And apropos of nothing, this is my only companion as I work in the dark tonight, while my wife and corgi — no, two separate beings, thank you — sleep in the other room.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A 27-year old Florida man faces felony child abuse charges for allegedly pushing a child off his bicycle following a brief altercation; he insists he didn’t push the kid, but merely knocked the boy off his bike by kicking its front tire. Which somehow doesn’t seem to make it any better.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A 40-year old Rohnert Park man was lucky to escape with non-life threatening injuries when he ignored railroad crossing gates, a train’s horn and warning lights to ride his bike across railroad tracks as a SMART train was crossing. Seriously, train crashes are the easiest collisions to avoid, since they’re confined to a narrow space and usually provide ample warning that they’re coming. And they’re fucking loud.
Golden State Report’s Paul Thornton says San Francisco’s Prop G is the most LA thing on the city’s ballot; the measure would rip out the popular sunset Dunes Park to restore the former Upper Great Highway. Which clearly wasn’t so great, or they never would have shut it down to create a linear park in the first place.
A 33-year old Pennsylvania man was sentenced to 10 to 40 years behind bars for beating another man to death with his own bicycle, after pleading guilty to 3rd-degree murder while insisting he didn’t remember doing it, but admitting video evidence was likely to sway a jury. The article kept disappearing on me, but maybe you’ll have better luck.
An Alabama woman received 25 years behind bars for killing a 13-year old middle school student as he was riding his bicycle, while she was speeding, “under the influence of multiple substances,” and ran the red light he was legally crossing.
Yucatán Magazinelooks at the dangers faced by bike riders in Mérida, the Mexican state’s capital city, from disconnected and poorly maintained bike lanes to hazardous urban corridors. Sounds kinda like a certain SoCal megalopolis we could name.
A new joint German-Israeli study used a robotic bike — no, not what you think — to determined that “dynamic, trunk-related control that keeps the upper body stable while the world tilts beneath the wheels” is more important than general steadiness on two feet in keeping older bike riders balanced and stable on their bicycles.
I can’t remember the last time a migraine knocked me out like that, or affected me so badly for so long after the pain was finally gone.
I’m told my migraines, and the associated dizziness, stem from a traumatic brain injury suffered in the infamous beachfront bee incident that put me in the ICU for a few days 20 years ago.
The impact knocked me cold for several minutes, erasing any memory of the crash and leading to one of those life-after-death visions you read about, which, real or hallucinated, both shattered and cemented my own personal faith.
The ER doctors at Santa Monica’s St. John’s hospital told me my helmet probably saved my life. But in those pre-MIPS days, it did nothing to prevent the concussions I suffered.
The first migraine I ever had came four years after that, and they’ve continued to grow more frequent and worse in the years since.
I’ve often been a critic, not of bike helmets, but of the overpromises made by so many people who equate bike helmets with seat belts or air bags, as if they would somehow magically protect you from a multi-ton motor vehicle traveling at highway speeds.
They won’t.
Even the best bike helmets are intended to protect you from relatively low speed falls off your bike, not collisions. But as I’ve learned the hard way, that limited protection can still make a huge difference in your health decades after a crash.
Now the Canadian-made Pikio Si Oblik has been rated the safest ever by the testing institute at Virginia Tech. It’s hard to recommend a helmet that costs nearly $400, especially when you can get a decent MIPS model for so much less.
But based on my own experience, it might be worth it.
Meister tells WeHo Online that the council didn’t receive any other options other than the bike lanes when they voted to approve the project — even though the street was subject to nearly a decade of discussion and public meetings — and she prefers a plan that would replace the bike lanes with parking spaces, calling it a “compromise.”
Although the C-words I would use are “capitulation,” and “convenience,” as in a surrender to the whims of motorists who are used to parking on the deadly street.
Never mind that protected bike lanes have been shown to improve safety up to 90% for all road users, while maintaining parking would only serve to keep the corridor deadly by forcing bike riders to use the single remaining lane or ride in the door zone.
Parking proponents will undoubtedly be out in force at the meeting, and will need to be met with an equal and opposite demand to improve safety for everyone. The alternative will be to keep Fountain Ave unrideable and unsafe to walk along and cross, as well as to drive.
If that’s the plan, they might as well save the money to pay for ghost bikes and white tires for all the victims yet to come.
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More evidence that ICE is out of control, after a Long Beach man was intentionally run down by ICE agents as he was riding an ebike and struck with an unmarked vehicle, then tased twice and handcuffed face down in the gutter, suffering a broken arm in the attack.
Ricardo Gonzalez was attacked by agents on Saturday, apparently because of the color of his skin, since they had no other means of determining his immigration status as he was riding his bike. Never mind that Gonzalez was born in Hanford, California, making him a US citizen by birth, despite Trump’s efforts to change that.
Note to ICE agents: Maybe try to determine someone’s citizenship and immigration status before you run them down with an SUV — or better yet, just don’t run them down in the first place.
