Just 245 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
So stop what you’re doing and sign this petition to demand Mayor Bass hold a public meeting to listen to the dangers we all face on the mean streets of LA.
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
We’re still at 1,128 signatures, so let’s keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us!
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay.
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On top of everything else, I’ll be having a small skin cancer today, no doubt a souvenir of decades of riding a bike when they still thought the sun was good for you, and and any lotion you might use was meant for tanning, not screening out dangerous rays.
So the status of tomorrow’s post is to be determined at this point. Not because of the minor surgery, but whether I’ll survive riding the bus with an effed up shoulder and ribs.
Hopefully I’ll bounce back and see you in the morning; if not, we’ll be back bright and early on Thursday.
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There may be hope yet. Eventually, anyway.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, aka NHTSA, unveiled the final draft of a new regulation to improve traffic safety, requiring every new motor vehicle sold in the US to have forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection braking.
According to the AP,
The standards require vehicles to stop and avoid hitting a vehicle in front of them at speeds up to 62 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour). Also they must apply the brakes automatically at up to 90 mph (145 kph) if a collision with vehicle ahead is imminent.
The systems also have to spot pedestrians during the day and night, and must stop and avoid a pedestrian at 31 mph to 40 mph (50 kph to 64 kph) depending on the pedestrian’s location and movement.
Presumably, any system than can detect pedestrians should be able to protect people on bicycles, although that’s not guaranteed.
Or even required.
Yet another reminder that we remain an afterthought when it comes to safety.
However, the new regulations won’t take effect for another five years. And it will take decades before most older cars with more limited capabilities are off the roads.
It’s predicted the new regs will save just 362 lives each year, less than 1% of the more than 40,000 people killed annually on American roads.
But it’s a start.
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Metro offers a guide to next month’s Bike Month, including Metro Bike discounts for Bike Week, starting May 13th, and free Metro rides for Bike Day on Thursday the 16th. Although what’s missing is any mention of Bike Day activities, or the pre-pandemic Bike to Work pit stops to encourage more people to try bike commuting.
UCLA will observe Bike Month with a series of mobile bike repair services across campus, along with pit stops on Tuesday the 14th, and Wednesday the 15th.
Beverly Hills will mark Bike Month with a series of events, ranging from a month-long commuter challenge and a “May the 4th Be With You” family bike ride to the kind of Bike to Work Day pit stop Metro appears to have forgotten.
Pasadena will also celebrate Bike Month, starting with National Ride a Bike Day this Sunday, the annual Rose Bowl Ride of Silence on Wednesday the 15th, and refreshments at City Hall for Bike to Work Day.
Meanwhile, LAist offers a guide to living carfree in the City of Angels, including how to use your bike for transportation; you can listen to their podcast from last year on the same subject below.
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Momentum lists the 20 best new bike lanes in the US, topped by projects in New York and Redmond, Washington.
Southern California is represented by Pasadena’s Union Street protected bike lane at #6, and Santa Monica’s 17th Street at #16.
And it should come to the surprise of absolutely no one that Los Angeles is nowhere to be found on the list.
As usual.
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Gravel Bike California conducts a little recon for NorCal’s planned 300-mile Great Redwood Trail network.
Great Redwood Trail Recon: Northern California's future 300 mile network. @bikinginla @camtborg @ActiveNorCal @railstotrails https://t.co/OX7S9FVkRP
— Gravel Bike California (@GravelBikeCal) April 30, 2024
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It’s now 132 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And 34 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Sheriff’s deputies in San Marcos will conduct an “ebike safety sweep” on Wednesday afternoon to educate riders on ebike safety, while ticketing any violations committed by ebike riders — including a requirement to ride to the right, which only applies if you’re traveling at less than the speed of traffic. If you do get a ticket, fight it, because an operation specifically targeting ebike riders rather than all road users suggests illegally biased enforcement.
A road-raging Maryland man faces charges for attempting to run a pair of bicyclists participating in a charity ride off the road with his pickup, then pulling into a driveway and firing three blasts with his shotgun, apparently missing them.
