March 31, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on US gives up everything for Lent, tactical techniques to slow speeding drivers, and sharing the road with driving dogs
As we noted yesterday, this site will not observe April Fools Day.
With everything that’s going on in the world right now, you need to be able to trust what you read. Especially here.
March 12, 2020 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on More Covid-19 bike news, you can’t carry heavy things on a bike, and Del Rey gets its very own Great Street
As everyone knows, you can’t carry heavy loads on a bicycle.
We used @pedalmeapp to distribute @SouthwarkGP's leaflets for last year's EU elections. I can't cycle, so was worried the six boxes might have been too much. I was pleased to be wrong, but hadn't realised by quite how much… https://t.co/AvYSE62mm0
Video from one of world's largest logistics companies, @DBSchenker on their use of cargo bikes which they say are 40% more productive than a van in a cityhttps://t.co/Jgf9u9H1wc
Something I can relate to, after once noting the location of every vehicle at an intersection before leaning into a perfect high-speed right turn. Yet somehow failing to spot the puddle directly in front of my wheel.
Then almost miraculously skidding across eight lanes of busy traffic without getting run over, and smashing into the curb on the far side.
I was lucky to get up with just a broken elbow, road rash from head to heel, and my shredded spandex shorts literally hanging a thread from indecent exposure.
Good times.
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A speeding British driver loses control on a slick roadway, barely missing a bike rider before flying off the road.
KCET presents seven places where you can discover the LA River, much of which is accessible by bike. And all of which should be by 2028, when the LA River bike path is scheduled to finally be completed.
Friday the 13th could be unlucky for scofflaw bike riders, pedestrians and motorists in Santa Monica, where police will conduct bike and pedestrians traffic enforcement safety operations throughout the remainder of the month, starting tomorrow. As usual, ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limits so you’re not the one who gets a ticket.
The 2020 Bicycle Leadership Conference sponsored by PeopleForBikes, usually held in conjunction with the now-postponed Sea Otter Classic, has been rescheduled for October.
The Paris-Nice bike race goes on, with a forth stage individual time trial. Enjoy it while you can; this is likely to be one of the last professional races we’ll see this year.
August 23, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Road rage driver attacks LA bike rider, WeHo mayor OKs blocked bike lanes, and protected bike lanes AOK
Sorry about that.
My apologies for yesterday’s unexcused absence.
Blame it on my diabetes, after a bout of low blood sugar knocked me out for several hours.
A man riding to work on Santa Monica Blvd was repeatedly harassed, brake checked, and physically assaulted by a driver in an unmitigated display of road rage that lasted over 6 minutes.
All for the crime of riding a bike, legally and exactly where he was supposed to be.
And to top it off, she accused him of scratching her car after she blocked his bike against another car, and proceeded to door him multiple times.
Seriously, watch the whole thing — with the sound up.
Diaz is the victim of the crash, who remains hospitalized.
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Evidently, the mayor of West Hollywood is perfectly okay with mail carriers and delivery drivers blocking the city’s few bike lanes.
The Mayor of @WeHoCity@ourWEHO saying that USPS is ok parking in the *bike lane* because they need to be “efficient” with their time when delivering mail. Why does their need to be efficient outweigh cyclists need to not die? Each time a car is parked there, it endangers lives. pic.twitter.com/DiqqAeZexU
After all, it’s much easier to accuse people of “outrage culture” than to take a small step to protect human lives.
WeHo can clearly do better than that. And should.
In fact, it does, no thanks to the mayor, apparently.
More info: Since Jan 2019, Parking Enforcement significantly increased ticket issuance for all loading zones, bike lanes. Bike lane citations, this past July, are four times higher than what they were in July of 2018. BUT there’s always more work to do! Loading zones, etc. #WeHo
After the the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) released a study questioning the safety of some protected bike lanes, John Pucher and Ralph Buehler, two of North America’s leading bicycling academics, say it ain’t necessarily so.
“Finding problematic intersection design of cycle tracks here and there in three U.S. cities does not at all negate the overwhelming evidence that protected bike lanes are both safer, in fact, than unprotected lanes or no facilities at all, and that the vast majority of cyclists and potential cyclists overwhelmingly prefer such protected facilities and feel safer on such facilities, thus leading to sharp increases in cycling rates.”
Pucher stresses:
“The IIHS study focuses on the dangerous intersections, but overall, cycle tracks are definitely safer. I agree, however, that intersection design is absolutely crucial to the safety of cycle track systems, and that special intersection, roadway markings, traffic signs, and traffic signals are necessary.”