Here’s what these critics miss: A bike lane makes a road safer even when no one is riding in it. Wide lanes invite speeding and inattention. Narrowing them slows traffic, and the striped buffer puts extra feet between moving cars and people on the sidewalk. Federal data cited by city staff show bike lanes on arterial roads cut car-bicycle crashes roughly in half. If anything, the city should go further and add bollards or other barriers, so a drifting driver hits a barrier before a person. That would also make riders feel safe enough to use the lanes more.
Now consider the money. Many roads in northwest and southwest Bakersfield were built with two lanes each way but enough pavement for three or four, on the theory that traffic would someday need it. At the pace we grow, that day is decades away, if it comes at all, and these roads will need rebuilding long before then. Where were the fiscal watchdogs when we paved all that unnecessary asphalt? Repurposing a few feet of it for the safety of everyone is a bargain by comparison…
And when it comes to bike infrastructure itself, fiscal conservatives have been making the case for years. The Kern County Taxpayers Association, hardly a group of free spenders, has long pushed for a better network of bike and walking paths across the city, including more than 50 miles of trails along abandoned and underused rail lines. When the region’s leading fiscal watchdog says safe places to walk and bike are worth the investment, critics who call it waste should take note.
None of this is a liberal plot to take away anyone’s car. It’s about two things conservatives have always championed: freedom of choice and public safety. People should be free to choose how they get around, whether that’s driving, biking, walking or some mix, to save money on gas, to get some exercise, or to let their kids gain a little independence. But that choice only means something if every option is reasonably safe. Too often, it isn’t. A parent may hesitate to let a 12-year-old ride to school. A retiree may not be able to safely walk to the corner store. Someone who can’t afford a car, or can’t drive one, may be taking their life in their hands just crossing the street. Keeping people safe is among the most basic jobs of local government, and the right to get home alive shouldn’t depend on being encased in a car. Responsible spending, personal choice, public safety and strong families are supposed to be conservative values. Safe streets serve all four.
Maybe someone should show this to Sean Duffy, our current Secretary of Transportation, and tell him enough with the “DEI bike lane” crap.
And I say “current,” because no one seems to have job security in this administration, except for those who seem to least deserve it.
My colleague Lily Janiak, our San Francisco Chronicle theater critic who bikes to shows and everywhere else, coaxed me along like a mother duck, warning me about the risks of tires sticking in streetcar rails, getting “doored”, and even other cyclists. Struggling to remember it all, I felt certain I was going to die.
In the process, I’ve gotten healthier, spent less money and saved time cruising past traffic jams. But the results extend beyond all that (and the smugness that often comeswhen cyclists lecture about health, money and traffic). I’ve become a better journalist and a better community member. I may not live longer — did I mention that I bike in San Francisco? — but I’m definitely doing a better job working for you.
Unfortunately, the story is hidden behind the paper’s draconian paywall. But it’s worth finding your way around it if you can to give it a read.
Years ago, Maximilian Schnell left his job and his life in Paris and began a nomadic lifestyle on his bicycle. The road has given him freedom and adventure. And he has set himself grueling physical and mental challenges.
Perfect Road, a documentary from Danish directors and cousins Adam and Christian Bonke, follows him on an extreme journey through some of Europe’s highest mountain passes, while also providing a meditation on modern life and character study. For one, even in an age of digital nomads, Schnell’s lifestyle pushes the envelope. And then, his relationship with his partner Nina makes him question his life priorities.
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We’ve seen this video before, depicting a Slovakian mountain biker outrunning a bear, possibly without even knowing he was doing it.
In one of the most shameful episodes I’ve seen, a Quebec City family called off a planned ghost bike ceremony for their 11-year old son after receiving “hateful” messages; a member of the group Souliers et vélos fantômes Québec — Ghost Shoes and Bicycles Quebec — called the comments “wildly inappropriate.” Seriously, there’s not a pit deep enough for anyone who’d send something like that to parents whose child had just been killed, under any circumstances.
There’s a special place in hell for anyone who would crash into two six-year old kids as they’re riding their bikes in Half Moon Bay, and just drive off leaving them on the side of the road; 37-year old Robert Schumann faces multiple charges after cops used a drone to track him down as he bravely hid in the woods to avoid capture. Fortunately, the children are hospitalized in stable condition. Once again, however, you’ll have to work your war around yet another unproductive paywall.
National
Aussie pro cyclist Lachlan Morton succeeded in setting a new record for the old Pony Express route last week, beating the relay team that carried Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address to California by nearly 12 hours, while covering the 1,966-mile route in 6 days, 21 hours and 15 minutes. Although Morton did have the advantage of paved roads, pneumatic tires and something slightly more aero than a horse.
A London writer who wisely chooses to remain anonymous justifies why they’ve ridden though roughly 40,000 red lights and have no plans to stop, although kindly choosing not to ride through red lights and crosswalks when pedestrians are present.
Two German men are retracing the route of China’s Long March by bicycle; the military maneuver by the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army became a defining chapter in modern Chinese history, leading to the defeat of the forces of Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese Civil War.
Competitive Cycling
Former cycling scion Taylor Phinney finished eighth in the men’s individual pursuit at the 2026 UCI Track World Championships, while beating his personal best by a massive 11 seconds, nearly seven years after he retired from road racing. Although his wife Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney is still kicking ass on the women’s road circuit.
