Happy Valentines Day!
Remember to give your two-wheeled loved one a little extra care and affection today, too.
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Once again, someone in a rental truck has mowed down pedestrians and bike riders in New York.
This time, police chased a fleeing driver in a U-Haul truck as he drove down a Brooklyn sidewalks and bike lanes through six intersections, killing one person and injuring seven others; three of the victims were on bicycles.
And like the killer of Dr. Michael Mammone in Dana Point, the driver suffers from mental illness, with a history of going off his medications, according to his son.
Which sadly seems to be no barrier to operating a motor vehicle.
Police aren’t sure yet if the attacks were deliberate, though it’s hard to imagine otherwise. However, they are confident this was not a terrorist attack.
Just someone once again using a motor vehicle as a weapon, apparently.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in the other case of a driver in a rental truck mowing down innocent people in the Big Apple say confessed terrorist Sayfullo Saipov has to die by lethal injection for the Halloween, 2017 attack on a Manhattan bike path, because he’s too dangerous to keep in prison.
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After blaring accusations that Vanroy Evan Smith made comments about white privilege when he stabbed Dr. Michael Mammone to death, the New York Post discusses his interview with the Orange County Register. And can only manage to mention Smith’s denial of racial comments in passing near the end of the story.
Which isn’t exactly a correction. Let alone a retraction.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mammone’s wife talks with KCAL News about the loss of her husband; a celebration of his life will be held Thursday at the Festival of the Arts.
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A former Bay Area resident visiting from Houston took a tour of rain damage in the Santa Cruz mountains from the January storms, and posted video of it as a short film he calls the Tour de Disaster.
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Vancouver’s parks board voted to rip out a popular popup bike lane through a public park, because it wasn’t popular with drivers who used the road as a cut-through route.
But sometimes, its the people on two wheels behaving badly.
No bias here. A Santa Barbara letter writer says it’s not true that the State Street Promenade is safer now that cars have been banned, complaining about the risk to pedestrians posed by irresponsible bike riders, and that “No amount of new bike paths will improve public safety if cyclists ride irresponsibly.” While she has a point about irresponsible people, regardless of how they travel, she’s apparently confused about the relative risks posed by bicycles and motor vehicles.
No bias here, either. A Republican councilwoman in Queens responds to a park bike crash by saying bike riders should be required to be licensed and carry insurance, after a “bike racer named Kevin” bailed without providing his contact information when he hit a woman on a bikeshare bike. A reminder that hit-and-run is hit-and-run, whether you’re on a bike or in a car. Although that whole registration and insurance thing hasn’t worked that well to rein in bad driver behavior, either.
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Local
The Washington Post says the death of 12-year-old Molly Steinsapir in Pacific Palisades as she rode with a friend on a borrowed Rad Power ebike calls attention to the safety of ebikes, and ebike brakes in particular, and “whether the wildly popular bicycles are safe for young people to ride.”
State
A Santa Ana news site recommends registering your bicycle for free with Bike Index, after Irvine cops bust a bike thief — and have to let him go with a ticket because the bike was worth less than the $950 threshold for grand theft.
Encinitas appears to be getting serious about improving bike and pedestrian safety, approving an implementation plan for the city’s active transportation plan; roughly three-quarters of the 86 miles of bikeways contained in the active transportation plan remain to be built.
Police are looking for a hit-and-run driver who ran down a 71-year old man from behind as he stood in a South San Francisco bike lane after getting off his bike.
SFist reports on the brazen dooring attacks on Friday’s East Bay Bike Party that left two people seriously injured, as well as other attacks in Bay Area cities on Thursday and Saturday; Streetsblog calls the attackers sociopaths, not incorrectly.
A Sonoma paper wants to honor whoever is “adorning” a local bike path with seasonal displays.
National
Giro is recalling bike helmets made before this year because the straps may “disengage” during use. Which sounds like a bad thing.
For the second day in a row, someone riding a bicycle has been killed in a collision in my platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Colorado hometown. And once again, police blame the victim for allegedly blowing through a traffic signal.
Life is cheap in Texas, where an Austin municipal bus driver walked with seven years probation for killing a former TV station employee as he rode his bicycle on the University of Texas campus, while she was allegedly stoned on prescription drugs.
The official explanation for a bike crash involving an Illinois college student doesn’t pass the smell test, as the local MTD insists the bike rider somehow swerved into the side of a bus as it passed him safely outside the bike lane he was riding in.
There’s a special place in hell for the Michigan hit-and-run driver who fled on foot after killing a six-year old boy riding his bicycle.
New York advocates complain the city has failed to live up to promises to upgrade bicycling infrastructure in high-risk areas of Brooklyn.
The Washington Post says those darn Gen Zs just don’t want to drive.
International
Momentum Magazine suggests ten ways to go on a Valentine’s Day bike date.
He gets it. A British letter writer says if it’s true we live in an anti-car world, he’d hate to see a pro-car one.
UFC star Connor McGregor says he’s still traumatized after being knocked off his bike by a driver in Ireland last month.
A Dutch man has spent the last nine months riding his bike 8,700 miles from the Netherlands to Nepal to observe the effects of climate change.
An Australian man is on trial for murder after allegedly stabbing his rooming house neighbor to death, in a dispute that began when the other man called him a “poof” and moved his bicycle; he says he killed the victim in self-defense as the man was trying to steal his bike.
Finally…
Win a $1 million bike race without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. Your next Trek could be tie-dyed.
And watch out for those sneaky bicyclists with their damn cams out to catch those poor, unfortunate drivers breaking the law.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin, too.