No bias here, either. A writer for Strong Towns says Florida Governor Ron DeSantis isn’t wrong when he says “some activists want to make driving so miserable that people have to abandon their cars,” accusing a “significant percentage of safe streets activists” of being motivated by a hatred of cars and the people who drive them. Never mind that a “significant percentage” of safe streets activists are drivers themselves.
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Local
A 38-year old man was shot by an unknown assailant while riding his bicycle in Sun Valley Friday night, calling police after “noticing” he’d been hit by gunfire.
State
Irvine will host the city’s first-ever open streets event this Saturday, with a relatively petite 1.66-mile CicloIrvine from 11 am to 4 pm.
An Encinitas paracyclist is looking for donations to help her make it to a qualifier for the Paris Paralympic Games.
San Diego recommends five scenic bike rides, calling the city a bike rider’s paradise. Just remember your ebike won’t be welcome in Mission Bay.
Good question. A Redwood City writer wants to know what happened to the award-winning plans for the city’s first bike boulevard, which seem to have disappeared without a trace from the list of upcoming projects.
Eureka explains to drivers how to operate their big, deadly machines after a pair of new bikeways currently nearing completion are finished. Because evidently, that whole “licensing and registration” thing they keep insisting should be required for bicyclists isn’t enough to guarantee the people who pass them actually know how to drive already.
National
If you’re looking for a bargain on bikes, parts and accessories, Colorado Cyclist and Planet Cyclery are holding online going out of business sales with up to 30% discounts across the board. But look around and compare prices before you buy, because liquidators often jack up prices before they cut them.
McLaren IndyCar racer David Malukas may be regretting being one of us, because he lost his contract after missing the year’s first four races due to an off-season mountain biking injury.
That’s more like it. An Arizona man will spend at least 12 years of a 14-year sentence behind bars, after pleading guilty to negligent homicide and hit-and-run charges for fleeing the scene after killing a bike rider; he was already wanted on outstanding state and federal warrants at the time of the crash. Which at least explains why he fled.
Autopsy results show a Colorado mom, whose body was found three years after she disappeared on a Mother’s Day bike ride, was murdered “by unspecified means,” and had been injected with an animal tranquilizer used to immobilize wildlife before her death; her husband was initially charged with her murder, but charges were dropped because authorities hadn’t yet found her body.
Christian music star Amy Grant discusses the Nashville solo bicycle crash that took her memory, and nearly her life, forcing her to relearn the words to her own songs while leaning on her faith and family.
International
Mathematically challenged website Discerning Cyclist lists five things people get wrong about road bikes, which turns out to be six.
Israeli Occupation War Cabinet minister, and former opposition candidate Benny Gantz is one of us, too, breaking his foot while riding a bike in Southern Israel. But at least he has the freedom to ride a bike, unlike most people in Gaza these days.
Competitive Cycling
Sofia Gomez Villafañe and teammate Matt Beers won this year’s Belgian Waffle Ride in San Marcos on Sunday, with Courtney Sherwell and Caroline Wreszin rounding out the women’s podium, and Alexey Vermeulen and Petr Vakoč finishing second and third for the men.
Bicycling considers how collegiate cycling can save American bike racing. This one doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else, so you’re on your own if they block you.
British Cycling demonstrates the track bike they hope will carry their athletes to victory in the Paris Olympics. Demonstrating once again that victory in Olympic track cycling depends at least as much on technology as actual talent.
Former Tour de France champ Geraint Thomas blames UCI boss David Lappartient and race organizers for half of the crashes in pro cycling, saying that level of carnage wouldn’t be accepted in any new sport. Although someone should tell him about all those people flooding ERs with pickleball injuries.
Finally…
Now you, too, could host your very own bicycle museum, assuming you own a vacant building somewhere in the Twin Cities. Your next bike could have a very cool looking Bugatti frame, handcrafted from a design created by Ettore Bugatti himself 115 years ago.
And who needs to ride a bike, when your bike can ride itself?
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Thanks to David V for his generous donation to help support this site, and keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day.
Or every day my internet works and I’m not too banged up to do it, anyway.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin
