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.
In fact, I was told by someone from committee Chair Mike Bonin’s office that the motion is a benign attempt to make people feel more comfortable with the data used for LA’s Vision Zero.
And no one seems to know why Keep LA Moving felt such urgency to support it.
Bonin wisely held the motion over to the next meeting on February 28th to give its authors a chance to review the language, and make sure there’s nothing in it that would reduce the effectiveness of Vision Zero.
My fear is that it may give Vision Zero opponents an excuse to challenge the data used for the program, possibly in court.
However, I’ve been told that it’s been reviewed by the City Attorney’s office, who didn’t find any problems with it.
Although it wouldn’t hurt to do it again.
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It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from Wes High, who recently had the pleasure of a punishment pass, followed by getting deliberately doored while riding on Fountain Ave in Los Angeles.
While riding on the sharrows.
Hopefully, he’s reported this to the LAPD, since this is clear evidence of assault with a deadly weapon — in this case, a motor vehicle.
They’re particularly looking for anyone who saw the suspect vehicle before the crash, witnessed the actual crash or had contact with the suspect afterwards.
Especially if you have video footage of the any of the above.
The link includes instructions on how to handle the footage and who to send it to.
The San Diego Union-Tribune says the city’s goal of getting 22% of residents who live within half a mile of transit to walk, bike or take public transportation to work by 2020 is a fantasy.
No windshield bias here. Montclair decides to blame the victims by making it illegal to cross the street while texting, talking on your phone or listening to ear buds. And yes, that’s just as idiotic as it sounds.
Streetsblog examines how Baltimore bike lane opponents used a 20-foot minimum standard street width for fire engines to block a planned protected bike lane network. Even though it’s never been a problem before, in a city where many streets don’t meet that standard.
An Ottawa, Canada columnist can’t imagine why anyone would object to a decision to ban bikes from the city’s new light rail line during rush hour. Apparently, he’s never heard that bikes offer a solution to the first mile/last mile problem, which helps get more people out of their cars.
Bicycling is the leading form of rush hour transportation in London, where all other forms of transportation have decreased 30%. Which goes to show what is possible when you build a safe bicycling network, as London did with their cycle superhighways. Especially in Los Angeles, where the weather is much better.
Note to world: Not every group of people on bikes riding together is a race. Sometimes they just ride to raise funds, or call attention to a cause, or just for the hell of it. Even in Afghanistan.
Before we get started, let me offer my apologies to anyone who sent me links to the stories below.
With all that’s been going on, I’m afraid I’ve lost any record of who sent me what. So please accept my thanks in advance; I am truly grateful to everyone who forwards bike stories for this site, today or any other day.
Photo of Fred Mackey taken from his GoFundMe page; see below.
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Sometimes I wish the people fighting traffic safety projects in Los Angeles could see the damage done by careless — and too often, cowardly — drivers.
Case in point, this crowdfunding page for yet another bike rider who was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver while crossing La Brea Ave.
The campaign to help Fred Mackey pay the medical expenses his insurance won’t cover has raised a little over $3,000 of the $25,000 goal after four days.
I sort of met Fred while he was in the hospital; after learning about his crash, I popped in to say hi since he was on the same floor as my wife. Unfortunately, he was busy with his doctors at the time, and by the time I could make it back a few days later, his bed was occupied by an Asian woman who was wondering what the hell I was doing there.
And yes, there’s something seriously wrong with a country where people have to go online to beg for money to pay their medical bills.
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CiclaValley offers what amounts to a painful Gravel Mob gag reel.
Then again, looking for bad drivers in Los Angeles is like looking for ice in Greenland.
Except the bad drivers aren’t going anywhere.
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A foul-mouthed excuse for a comedian seems to think running bike riders off the road is amusing, and that share the road means bike riders have to get the hell out of his way.
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As long as we’re watching videos, let’s make the short leap from the seriously unfunny to a serious whackjob convinced LA is intentionally creating traffic jams to force drivers out of their cars and onto bikes and transit.
Unfortunately, though, he’s not the only one who believes this crap; you’ll find similar comments on almost any news story about or bike lanes or road diets.
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Local
Maybe LA is finally getting the message that it’s cheaper to fix broken bike lanes than pay out multi-million dollar settlements to injured bike riders, since they repaved bike lanes in Lincoln Heights and Eagle Rock last week.
As we mentioned before, Pasadena is threatening to put a stop to the popular Rose Bowl Loop rides by installing a number of stop signs around the route. Something tells me they’ll also park a patrol car next to each one to enforce it, too.
Bicycling offers tips on how to deal with road raging drivers. In my experience, the best move is to remove yourself from the roadway; pull up onto the sidewalk if possible, preferably in a public place. And make a public display of taking a photo of the driver and his or her license plate.
Now that’s more like it. An unlicensed Florida driver got 12 years for the hit-and-run death of a bike rider, after getting his girlfriend to claim she was behind the wheel. Note to women: If your boyfriend, husband and/or significant other wants you to take the fall for his crimes, get a new one.
An English man gets nine and a half years for plowing into a bike rider during a Jack Daniels-fueled rampage, after telling his girlfriend he was cheating on her, followed by carjacking a woman’s car.
On a personal note, let me offer my sincere thanks to everyone who has expressed their best wishes for my wife’s recovery from her recent surgery; it’s helped get us through a difficult few days.
And if you’re riding this weekend, remember that drivers will be far more focused on shopping and finding a finding parking space than watching out for you. So ride safely and defensively; I want to see you all back here next week.
It’s a pretty light news day. Which means you should be able to read all of today’s post, and still get out to enjoy a ride in this beautiful LA weather.
Today’s photo shows the WeHo Pedals bikeshare dock outside Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where I’ve been spending way too much time lately.
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Eric Fleetwood forwards this video reminding riders not to take their right-of-way for granted.
Here’s how he describes it,
As I approached the curve to the left, I signaled left to alert the driver of the Mini Cooper, even though I had the right of way and a pulsing amber headlight. Early in the video it became apparent that he was not going to yield (you can see the back of the Yield sign and the graphic on the pavement), I veered to the right side of the road and let him pass by on my left. It appeared that he might be on a cell phone.
Incidentally, many riders down here feel that San Clemente has the worst drivers in South Orange County. I have many experiences with errant drivers, not all of which are on video. From last year: Picture the letter K with the bike route being the backbone of the K. A driver wanting to go from the right arm to the right leg of the K did so by turning left down the wrong side of the main street and then left onto the leg of the K, looking right at me and my Dinotte 400A pulsing 400 lumen amber light.
Los Angeles Walks is joining with the LA Vision Zero Alliance, and SoCal Families for Safe Streets to remember the victims of traffic violence at City Hall this Friday.
Celebrity chef Mario Bartali’s Eataly may have just opened in Century City, but it’s just a fraction of the size of the one opening in Bologna, Italy; so big that Bianchi stocked it with adult tricycles just to get around the 20-acre food complex.
Cycling in the South Bay’s Seth Davidson tries riding in ostensibly bike-friendly Vienna, Austria, and finds it not to his liking. At all. And says that does not bode well for Los Angeles.
There’s a special place in hell for someone who’d try to get away with a hit-and-run by pretending to be a Good Samaritan helping the victim, rather than the heartless driver who ran him down, like this jerk in India.
But you’ll find the same thoughts in the comment section virtually anytime bicycling gets mentioned online.
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Thanks to David Veloz for his generous contribution to help support this site, and bring you SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy every morning my laptop is working.