So maybe stay inland for a few days. Or if you ride near the coast, at least check your route for flood conditions and damage before you go, and turn back at the first sign of standing water. You don’t know what may or may not be hidden by the water, and salt water can be very harmful to your bike.
And to you, if a stray wave catches you.
Today’s photo depicts the most recent deadly crash on Forest Lawn, reportedly due to speeding.
Even though her own staff says it won’t do much to reduce speeding and improve safety. But it will keep her backers at Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai cemeteries happy, as they strive to keep the street dangerous and drive up business.
Yay, us.
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Life can be hard. Especially when sudden fame brings promises that no one keeps.
Despite never having ridden a bike before, and only 15 years old, she made the trip in just seven days in the middle of the lockdown, often riding on an empty stomach.
But sadly, her father died of a heart attack just a few months later.
Here’s how she explained the rest of the story to NPR, and what happened after the acclaim died out.
That was in 2020. “Now — life is hard,” Kumari told NPR.
What happened to all the promises made — for financial support, especially to support cycling as a competitive sport?
Many promises were not kept, she says.
“The politicians who made promises, saying they would give money for my sports or education — nobody actually gave anything,” she says. “Whatever reward money we collected back then [from individuals who extended help and a government award that came with a cash prize], we put it all into our house, rebuilding it. We had a brick house before, but it only had bare walls. Now we have completed it, added a toilet, a bathroom, and a running water connection. By doing all that, the house has finally become livable,” she says…
At the moment, her mother works as a cook. Her meager income supports Kumari and her three siblings at home (an older sister has married and moved out).
“There are days when we go to sleep hungry,” she says. “Our brother-in-law used to help us earlier, but now he also has a child, a wife and his father to take care of. He works a small job in the city — how much can he really do? So now he isn’t able to help us much.”
It’s worth taking a few minutes to read or listen to the story.
If nothing else, it’s a remind that as hard as life may seem at times, we’ve got it pretty good over here.
And that heroes and remarkable achievements are too often quickly forgotten.
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Over the weekend, I ran into Stephen Post, a candidate for the West Hollywood City Council, at Plummer Park.
And no, I didn’t hurt him. And yes, I should be more careful.
We didn’t really have time to chat, since my wife was anxious to leave, and the corgi had squirrel treed a few feet away, and was being very aggressive in her attempts to either a) climb the tree to get it, or b) bark it into submission.
However, I did discover Post is a multi-modal bike commuter who lives just a couple blocks from where Blake Ackerman was killed, and he’s a big supporter of the planned safety improvements on Fountain Ave, including protected bike lanes.
I’ll leave it to you to find out more about his positions on other issues. But we agreed it’s long past time for a new generation of leadership. And he seems like someone ready to take that next step into local governance.
So if you live in WeHo, check him out. And if you don’t, check him out anyway.
And to think I had a hard time just talking our dad into riding around the block with us. Then again, the racing bike he kept hanging on the garage wall was over 40 years old by then, and it was hard to get parts for a 1920s vintage road bike even back then.
No surprise here, at least not if you’ve been paying attention, as a new study from Johns Hopkins reconfirmed that narrowing traffic lanes does not result in more crashes, and makes streets safer for bike riders and pedestrians.
Hats off to Irish ultra-endurance cyclist Joe Barr, who is now the official Guinness World Record holder for biking the entire 2,448-mile length of Route 66 in 10 days, 6 hours and 27 minutes.
Um, okay. A 66-year old Connecticut priest says he felt like Moses in the desert on just the first day of a 350-mile ride through the Alps to raise funds for a Catholic school. Even though Moses spent 40 years wandering through that desert, and never did get where he was going.
New York is embarking on a ten-year safety review of the city’s streets, with an emphasis on improving condition for bicyclists and pedestrians. The difference between New York and Los Angeles is that when they conduct a safety study, they actually do something about it.
Wired examines how a tiny Vancouver-based startup studied head-banging woodpeckers to discover a new approach to skull protection, leading to the world’s safest bike helmet.
In response to a question from the Irish parliament, the country’s Minister for Justice says 1,368 bicyclists and 253 e-scooter riders were fined for running red lights since 2024 — and no, they didn’t note the number of drivers ticketed for the same offense, though a previous study showed drivers run more red lights than bike riders do. Maybe it’s just me, but that number actually seems pretty low for a country of five-and-a-half million people.
The long planned and fought for Westwood Blvd protected bike lanes could finally be happening.
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton writes that LADOT is moving forward with a proposal for 2.2 miles of bus lanes and protected bike lanes, from the E Line station at Westwood and Exposition to the UCLA campus, along with another 1.1 miles of bus-only lanes.
Councilmember Katy Yaroslovsky has urged the city to speed up construction of the project following February’s 99 Ranch Market crash, when an elderly driver slammed into the building, killing three people and injuring at least six others, after hitting and injuring a bike rider.