No, you don’t have to wear a bike helmet. If you were to, say, get hit by a garbage truck on your commute, a small piece of foam and molded plastic is not going to make much of a difference. But since this is America and not Copenhagen, where cyclists are demonized for taking a sliver of space away from precious steel boxes and commuters are regularly in fear of their lives, it’s best to hedge your bets. Wear a helmet. (But whatever you do, please don’t helmet shame those who prefer to let their locks flow.)
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Sometimes it’s the people on bikes behaving badly.
Beautiful piece by an investigative reporter for the LA Times about the remarkable recovery of a man who was nearly killed in an Oceanside bike crash, after lingering in a near vegetative state for months. And her efforts to convince someone he was still alive in there.
Sad news from Bakersfield, where a woman was killed trying to ride her bike in a crosswalk; the CHP immediately absolved the driver of blame because it was dark. Apparently, Dodge Challenger’s like the one the driver had don’t have headlights, and the CHP has never heard of the state’s basic speed law, which prohibits driving too fast for current conditions. Like when it’s too dark to see what’s in the road directly ahead of your car.
Seventy-five-year old Courtney Rudin was convicted of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter for the head-collision that killed a woman riding in a Sonoma County charity ride when he made dangerously ill-advised passed around a slower vehicle; he faces just one year behind bars. Seriously, killing another human being should never be a misdemeanor, intentionally or not.
Forbes says bicycle-oriented development is a growing force with the larger field of transit-oriented development throughout the US, now that bicycling is the nation’s fastest-growing form of transportation.
I want to be like him when I grow up. An 86-year old Utah man still rides 1,000 miles a year on a tandem with his son; he was riding 3,000 miles a year on his own until he was hit by a driver three years ago. Although I’d just as soon skip that whole “hit by a driver” part, thank you.
The owner of three pit bulls that killed a nine-year old Detroit girl as she was riding her bicycle has been charged with second degree murder for not controlling his dogs; the dogs, one of whom was shot by a rescuer, will likely get the death penalty.
Rapper Kadeem’s new album World Sport takes on a bicycling theme, reflecting the time spent on his ‘87 Schwinn World Sport as he was recording it, as well as his time on two wheels navigating the streets of Boston, dealing drugs and delivering for DoorDash.
New York prosecutors threw the book at the 18-year old driver who ran a red light and caused the collateral damage crash that killed a Brooklyn bike rider two weeks ago, charging him with criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, reckless driving, vehicular assault, disobeying a traffic device and doing 61 mph in a 25 mph zone. In other words, driving his Dodge Charger exactly the way the carmaker suggests he should.Thanks to Shaggy for the heads-up.
The New York Times examines why drivers rarely faces charges for killing bike riders; prosecutors have to show the driver’s behavior was “egregious,” and that they broke at least two traffic laws. Although it seems unlikely that the same standard would apply to killing someone with any other kind of weapon.
Montreal will soon start ticketing drivers who violate Quebec’s equivalent of a three-foot passing law by using an ultrasound device that measures the distance between a bike and a passing car. The LAPD apparently has no interest in that, despite being told about the device multiple times as part of the department’s bike liaison program.
They’re onto us, comrades. A Palo Alto writer says a plan to add bus lanes and protected bike lanes on a major street is just a scheme to increase congestion.
Founders of Moscow’s massively popular bike parades say the city’s Department of Transport is muscling in on them with a goal of taking them over and shutting them down; the three-times a year rides attract as many as 30,000 people each time.
Transgender world masters track champ Rachel McKinnon is still facing a backlash — including death threats — a month after winning the title. I’ll leave it up to others to determine if being born male gives her an advantage or not — but she followed the rules, and beat cyclists who had previously beaten her. And no one deserves that crap, especially over a damn bike race.
August 8, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Bay Area bike advocate busted for Biking While Black, and LADOT officer blocks a DTLA bike lane
Was a Richmond bike rider busted in Oakland for Biking While Black?
Najari Smith, the founder and executive director of non-profit group Rich City Rides, was handcuffed and taken into custody on Friday for the crime of playing amplified music while leading a group of kids on a celebratory ride, and forced to spend the weekend in jail.
Like LA’s East Side Riders, Rich City Rides operates as a bike shop/co-op dedicated to building a better community by getting the people of the economically depressed area onto two wheels. And Smith is respected, if not beloved, as the peacemaking leader of that group.
According to Streetsblog, Oakland police issued a statement saying Smith was taken into custody for repeatedly refusing to provide identification after officers approached him for blocking an intersection. Even though that’s not what was written in the citation.
However, police in the East Bay area have a history of cracking down on groups of young black bike riders.
