Police respondeding to the crash found a man lying unresponsive on the north side of the road.
Witnesses reported the driver was headed west on Oceanside when he or she slammed into the victim, who has not been publicly identified. That was corroborated by physical evidence.
There’s no word on which direction the victim was traveling or where he was positioned on the roadway. However, there is a bike lane in both directions on Oceanside, with the intersection controlled with a traffic signal.
There’s also no word on whether he had lights on his bike at that hour.
The driver was arrested at the scene on suspicion of driving under the influence, with police also seizing their car.
Anyone with information is urged to call Oceanside Police Collision Investigator Clint Bussey at 760/435-4412.
This is at least the 26th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the sixth that I’m aware of in San Diego County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
May 9, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Mother of five dies after she’s taken off life-support, 10 days after collision while bicycling in Lincoln Heights
Too often, we never learn what happens after someone riding a bicycle is taken to the hospital.
If we ever hear about it in the first place.
That’s what nearly happened late last month, when a woman died days after she was struck by a driver while riding her bike in Lincoln Heights.
Make that a young mother, who leaves five young kids behind.
The first clue came with a post on Nextdoor, which Michael Shifflett forwarded to me this morning.
Unfortunately, there was no confirmation about the crash, let alone her death. And searching the LA County coroner’s office turned up nothing.
Because they misspelled her name.
According to information Shifflett was able to gather speaking with witnesses and members of her family, 31-year old Adriana Rodriguez, otherwise known as Fishy, was hit by a driver’s car at N. San Fernando Road and Humboldt Street on April 18th.
She was hospitalized for ten days afterwards, and died April 28th after being taken off life-support.
Let’s see if we can boost that a little for those kids who will now grow up without a mother.
And yes, I gave, too.
This is at least the 25th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the eighth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; it’s the third I know of in the City of LA.
It’s also a reminder that too many stories like this never make the news. And we’ll never know how many other victim of traffic violence we may not have heard about.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Adriana Rodriguez and all her family.
Thanks to Michael Schifflett and Chris By Bike for the heads-up.
May 5, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Man killed riding bicycle near center divider on the Pomona Freeway in South El Monte; 7th LA County death this year
Once again, someone has been killed riding a bicycle in the traffic lanes of a major SoCal freeway.
And once again, it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.
Not surprisingly, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
A collision with one vehicle at highway speeds is not likely to be survivable, let alone multiple vehicles.
As in the other cases where bike riders have been killed while riding on a freeway, no explanation was given for what the hell he was doing there.
Just to be clear, while it is legal to ride a bicycle on some limited access highways where there is no alternative bicycle route, there are few, if any, places in the Los Angeles area where it is allowed.
And it is never smart to ride a bike to the left of the fog line, or right limit line, on any urban freeway.
This is at least the 24th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
According to the paper, Swantek was riding on Glendora Mountain Road when he lost consciousness due to an undetermined medical problem just before noon Friday.
A passing Good Samaritan began CPR, and continued until paramedics took over. However, Swantek was declared dead less than half an hour later.
Anyone with information is urged to call the CHP’s Baldwin Park office at 626/338-1164.
Sadly, it’s yet another reminder that cars aren’t the only danger we face on the roads.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Stanley Swantek and all his family and loved ones.
Thanks to John McBrearty, ActiveSGV and LB Acct Action Grp for the heads-up.
The victim, who was not publicly identified, was reportedly trying to cross from the center divider to the right shoulder. There’s no word on why he was crossing where he did, rather than use the nearby bridge.
This is at least the 21st bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fourth that I’m aware of in San Diego County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and all his loved ones.
One victim, described only as a teenage boy, died after being taken to a local hospital.
Another boy was hospitalized in critical condition with what was described only as major injuries, while a third suffered significant lower body injuries.
Twenty-eight-year old Port Hueneme resident Samuel Rocha turned himself in to police sometime overnight. He was still being processed at 9:30 this morning.
KABC-7 reports Rocha has been booked on one count of homicide and two counts of attempted homicide, in a story that hasn’t been posted online yet.
Let’s hope they’re right, and authorities are taking this crime seriously for a change.
This is at least the 20th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fourth that I’m aware of in Ventura County.
That matches the county’s total for all of last year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victims and all their loved ones.
Thanks to everyone for all the kind words following my surgery earlier this month.
My fumble fingers are finally functional again, even though the swollen new Frankenhand they’re attached to is still almost, sort of, not really, kind of back to normal.
But it’ll get there. And nearly two weeks after surgery, the pain is already better than it was before, so there’s that.
Meanwhile, we have a lot to catch up on.
It will take a few days to catch up on all the bike news we missed, but I’ll make sure we don’t miss out on anything important.
So let’s get started on the first installment.
And my apologies for the near-total lack of credits today; with one exception forwarded by multiple people yesterday, I lost track of who sent what to my attention during my extended downtime, which is going to be a problem until we get caught up.
Heartbreaking news from DC, where a longtime bike advocate was killed in a collision, just hours after tweeting about the dangers on the city’s streets.
Had to bike through a roundabout over a highway to get my Covid jab. Lifespan maximization function is clearly perfectly well-calibrated. pic.twitter.com/Zw62SRq70w
(Jim) Pagels was struck in a horrific chain-reaction crash along Massachusetts Avenue NW, about a mile from his home on Capitol Hill, his family said. The avid rider and self-described urbanist who was in his second year of a doctorate program in economics, died at a hospital.
Pagels’s sister, Laura Menendez, described her brother as funny, smart and passionate about many things — pursuing his postgraduate studies, playing tennis and board games, and traveling by bike.
“He had a good heart,” Menendez said. “And he was such a huge advocate for bike safety.”
The paper also quotes a friend of Pagels.
“He was so excited about working in that urban space,” said Finn Vigeland, a close friend who met Pagels while the two worked on the Columbia Daily Spectator. “He was well aware of the dangers of cycling . . . but he loved biking, and he wanted everyone to bike. He wanted everyone to feel like this was the best way to get around D.C…
I hope our city leaders hear about Jim and understand the life that was so senselessly taken away on Friday. He cared so deeply about the injustices that led to his death, and he would want us to be furious about it,” Vigeland said. “I hope that knowing that this was something Jim was working so hard to change might prompt people to take bolder action.”
Let’s hope city leaders get the message here, too.
And used the tragedy as a springboard to call for safer streets, and talk with Michael Schneider, founder of LA street safety PAC Streets For All.
It doesn’t take long for their conversation to get to the heart of the problems on our streets.
ME: Six years ago, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti set a goal of zero traffic-related deaths by 2025, part of the global Vision Zero initiative. So far, we’re not on track to meet that goal. My colleague Steve Lopez recently reported that 238 people died in car crashes in Los Angeles last year — only a tiny decrease from 2019 despite significantly reduced traffic due to COVID-19, and just 8% less than the first full year Garcetti’s policy was in effect. What is going on?
SCHNEIDER: Our city is very good at plans and goals and not very good at implementation. Can you imagine if you were a heart surgeon and people were coming in for heart surgery, and no one would let you operate? Vision Zero is a laudable goal, but until we have a City Council and a mayor who will spend the political capital to make the tough decisions and deal with NIMBY blowback to make changes to our streets, it’s never going to happen…
ME: Where has Mayor Garcetti been on safe streets?
SCHNEIDER: Absent. He says all the right stuff, and he hires great people, like Seleta Reynolds. He will never risk his neck at all for a bike lane or a bus lane.
But I think we’re on the cusp of some exciting changes, especially because the city of Los Angeles has now aligned their elections with federal elections, and the turnout is so much larger and so much more progressive. I think we are on the cusp of truly having different political leadership, where a guy like Paul Koretz, who’s termed out, couldn’t win in 2022 and beyond. And where someone like Nithya Raman, who had making the city more bikeable in her campaign messaging, can defeat an incumbent.
Then there was this about the recent failed attempt to make iconic Melrose Ave safer and more livable for everyone.
ME: Talking about blowback, I read the post you wrote about the proposed “Uplift Melrose” project, which would have added protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks and shaded seating areas along a 1.3-mile stretch of Melrose Avenue. There was broad support from local businesses, but City Councilmember Paul Koretz effectively killed the proposal. Why is it so difficult politically to get changes like these approved?
SCHNEIDER: Opponents typically say the following: If you remove parking or reduce car capacity in any way, how are people going to shop or get to businesses? You’re going to kill business. They also ask, “Why would we invest in this when no one uses the bike lanes anyway?” People cite anecdotes of driving by bike lanes and seeing them empty.
If we had a beautiful six-lane paved highway that only went for one mile and then became a dirt road with potholes, how many cars would take that road? That is the equivalent of what we ask people to do when they bike around Los Angeles. If we had a network of protected bike lanes, you would see a ton of people using them. One piece of evidence is CicLAvia. Those events bring out tens of thousands of people to ride their bikes on closed streets.