Despite the work of advocates, any hopes of a bike lane south of Santa Monica Blvd were dashed in the early 2010s due to intense opposition from local businesses and the wealthy Westwood South of Santa Monica Blvd Homeowners’ Association, coupled with double-dealing by former CD5 Councilmember and all-around schmuck Paul Koretz.
Even under Yaroslavsky’s leadership, Westwood Boulevard improvements are taking a long time. Yaroslavsky and LADOT have been working on the fully-funded $10 million Westwood Boulevard Safety and Mobility Project since early 2024.
LADOT is asking for your input on the project. Fill it out, because there’s no reason to believe the opposition will be any less intense this time around.
The only difference is the councilmember won’t be in the pocket of wealthy local homeowners.
Cellphone records show Oscar Pinuelas was using Instagram and Pandora on his phone right up to when he slammed into Laura Harker’s ebike from behind, even though she wearing a brightly colored bike helmet and clothing.
Pinuelas remained at scene, but apparently the CHP only recently examined the cellphone data and made an arrest.
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ActiveSGV invites you to the opening of the Emerald Necklace Mobility Hub a week from tomorrow.
Although the key words there are “in America,” because we may have a ways to go to catch up with China.
Yes, China.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A reckless driver drove his car onto an Ohio bike path, despite two missing tires, then stole another car at a park after that one became disabled, and returned to the continue along the bike path. No word on whether anyone who was actually supposed to be on the bike path had to bail out of their way.
But sometimes, it’s the people on bikes behaving badly.
A 43-year old Liverpool, England man “swerved dangerously into traffic” on his bike and rode towards a family walking with baby carriages in an attempt to evade the cops after they spotted him riding on the sidewalk while using his phone; he was fined the equivalent of slightly more than $380 after being convicted of dangerous cycling. Then again, if he’d been in a car, that whole family could be dead right now.
A Hesperia man had his ebike stolen at gunpoint after a passing driver pulling a U-Haul got out of his car with gun in hand, announced he was taking the bike, and fired a shot past the victim when he initially refused to hand it over.
A suspect was arrested for a Santa Rosa hit-and-run, nearly two weeks after a bike rider was killed and left lying in the street until the body was found the next morning. As I’ve said before, cases like this should be charged as 2nd degree murder, because the driver made a conscious decision to flee the scene and leave the victim to die alone in the street.
Aussie Lachlan Morton is attempting to break the record for the fastest ever Pony Express run, set in 1861 when a relay of riders carried Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address to California; Morton hopes to ride the historic 1,966-mile Pony Express route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California faster than the record of seven days and 17 hours. Of course, he has the advantage of paved roads, and doesn’t have to worry about anyone shooting at him until he passes through Nevada.
Oops. New York is suing a Manhattan law firm and its principals, accusing them of running a personal injury fraud scheme that allegedly sought tens of millions of dollars from the city over bike crashes that never happened.
Lawyers for the New Jersey driver who killed the hockey-playing Gaudreau brothers two years ago blamed the victims for the crash, saying they were riding their bikes in the roadway, making it impossible to avoid the crash. Even though that’s exactly where they were supposed to be, and the driver was allegedly drunk, speeding and passing a slower car on the grass shoulder of the roadway. But yeah, it’s their fault. Schmucks.
Ten laps of ten miles each on 10/10. Or put another way, 10/10 on 10/10.
That’s what a group of bike riders will be doing Saturday morning, riding up and down Mandeville Canyon to raise funds for the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, which runs the suicide prevention hotline here in Southern California.
This is the seventh consecutive year the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge has been held, now sponsored by the Domestique Cycling Club. The first time it was just a single man riding up and down the iconic cycling climb; last year 91 bicyclists raised over $13,000 for mental health and suicide prevention.
This year they’re already over $22,000.
There’s still time to sign up ride or make a donation, so I’m including the full press release for the event below. And even if you’re saving your legs for Sunday’s CicLAvia, you can still show up and cheer the riders on.
LA Cyclists Will Climb Mandeville Canyon Up To Ten Times On World Mental Health Day To Fund The 988 Crisis Line
The 10/10 Mandeville Challenge returns Saturday, October 10, raising money for Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, home to the nation’s first suicide prevention center
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7, 2026. On Saturday, October 10, World Mental Health Day, cyclists from across Los Angeles will gather before dawn at the base of Mandeville Canyon for the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge, a community ride benefiting Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, home to the nation’s first and most comprehensive Suicide Prevention Center and the organization that answers 988 calls, chats and texts for Southern California.
Each lap is a full climb of Mandeville Canyon, 1,000 feet over 10 miles round trip. Ten laps is 100 miles and 10,000 feet. Cyclists choose their own lap goal, supporters pledge per lap or donate outright, and all donations and pledges go to Didi Hirsch. Last year 91 cyclists completed 391 laps and raised more than $13,000. This year flat donations have already passed $22,000 before a single lap has been ridden, with per-lap pledges still to come.
The challenge was founded in 2020 by Dr. Trevor Schraufnagel, who saw the isolation of that fall deepen depression and suicide risk, and who rode Mandeville alone on October 10 that year. The name carries the meaning: a 10 out of 10 is the hardest effort a cyclist can give, and the challenge asks everyone on the mountain to find theirs at least once, whether that takes one lap or ten.