And a Stanford University study showed Oakland police ticketed black riders at six times the rate of white bicyclists, in a city that’s less than one-third black.
Photo shows Najari Smith with the trailer and sound system he was using when he was arrested.
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What does it mean when the people responsible for keeping drivers from blocking bike lanes are the ones blocking them?
In more ways than one.
A bike rider who prefers to remain anonymous forwarded this video of a confrontation with an LADOT Traffic Officer who not only stopped in a DTLA bike lane in heavy traffic, but passive aggressively stood next to her car refusing to move an inch so the rider could get by.
Maybe she was under no obligation to move until she was damn good and ready.
But is it too much to expect a little common courtesy from a city employee, when stepping aside for a few seconds wouldn’t have affected her job performance in the slightest?
Apparently so.
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Once again, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office plea bargains a serious crime down to a mere caress on the wrist, as a French citizen was sentenced to time served — a lousy 18 days — for ramming his SUV into a group of people in DTLA.
That’s despite facing up to eight years on the original five counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
Seriously, how can we expect drivers to take traffic crime seriously if the DA doesn’t?
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Awhile back, we linked to a story about a rapidly growing petition from an Australian anti-bike group that was calling for bicyclists to be required to ride single file.
And their surprising discovery that it may be a well-known cyclist who turned against the local cycling community, after most of the local group rides had turned against him.
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Local
Seriously? Public TV station KCET offers ten basic bike tips for a satisfying ride. And the first one is “Wear a helmet.” As I’ve noted before, I never ride without one. But bike helmets should be seen as the last line of defense when all else fails, never the first. Better advice would be telling people to ride defensively.
You’re invited to re-imagine Downtown Ontario tonight with pop-up buffered bike lanes on Euclid Avenue, as well as extended sidewalks and parklets, followed by a free concert in the town square.
A San Jose sidewalk rider asks everyone to just chill out, because he says it’s not that bad, and the streets can be dangerous. Never mind that sidewalk riding is illegal in downtown San Jose, and riding on the sidewalk actually increases your risk of a collision.
A San Diego native plans to ride an electric wheelchair across the Cascade Mountains through Washington State to call attention to improving accessibility to the outdoors; he was paralyzed when he crashed his bike into a tree ten years ago while he was a student at UC Santa Cruz.
A Colorado town pats itself on the back for improving safety for bike riders — by banning them from riding on sidewalks in the central business district.
Witness the Ofo graveyard, where yellow Dallas dockless bikeshares go to die. You’d think they could donate some of those bikes to homeless or underprivileged people. But evidently, you’d be wrong.
A bike rider in British Columbia suffers potentially life-threatening injuries when he’s hit by a driver. But all the local paper seems to care about is the road that was closed as a result.
Calgary bicyclists complain after the city botched several bike path detours, forcing riders onto dangerous streets. Sort of like the repeated closures of the LA River bike path around Griffith Park, part of which remains closed through next year.
The New York Times offers a moving look at Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, the American bike tourists murdered by ISIS terrorists in Tajikistan. Thanks to David Drexler for the heads-up.
According to researchers, part of the problem stems from the fact that many deaths never get reported by the news media. And those that do are often misrepresented by the police and press.
That’s a problem we’ve seen too many times with bicycling crashes, when the police are quick to blame the victim, only to reverse themselves later.
Or too often not, leaving it up to the victims’ families and their lawyers to correct their mistakes.
And the public usually never hears about it.
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Then there’s this video forwarded by Eric Lewis of a near sideswipe collision captured on his new bike cam.
Which is a perfect candidate for the new #NearMissLA hashtag.
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There may be action taken to stop cab drivers from parking in the new bike lanes on Figueroa, and elsewhere, after all.
As a result of a recent flurry of tweets and videos showing the blocked bike lane, the LA Taxi Commission has proposed a new order prohibiting taxis from blocking bike lanes.
The Taxi Commission just passed tentative Board Order 085, which prohibits taxicabs from obstructing bike lanes in Los Angeles, and ascribes penalties to violators. Next, we will have the final vote at our August meeting. pic.twitter.com/oAc97bvxG0
Trek is forming a new women’s team headed by former world champion — and expecting mother — Lizzie Deignan. Another women’s team is great, as long as they pay them what the men make, which is highly unlikely. And get them some TV coverage so people might actually be able to watch for a change.
Yesterday, a friend and long-time supporter of this site texted me to say she was in the back of an ambulance on the way to the emergency room after getting hit by a driver.
Fortunately, she wasn’t seriously injured, and was sent home with a large hematoma and assorted scrapes and bruises.
