it is without paying them first.
Travel + Leisure, who have apparently become experts in all things bicycle, test out and review year’s best women’s padded bike shorts. In other words, bike shorts.
A Boulder, Colorado website examines why it’s one of the country’s best cities for cyclists.
Speaking of Boulder, the city’s Stages Cycling joins the growing list of zombie bike brands brought back from the dead after being bought out of bankruptcy by giant bike brand Giant.
A Michigan columnist says riding what he calls “a poor man’s convertible” can offer an escape from these troubled times. Then again, an actual convertible can make you poor.
International
As if the city’s bike paths aren’t crowded enough, Bogota, Columbia is moving forward with a proposal to allow actual e-motorbikes to use them, too.
This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work. Winnipeg, Manitoba, is responding to the death of a bike rider last year with a proposal to install protected bike lanes and lower the speed limit to 25 mph.
That’s more like it. Flags were lowered to half staff in an Ontario, Canada city to honor a nine-year old boy who was killed by a school bus driver while riding his bike. Then again, if we did that for every victim of traffic violence in Los Angeles, the flags might never go back up.
The Mounties always get their man — for not wearing a bike helmet.
The new head of British spy agency MI6 is one of us, after Blaise Metreweli chose to ride her bike to a last-minute meeting at a London Park before she was named to be the firs woman to lead the agency. Rather than borrowing 007’s iconic Aston Martin, evidently; we’ll forget that misguided foray into German BMWs.
The Isle of Man insists they’re not going to ban bikes from a popular roadway, despite a radio station’s tepid petition, which has garnered less than 350 signatures in two weeks.
Bicycle Retailer looks at the best new products at this year’s Eurobike show, but Zag Daily is not impressed. .
Competitive Cycling
Twenty-three-year old Dutch cyclist Puck Pieterse isn’t willing to settle for being one of the top ‘cross and mountain bike pros, but wants to conquer road cycling by winning the Tour de France Femmes, as well.
Finally…
Why just pedal when you can row, too? When you’re riding with alleged illegal drugs on your bike, put a damn light on it, already.
And that feeling when an 11-year old — yes, 11 — has better bike skills than you and me.
Well, me, anyway.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