“In the fall of 2020 I watched isolation deepen depression and suicide risk for a lot of people, and the hardest part of my job was the number of them who believed help wouldn’t help. It will. That’s what this ride is for,” said Schraufnagel, licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Balance CBT, Associate Director of the UCLA Anxiety Disorders Clinic, and founder of the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge. “Somewhere on that climb every cyclist hits a 10 out of 10, and that effort is relative only to you. We ride on World Mental Health Day because that’s the point.”
“We are so grateful to Dr. Trevor Schraufnagel, event organizers, and everyone taking part in the 10/10 Mandeville Challenge for turning a personal challenge into a powerful act of community support,” said Lyn Morris, LMFT, Chief Executive Officer of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. “Suicide prevention is something we all have a role in, and every conversation, every act of connection, and every dollar raised can help make sure someone in crisis knows they are not alone and that help is available. On World Mental Health Day, this ride is a meaningful reminder of the difference we can all make and the power of community.”
The 10/10 Mandeville Challenge is presented by Domestique Cycling Club, with support from Specialized Santa Monica, Goodboybob Coffee, Maurten, SVRY, Tirata and Athletic Brewing. Cyclists can register and supporters can pledge at go.rallyup.com/1010mandeville.
Event details
What: 10/10 Mandeville Challenge 2026, a community cycling climb benefiting Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services
When: Saturday, October 10, 2026, 6:30am to 7pm
Where: Mandeville Canyon Road, Brentwood. Participants gather at the Event Base Station at Paul Revere Charter Middle School, 1450 Allenford Avenue, Los Angeles.
As for today’s illustration, I’m too tired tonight to try to figure out any other way to illustrate mental health, so a happy smiling sun it is.
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It’s not the cars, it’s the bike lanes that are the problem.
Even when someone on a bicycle gets killed in the shadow of In-N-Out in Venice Blvd, in what passes for a protected bike lane in Los Angeles, and right under a Karen Bass campaign poster.
If that doesn’t sum up the state of the city these days, I don’t know what does.
At least now we know when and where Oscar Lazaro was killed, reportedly in a dooring.
The parents of a fallen teenage bike rider filed suit against the 80-year old driver who killed her as she rode her ebike in a crosswalk with warning lights flashing; the noted local folk artist is already facing a misdemeanor charge of negligent operation of a motor vehicle resulting in the death. Which will likely be pled down to a traffic ticket before they’re done, and he should be back to driving in no time.
A Boston writer considers what the city could learn from Danish cyclists, and concludes it’s a matter of obeying the law and being more courteous. I would have said it’s fighting for safer streets to stop drivers from killing kids — aka stop de kindermoord — but he’s entitled to my opinion.
Crashes — and deaths — are piling up in New York’s Central Park, despite a lack of motor vehicles and the people in them on the park’s carfree loop, which looks as busy as a typical CicLAvia in the photo accompanying the story.
An Ontario, Canada letter writer says adults on bicycles need to set a better example for kids by riding safely and following the law. She’s got a point. I stopped blowing through stop signs when a little kid pointed at as I went through one, and told his dad he wanted to be just like me when he grew up.
Anyone want to guess how much I want to write about bikes right now, after writing about at least the seventh person killed riding one in Southern California in the past two weeks?
Anyone?
I didn’t think so.
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In a bizarre story from Mississippi, a man awaiting trial on murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run charges for intentionally running down two bike riders dropped dead in his jail cell.
Fifty-seven-year old Shannon Thomas reportedly died of a heart attack last month, after he allegedly chased down and killed a 21-year old woman and attempted to kill the 36-year old man she was riding with in March.
To make things even stranger, Thomas was dating the mother of the woman he killed, and ran the couple down after an argument with the other man.
Which you’d have to think would adversely affect his relationship with the victim’s mom.
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Yawn.
It’s Prime Day again, the two-day national holiday devoted to buying things you don’t need, just because the marked up price has been marked down to make it seem like an irresistible bargain.
Which isn’t to say you can’t actually get some good deals, but caveat emptor.
Ebike maker Gazelle is recalling roughly 1,032 of its Urban Arrow cargo bikes because the front bolt in the seat post clamp can break and make the seat come loose. Which is an oddly specific number to follow the word “roughly.”
He gets it. A Milwaukee County supervisor has put a stop to a planned 15 mph speed limit for bike trails, arguing it doesn’t make sense to impact legal trail users when the real problem is “unauthorized high-speed e-motos that should not be operating on these trails in the first place.” Maybe he could have a talk with some of our SoCal city leaders. Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.
In the most heartwarming story you’ll read today, a 96-year old great-grandfather was reunited with the bicycle he rode for decades, after his 67-year old daughter had it restored and delivered to the Cambridge, England care home where he now lives by members of his cycling club; he met his wife of 73-years when they both were riding back in 1947.
London office developers are strongly backing proposals to weaken the city’s bicycle parking requirements, after a new analysis showed that the vast majority of indoor bike spaces sit empty every day. Which I can understand, because I always insisted on taking mine into my office, rather than risking getting it stolen from an unsecured parking garage.
Damn. A 48-year old European commercial bond trader at JPMorgan’s London office declared “I’m not a cyclist” before taking part in a 500-mile fundraising ride, then proceeded to drop dead on the first day.
Eight years and 1 million crossings after Dutch engineers replaced the asphalt surface of a bike path with hollow panels made from recycled plastic, the trail has resulted in 50–70% lower carbon emissions, while rain storage reached 48% of capacity.
Once again, I failed to win the Nobel Prize for physics, despite my discovery that a body not in motion will usually grow a big butt.
Mine included.
So keep moving out there.
Meanwhile, if you’re still reading this, it means Iran hasn’t taken Donald Trump up on his invitation to nuke Los Angeles and/or San Diego.
Although what’s even scarier is the laughter from the audience.
Twitter post
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Santa Monica public radio station KCRW lists Sunday’s Heart of LA CicLAvia at the top of their things to do list for this week.
CicLAvia—Heart of LA (Downtown) | Sunday | FREE The dream of safe streets becomes reality for one day. Bike, skate, or walk through 6.5 miles of car-free streets connecting Downtown, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, the Arts District, Boyle Heights, and Echo Park.
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The Los Angeles Times reports that the safest drivers on LA streets appears to be no driver, as Waymo stats show crashes involving the driverless cars are climbing. But most result in just minor damage and injuries, and many occur while the vehicles are stopped.
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Montrose invites you to the official opening of the re-imagined La Crescenta Ave tomorrow.
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Noted bicyclist Conan O’Brien talks bikes with Owen Wilson, including about how deadly SoCal’s killer highway is. 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.
Pasadena police urge drivers to slow down in school zones, and offer safety tips for students walking, biking or rolling for tomorrow’s National Walk, Bike and Roll to School Day. Meanwhile, LA tells drivers to just carry on.
Italy’s Giulio Ciccone is questioning the results of a photo finish that gave victory in the European cycling championships to Remco Evenepoel, despite what appears to be a dead heat; Evenepoel was awarded the win by a margin of just 0.0028 seconds.
The Upworthy site spends some time with cycling great Gino Bartali, who was not only a two-time winner of the Tour de France, but helped save hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews by hiding forged papers from the Germans and Italian fascists in the frame of his bicycle during WWII.
Cyclistexamines six items at Italy’s Ghisallo Museum that illuminate the history of cycling, next to the cycling-oriented chapel honoring the Madonna del Ghisallo, the patron saint of bicyclists. Although once again, you’ll have to get past the magazine’s paywall. And I’d gladly make the case for Bartali as the patron saint of cyclists.
I’m told there’s a new ghost bike on Venice Blvd in Palms.
Rumor is the victim was killed in a dooring a few weeks ago. The victim’s name, which was confirmed by an anonymous comment over the weekend, was Oscar Lazaro.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the name I had been given for the ebike rider killed by a driver in Arleta on September 13th. The commenter also confirmed that the victim in Arleta was on a legal ebike, not an e-moto, as I had questioned.
If anyone knows anything about either death, please let me know, either in the comments below, or at the email address on the About page.
That makes them the 55th and 56th SoCal bicycling deaths we know about this year, the 20th in Los Angeles County, and the sixth and seventh in the City of Los Angeles.
But there are probably others in LA we haven’t heard about, since the LAPD and LADOT no longer feel the need to inform us, or anyone else.
Deadly PCH has claimed yet another life, and once again at the hands of a speeding driver.
According to the Los Angeles Times, 51-year old Ryo Uchimiya was killed when a 16-year old boy slammed his speeding Range Rover into Uchimiya’s parked car early Saturday, as he slept in his car after arriving early for work at the famed Nobu Malibu restaurant.
The Times reports the 21-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that runs through Malibu has averaged roughly four deaths a year as a resulting from traffic violence over the last decade.
The driver reportedly didn’t have a license, according to TMZ.
Fifty-five-year old Jose Zayas was suspected of being intoxicated when he got into an argument with the driver over a missed stop, then made his escape on a bicycle after shooting the driver.
Researchers also found that the overwhelming majority of patients were male, with a median of 14 years old, and many were “violating age or helmet laws” at the time of their injuries.
However, in the context-free manner we’ve become accustomed to, researchers apparently neglected to note that ebike and e-scooter usage has also skyrocketed over the same period. And that many, if not most, young riders are using what are actually illegal electric motorbikes, which allow far higher speeds than legal ped-assist bikes.
So what you really have is a problem of more kids illegally using illegal e-motos and scooters, underage and without a license.
But sure, let’s just keep up the panic over ebikes, of any and all types.
“Car Sick” is an engaging account of how a car-obsessed Los Angeles tech entrepreneur became an advocate for safer streets whose primary mode of transportation is his bicycle. It paints a lively picture of what it’s like to navigate LA’s sprawling metropolis on a bike—including catching a flight from LAX with kids and luggage—while giving readers the confidence they need to feel comfortable biking in urban settings themselves.
Michael Schneider explains why city streets are not safe for anyone who’s not in a car and how to stay safe on streets that weren’t designed for bikes.
Streetsbloghas come out against Prop 45, which is billed as a reform to overly restrictive CEQA laws, but which the nonprofit transportation news organization says “would roll out the red carpet for just the type of projects that we created CEQA to prevent and mitigate in the first place.”
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A three-year old girl narrates a video — in Japanese, Swedish, English, and “Dogs” — of her parents taking her and a pair of golden retrievers riding on their pink and blue ebikes with matching sidecars,
Instagram post
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Sometimes, it’s the person on two wheels behaving badly.
A 37-year old Aussie man was arrested after crashing his ebike into a 16-year old girl while riding drunk and stoned; the girl was critically injured, while the ebike rider had an alcohol level more than two and a half times the legal limit, and tested positive for coke and meth. The woman he was apparently riding with just kept going.
This is who we share the road with, part four. A 75-year old Santa Ana woman has been arrested for animal cruelty and animal abandonment after she was accused of intentionally running over and killing a puppy last month. A witness said Hahn Nguyen placed dog food in the street, then ran over the puppy, named Blackey, when it scurried over to eat it; she then stopped on top of the dog for about 15 seconds before driving off.
Bike riders in Ontario, Canada were left shaken after a 34-year old man was killed riding his bicycle on a roadway with a 50 mph speed limit; one man said he couldn’t understand how it could happen on a day with clear visibility unless the driver just wasn’t paying attention. Apparently, cellphones and distracted driving must be new up there.
French soccer superstar Mbappé is one of us, posting video of rehabbing his knee by riding a bicycle, despite Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho’s “non-negotiable” rule forbidding team members from riding bikes. And yes, he was wearing a helmet.
Cycling Weeklyexamines an Eddy Merckx team bike from 1972, the year the Cannibal won the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double, Milan-San Remo, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Il Lombardia, La Flèche Wallonne, the Trofeo Baracchi and set the hour record in Mexico City — but the frame is too small to be the great one’s own bike.
After ignoring bicycles since the last election cycle — pun intended — Los Angeles Mayor and Metro Board Chair Karen Bass made a theatrical production of signing a resolution dedicating a whopping $1 million for CicLAvia and other open streets events.
“As a lifelong biker and native Angeleno, I know how important open and slow streets events like CicLAvia are to our city and the L.A. region. These events connect communities, bring people together, support local businesses, and help us reimagine public spaces in the second-largest city in the country,” said Mayor Bass.
Which is enough to fund two — count ’em, two — CicLAvias. But it’s better than nothing, which is what Metro’s budget originally included.
And speaking of which, CicCLAvia returns to the Heart of Downtown on October 11th, celebrating 16 years and one day since the first one on 10-10-10.
And yes, I still have the T-shirt. But either it shrank, or I didn’t.
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On the last possible day for California bill signings, Gavin Newsom signed Encinitas Senator Catherine Blakespear’s SB 1167, defining the difference between ebikes and e-motos.
SB 1167 establishes a clearer distinction between legal electric bicycles and higher-powered vehicles that are not e-bikes under California law. The legislation reinforces the state’s existing 750-watt and maximum speed limits for e-bikes while strengthening requirements for how e-bikes and other electric vehicles are labeled, marketed, sold, and operated.
Now let’s hope the cops and press read it, and stop confusing the two every chance they get.
San Diego is the top SoCal city at six, followed by Irvine at eight. Meanwhile, Los Angeles checks in at a relatively lowly, and overrated, 24, with green Long Beach just two notches higher.
And what sets the greenest cities apart is they’re all in blue states, which probably isn’t what Fox News had in mind.
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Thanks to Megan for forwarding a flyer for a rally in memory of two bike riders killed on the same street on or near UC Davis, as she says the university “punts” on safety measures, as well as responsibility.
A Washington State bike rider was found badly injured in the bushes next to the roadway, with “at least” six broken ribs, broken jaw, a broken eye socket, broken clavicle, several abrasions and a brain bleed, but the cops don’t think he was a hit-and-run victim, insisting he said there wasn’t a car involved, even though all he remembers is waking up in the hospital. Which is pretty fucked up for just falling at less than 12 mph.
I guess we’re going to ease back into this slowly.
I’m apparently still affected by the adverse reaction to the Moderna covid and flu shots last week. I had hoped to play catch-up today, and cover most if not all of what we missed last week.
But after falling asleep mid-sentence and running my laptop battery down to zero, it’s clear that I still don’t have my strength back — something I discovered after thinking I was okay on Saturday and nearly passing out at a WeHo dog event.
But at least I got to see a nice bakfiets someone rode to the dog park. Even the corgi stopped to check it out.
Due to the resulting time constraints, I’m going to be an asshole today and not take the time to look up who sent me what. So thank you for sending me stuff, even if I don’t credit you individually.
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I promised someone last week, before everything went to hell, that I would look into the death of man killed by a driver while riding an ebike in Arleta early in the morning of Sunday, September 13th.
A crowdfunding campaign posted by his brother has raised over $17,000 of the $20,000 goal to help pay for funeral expenses, describing in heartbreaking detail how much he loved, and was loved.
However, as we have discussed before, it’s difficult to determine whether a fallen ebike rider was on an electric bicycle or an electric motorcycle, since the police and the media can’t seem to tell one from another. And while any death is tragic, only the former are the subject of this site.
So unless I know for certain that the victim of a crash was riding a ped-assist bicycle, and not some other form of two-wheeled electric conveyance, I’m not including them in the already too high count of SoCal bicycling deaths.
And yes, even one is one too many.
So while my heart goes out to the family and loved ones of Oscar Adrian Lazaro, I won’t be adding his name to a 51 others who have lost their lives riding a bicycle in our deadly corner of the country.
But if anyone can convince me he was on a legal Class 1, 2 or 3 ebike, I’m more than willing to reconsider.
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Gracias por nada, Los Angeles.
Or rather, thanks for a whole 2.2 miles of new bike lanes installed in the last fiscal year, from June 2025 to June 2026. Except that’s lane miles — i.e., counting each side of the roadway separately — so we’re really talking about a whole one and one-tenth mile of net new bike lanes.
Streetsblog’sJoe Linton wrote earlier this month that the City of Los Angeles, not to be confused with the other 87 cities and various unincorporated areas that make up LA County, built a whopping 7.5 miles of new bike lanes. But at the same time, the city removed 5.3 miles of already existing bike lanes, resulting in the wholly underwhelming 2.2-mile net total.
They also improved a whole 14.1 miles of existing bike lanes, which usually translates to adding a row white plastic bendie posts and calling it protected, as if those wands will somehow magically ward off a couple tons of ballistic steel and glass.
Which is like trading the family cow for a handful of magic beans. I mean, your family does have a cow, right?
And people wonder why I’m voting for Nithya Raman, if only because she’s not Karen Bass — the current mayor who not only supervised the non-building of bike lanes for the last three-and-a-half years, but also personally intervened to keep Forest Lawn Drive deadly.
Not to mention my current state Assemblymember, who voted to make it virtually illegal to fix the deadly street after a more than $300,000 lobbying campaign on behalf of Forest Lawn and Mt. Sinai cemeteries, in what can only be seen as a blatant attempt to drive more business.
Pun intended.
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Speaking of things that suck, as we seem to be this morning, yet another person traversing the county without benefit of a motor vehicle was killed by a driver before they could reach the other coast.
According to the New York Times, 24-year old Norwegian Joachim Lanham was killed by a driver in Kansas while attempting to rollerblade from Los Angeles to New York.
Lanham was 22 days into his journey when he was apparently run down by an 82-year old woman, once again raising the question of what the hell someone that old was doing behind the wheel. Except that in many, if not most cases, auto-centetric road designs and the lack of viable options doesn’t give them any other choice.
I’m just tired of people coming to this country on a tourist visa, and being sent home in a box.
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If you’ve been hanging around this site for awhile, you’ve probably seen my complaints that, despite common perceptions, bike helmets aren’t the life-saving equivalent of seat belts and air bags, and do little to protect again high-speed crashes or injuries to other parts of the body.
No word on what the man actually did, or attempted to do. But the 63-year old woman responded by whacking the guy with her bike helmet — and continued to chase after him, yelling and smacking him with it, until a stranger intervened to protect her.
And him, apparently.
One more reason you should always have a helmet handy, evidently.
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Metro Bike says “Westward ho!” by expanding service between West Los Angeles and DTLA, as well as Downtown Los Angeles southward to the Rail-to-Rail Active Transportation Corridor.
Twitter post
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Kyle writes to say that Bike Streets is launching in Torrance.
They’re looking for 20 people willing to log every ride with Bike Streets and help build a Low-Stress Torrance Bike Map; you can sign up at bikestreets.com/join.
According to Kyle’s email,
Bike Streets takes a practical “Network First” approach to making biking safer and more accessible.
Instead of waiting years for individual bike lanes to be designed and funded, Bike Streets helps communities:
• Map the safest, lowest-stress streets and paths that already exist
• Connect those routes into a usable bike network
• Identify dangerous intersections and missing links that prevent the network from working
• Focus resources on fixing those critical gaps
• Start with practical, lower-cost improvements while working toward permanent infrastructure
The goal is to create a connected network that people can use now, and then continually improve it over time.
I think this is an approach worth learning about for anyone interested in making it easier and safer for kids and families to bike around their communities.
He says the project began with a podcast video from Avi Stopper of Strong Towns.
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A Bay Area TV station says a new bike trail offers a safer way to ride into Sausalito.
You can all sleep better tonight, knowing the NTSB, aka National Transportation Safety Board, is on the case of the Milligan University massacre. On the other hand, it’s not comforting to know that Tennessee thinks a bicycling route with a 55 mph speed limit is somehow okay.
A 32-year old man documented his ride in the Race Across America, better known as RAAM, finishing the more than 3,000 race in 11 days, 23 hours and 3 minutes in a tribute to his father, who is suffering from prostate cancer; his film The Road to Why is now available on Apple TV and Amazon.