What happened to Uplift Melrose was egregious even by L.A. standards. Koretz basically became a puppet for mostly white, wealthy homeowners who couldn’t see themselves riding a bike or a bus.
But if anything ever happens to me when I’m riding a bicycle, I want you to politicize the hell out of it.
Take what’s left of my body to the city council and dump it on the dais, if you have to.
Metaphorically speaking, of course. Or literally, for that matter.
And if it happens on a street marked for safety improvements in city’s mobility plan, I hope those lawyers up there on the right will join together to sue the hell out of the city for failing to keep their commitment to safer streets.
Or maybe just sue over LA’s failed and forgotten Vision Zero plan to force the cowards we foolishly elected to lead us to the changes we so desperately need on our streets.
………
LADOT has finally release the results of the city’s biennial walk and bike count, which for years has been done on a volunteer basis by the LACBC and later, LA Walks.
Which is something they should have been doing all along.
And yes, they are just now releasing data collected that was collected two years ago, for reasons known only to them.
It also shows how easy it is to boost bicycling with a little decent infrastructure, with a 73% jump in ridership as a result of the protected and separated bike lanes on the MyFigueroa project.
MyFig also resulted the city’s most heavily-trafficked pedestrian corridor, even above the tourist-clogged sidewalks of Hollywood Blvd.
And it points to how Los Angeles can increase the far too low rate of women riding bikes on city streets.
While the report found that women make up 40 percent of pedestrians on weekdays and 44 percent on weekends, women made up just 14 percent of cyclists. However, the report also indicated a 120 percent increase in female riders on streets improved with dedicated bike paths.
In other words, all they have to do is what the city already committed to in the 2010 bike plan, and the mobility plan that subsumed it.
Not to mention LA’s nearly forgotten Vision Zero and the mayor’s Green New Deal.
………
What the hell.
I’m not sure where this video is from; I can’t make out the the police patches or or the name on the patrol cars.
But something looks seriously wrong about a bunch of while cops taking a young black man into custody for the crime of…wait for it…
And while some cities require bikes to be registered, I don’t know any place where police have the authority to seize private property over a handful of minor infractions.
Which would be illegal as hell if they tried to seize someone’s car for an expired license or failing to signal a turn.
Let alone not having their headlights on in broad daylight.
Unfortunately, there’s a term for crap like this — Biking While Black.
And regardless of their motivation, it makes the cops look racist AF.
Thanks to Jon, Megan Lynch and Stacey Kline for the heads-up.
And if anyone knows where this happened, let me know so I’ll never make the mistake of going there.
Update: Thanks to Al Williams for identifying this as Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Which I will make a point of never visiting.
@bikinginla Phone-in your comment before or while the item is being introduced: (310) 288-2288 (say you want to comment on item #2) Zoom-in using passcode 90210: https://t.co/phVIDKQvpb Email your comment to cityclerk@beverlyhills.org pic.twitter.com/r7CX4Fo7OZ
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A Texas bike rider bike rider was hospitalized with a brain bleed and facial fractures when he was run down by a drunk driver — while riding on an ostensibly carfree bike path.
Singaporean actor Tay Ping Hui says he’s got nothing against bicyclists, despite complaining when a small group of riders merged onto the roadway ahead of him. Because apparently, it’s asking too much to slow down or change lanes to drive safely around them.
Sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
No bias here, either. A Singapore motorcyclist calls for banning bicycles from the roads after watching one — count ’em, one — scofflaw bicyclist weaving through traffic. Meanwhile, the website somehow feels the need to point out that 34 bike riders were ticketed for breaking the law over the weekend. Makes you wonder how many motorcyclists got tickets the same weekend. Let alone drivers. But sure, blame everyone on bicycles.
Calbike wants your support for the proposed Safety Stop Bill, which would allow bike riders to treat stop signs as yields. Which is exactly what many riders safely do right now. And far too many drivers do unsafely.
Meanwhile, AB 43 unanimously passed the Assembly Transportation Committee with no opposition; the bill would retain the deadly 85th Percentile Law, but allow cities to consider factors other than drivers’ right feet in setting speed limits, such as the location as well as pedestrian and bicycle safety.
California is joining a nationwide movement to prioritize safety over speed. The question is whether the shift is real, or if the legislature will simply pass a few feel good bills before forgetting all about it and moving on to other matters, as too often happens.
A San Francisco woman celebrates seven years of living carfree after switching to an ebike when her car was totaled by an uninsured driver; she claims she’s saved over $50,000 over that period.
My hometown university has now joined the Vision Zero club. Which isn’t too surprising, considering it’s surrounded by one of the nation’s most bike-friendly communities. Even though it didn’t get that way until long after I left, of course.
Apparently writing with all seriousness, a New Hampshire medical worker and self-described cyclist says he worked with a state legislator on a bill that would require bicyclists to ride salmon, but the bill died when he couldn’t get time off work to attend the hearing. Because evidently, riding a bike in New Hampshire just isn’t dangerous enough already.
A pair of Vancouver business owners are taking their case to the British Columbia Supreme Court to fight the re-installation of a protected bike lane through a park, arguing the decision to swap a traffic lane for a bikeway wasn’t “reasonable, rational or logical.” Seriously. It’s in a park.
Life is cheap in the UK, where a 26-year old driver got a lousy 35 months in jail for intentionally running down a 13-year old boy riding his bike after getting into an argument with the kid in a park, and following him for 20 minutes before using his car as a weapon to attack him.
Scottish cyclist Josh Quigley is on his second day of a world record attempt for the greatest distance ridden on a bicycle in a single week, attempting to ride 320 miles a day in an 80-mile loop through the Scottish countryside; he’s aiming for Aussie pro Jack Thompson’s record of 2,177 miles, despite suffering multiple broken bones in a crash three months ago.
This is who we share the road with. A Kiwi driver is filmed blissfully driving on the right side of the road — which is the wrong side Down Under adjacent — until confronted head-on by a large truck. If your first thought was that it was probably just an American tourist confused about what side to drive on, join the club.
My biggest fear when I agreed to surgery on my arm and hand was that someone would lose their life riding a bike, and I wouldn’t be able to write about the victim.
According to the Malibu Times, the man with the bike was struck and killed by a driver headed west on PCH.
A few moments later, one of his companions was struck and killed by a second driver as he scrambled to collect the victim’s belongings from the roadway.
Both men apparently died at the scene, just minutes apart. According to the paper, there have now been three people killed at the same spot in recent years.
The crash occurred sometime after dark on Saturday, April 10th.
The victim was riding without lights or reflectors when he was run down by a driver headed east on PCH at 51 mph, as recorded on the vehicle’s black box. He was knocked onto the other side of the highway, where he may have been struck by another driver.
There’s no word on whether the victim was riding on PCH or trying to cross the street. There’s also no word on whether the second driver remained at the scene.
Unfortunately, no identification was given for any of the victims, other than the first two men were homeless, while the third may have been.
But they all deserved better.
These are at least the 18th and 19th bicycling fatalities in Southern California this year, and the fourth and fifth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
They are also just two of at least five people killed on PCH in Malibu since early March, along with another pedestrian and the driver of an SUV who went off the road.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for all the victims and their loved ones.
Sometimes the needless death of an innocent person doesn’t merit even a few inches in the local paper.
Let alone a passing comment on the nightly news.
On Monday, I started hearing reports of someone killed in a collision while riding a bicycle in Costa Mesa, based on posts from the notoriously unreliable Nextdoor app.
By Tuesday morning, the location had shifted to nearby Newport Beach, along with comments suggesting the driver had been arrested. But still no confirmation from the coroner’s office or any of the local news outlets.
The coroner reported that 80-year old Ernest Adams died at a Santa Ana medical center early Monday morning, following a collision somewhere in Newport Beach Sunday afternoon.
According to the site, multiple witnesses reported seeing the suspect blow through a stop sign before slamming into Adam’s bike; a street view shows a residential street controlled by a four-way stop, with bike lanes in three directions, next to Newport Harbor High School.
Twenty-year old Norwalk resident Alexis Garcialopez was reportedly arrested for DUI causing serious injury after failing a roadside sobriety test.
Hopefully, that will be upgraded to vehicular homicide in the wake of Adams’ death. Because after 80 years on this earth, he definitely deserved a better ending.
This is at least the 17th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the second that I’m aware of in Orange County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Ernest Adams and all his family and loved ones.
March 28, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Update: Unidentified man killed riding bike in Indio collision Sunday morning; second fatal Indio bike crash in two months
Then there were three.
A bad weekend for Southern California bike riders got worse, when an unidentified man was killed riding a bike in Indio Sunday morning.
The driver, identified only as man, remained after the crash and cooperated with investigators.
Unfortunately, no other information is available at this time; even the police spokesman had to speculate that the crash occurred in the middle of the road, because police shut down in both directions.
And yes, this serves as yet another reminder to always carry ID with you when you ride.
This is at least the 16th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth that I’m aware of in Riverside County; he’s also the second person killed riding a bike in Indio in just the last two months.