She’s one of the safest and most conservative bike riders I know, and someone who always rides with a helmet and hi-viz. Yesterday the helmet came in handy; the hi-viz, apparently not so much.
I don’t have any details yet.
But this is just one more reminder about the dangers of LA streets. And that it’s already long past time to do something about it.
So often we see or share videos of awful driving around cyclists, so this textbook pass from an exceptionally patient & careful HGV driver for D&W Agri coming into Jedburgh deserves sharing, as does Rhoda's response! They're not on Twitter but we've thanked the haulier directly. pic.twitter.com/t46zQvfFoU
A Santa Cruz work skills program that teaches high school students to work as bike mechanics for class credit is slowly spreading across the US, with programs at schools in Colorado and Minnesota, and throughout California.
Treehugger says people who walk, bike or ride scooters aren’t fighting over a cookie, as London’s former cycling chief said, we’re fighting over crumbs.
Another great piece from Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss, who says our surrender to the automobile is absurd and deadly, yet people still prefer a handful of cars to hordes on bikes coming to spend money at local businesses. Thanks to Victor Bale for the heads-up.
Strong Townslooks at how bike lanes benefit businesses, saying that in city after city, business owners see more foot traffic and higher sales when streets are redesigned to be more bike and walk friendly.
Colorado tells bicyclists and pedestrians that safety starts with all of us. On the other hand, it usually ends on the bumper of a car.
Come to the US for a summer work program, go home in a box thanks to a Texas drunk driver who plowed into a group of five bike riders, injuring one rider and killing a 23-year old man from Columbia who had only been in this country for three weeks. Somehow, I suspect the tears on the cheek of the driver in her booking photo are nothing compared to those of the victim’s family. But maybe that’s just me.
A St. Paul MN man has pled guilty to vehicular homicide for fleeing the scene after killing a bicyclist; he claimed he ran a red light to get away from a road rage altercation and hit something, but didn’t stop to see who or what he hit. His mother is also charged with aiding him in the coverup.
An Ohio family is understandably outraged that no charges will be filed in the death of a 12-year old boy, even though the driver admitted he was reaching for a phone just before the crash; police incorrectly blamed the victim for riding his bike in the traffic lane, rather than as close to the edge as possible.
New York bicyclists will form a human-protected bike lane tomorrow to demand safer streets where a man was killed while riding home from work last year. Maybe that’s what we need to do here to finally get a little attention.
A Canadian news site talks with the Toronto mountain biker who cut up his arms crashing into barbed wire that had been strung at chest height across a popular trail. Stunts like this aren’t pranks, they’re acts of terror — deliberate attempts to injure or kill people on bicycles. And the jerks responsible should be charged accordingly.
Cycling Weekly offers tips on how to nail your first bike race, saying “racing is a landmark moment in the life of any competitive-minded rider.” Funny, I took up bicycling because I was too competitive, and it offered me a chance to ride just for the sheer joy of it.
Even though that means ignoring the concerns of everyone who wants to live on a quieter, calmer street. Or doesn’t want to get run down by those same drivers.
Which marks yet another victory, albeit hopefully a temporary one, for the people behind the driver activist group Keep LA Moving, which organized the resistance to the bike lane.
As well as opposition to the recently shelved Temple Street road diet, and the failed road diets in Playa del Rey.
So far, only the Mar Vista Great Streets Project on Venice Blvd has survived their traffic safety denier onslaught.
Let’s hope Pasadena can do a better job of communicating the benefits of such projects than LADOT has up to this point. And that the Orange Grove project will come back more successfully at a later date.
Because right now, the people in the black hats and two-ton vehicles are winning.
As Matthew T. Hall, San Diego Union-Tribune editorial director, lamented on Twitter about the kits, “What kind of world are we leaving our children?”
Well, for one, apparently one where folks Spin’s age, edging toward 60 and above, think the appearance of bicycles in certain communities amounts to some apocalyptic hellscape of two-wheeling insurgents intent on demolishing mankind as we know it…
Never mind that not everyone can afford to buy a bike, nor the notion that perhaps a significant portion of the bikes that appear in Little Italy—or Mission Hills or Point Loma for that matter—might have actually brought someone to your popular neighborhood. Seems like short-sighted economics to drive that kind of business away…
Is it a perfect system? Hell no, but what is? But for this curmudgeon who this week turned 59, the bikes have offered—at a reasonable price—an opportunity to regain some semblance of a connection with my city and, by some miracle, my youth.
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Horrifying video of a head-on collision as a driver turned directly into a bike rider waiting at a red light.
Needless to say, the driver claims she never saw him. Which should be seen as a confession rather than an excuse.
Note: This video shows exactly what it looks like to get hit head-on from the rider’s perspective. So consider that before deciding if you really want to hit play.
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Bloomberg reports that Uber disconnected the collision avoidance system that comes standard in the Volvo SUV that stuck and killed Elaine Herzberg while she was crossing the street in Tempe Arizona, relying on their own failed self-driving technology instead.
An American Idol contestant is teaming with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and a Nashville bike/walk advocacy group to discourage texting while driving, two years after he was run down by a distracted driver while riding his bike.
A Canadian mountie won’t face charges after investigators conclude there isn’t enough evidence to prove he ran over a fleeing bike theft suspect, even though he probably did.
A new study shows one in four drivers in Australia’s Queensland state pass bicyclists too closely. Which should sound familiar to most bike riders just about anywhere else.
Burbank police offer tips on how to stay safe when walking or biking.
Although they seem to have missed the memo that says it’s now legal to cross the street during the numerical countdown.
But really, the best part of the video is where they tell drivers not to speed, to turn off their cell phones when they get behind the wheel, signal turns and lane changes, come to a full stop for stop signs and red lights, and always watch for vulnerable road users.
They did say that, right?
Meanwhile, velocipedes reminds us of the horrible bike safety video put out by the tone-deaf Santa Monica Police Department a few years back.
A new study from UC San Francisco shows that riding your bike hard could be good for your sex life, at least if you’re a woman. And female bicyclists are no more likely to experience serious sexual or urinary problems than non-riding women.
National
Despite the rapid spread of Vision Zero across the US, traffic deaths continue to soar. Los Angeles deaths declined just 3% in the past two years, far short of the city’s overly ambitious goal of a 20% reduction by last year.
About time. Montreal recognizes that bicycles and motor vehicles are fundamentally different, and proposes changing the law to allow bikes to treat stops as yields, make rights on red lights, and follow pedestrian traffic signals.
This is how Vision Zero is supposed to work, sort of. Edinburgh, Scotland responds to the death of a bike rider by proposing bicycle traffic lights that give riders a head start. But does nothing to address the tram tracks that caught her wheel and caused her death.
Some critics are quick to blame L.A.’s Vision Zero programs for the unhealthy trend. Playa Del Rey road diet critics cite their own documentation showing a doubling of “accidents” since Vision Zero safety improvements were implemented. (If true, this would argue for more traffic calming, though that is not the conclusion they come to.)
The actual reasons for the alarming trend appears to have more to do with increased driving, low gas prices, a strong economy, and a lack of political will to take Vision Zero seriously. The program was barely funded for the first two years, until council leadership recently shepherded $27 million for the current fiscal year which just began on July 1. On top of the paucity of funding, several councilmembers have actively blocked safety improvements in their districts.
The simple fact is, we will never cut traffic deaths in Los Angeles without the political will to make it happen.
And that seems to be sadly lacking, both in the mayor’s office, and in far too many council districts.
…If you ask the motoring public, you will likely hear that scofflaw cyclists create their own problems by choosing to ride in the street.
Convincing a driver that a lack of vigilance could potentially take someone’s life is a difficult task. After all, most drivers overestimate their driving ability — particularly when it comes to using a device at the same time. Worst of all, most of us don’t have the discipline to put our devices down when we get behind the wheel. No group is more vulnerable to this lack of discipline than a human on a bicycle. And as a roadie, you probably face the risk of being hit more than anyone else based on the hours you spend weekly on a bike in traffic…
It’s a good read, and should give you a lot to think about.
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Local
An Op-Ed in the LA Times makes the case for accepting Bird scooters as part of the city’s transportation network. Although while people on bikes still die far too often on our streets, saying bicycling is “often lethal” is an extreme exaggeration. Last year, LA County saw one bicycling fatality per 357,000 residents; the City of LA was even safer, with one death per 442,000 residents.
Iowa decides that instead of fixing the roads, they’ll just make bike riders wear hi-viz on roads with speed limits above 45 mph. But only in groups of 500 or less; apparently, they think drivers may actually see over 500 people riding bicycles.
Sad news from New Orleans, where 32-year old Muhiyidin d’Baha, a well-known leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, died after he was shot in the leg in an apparent robbery while riding his bike; he rode another six blocks before collapsing in the street.
An Orlando street will go on a four-week road diet to judge its effectiveness and reaction of the public before any permanent changes are made. Although a single month seems like a very short amount of time to give it a reasonable test.
Australia has slapped an unexpected 5% tariff on ebikes — and is considering a similar tariff on premium bikes and frame sets — after a local bike maker complained, in a country where native bike makers make up just 1% of the market.
