Sometimes, a crash can cause a heart to stop. And sometimes, a heart stopping can cause a crash.
This time, it looks like it may have been the latter case.
The Ventura County Star is reporting that a man died after suffering cardiac arrest following an ebike in Point Mugu State Park on Saturday, although the story is hidden behind a paywall.
The victim, identified only as a 68-year old man, was riding with a group of people in Sycamore Canyon when he crashed near Big Sycamore Canyon and Ranch Center roads sometime before 1 pm on April 11th.
His fellow riders tried to resuscitate him before county fire personnel and state park rangers arrived and took over; unfortunately, he died at the scene.
Sheriff’s investigators concluded he probably crashed because of a medical problem, although the exact cause will likely be determined by the Ventura County medical examiner.
A street view appears to show the location is a pair of fire roads in hilly terrain. Even on an ebike, the exertion could have brought on something that caused his heart to stop.
This the 25th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the third in Ventura County.
She argues that the opposition campaign is “both amazing and shocking. Also, laughable.”
The slogans on these signs are not just false, they are complete reversals of truth. That is organized disinformation.
So, first of all, there is no plan to remove all the parking from Overland Ave. Making this the top slogan shows that the people leading this campaign are consciously using a bait-and-switch approach to getting your attention.
She goes on to make the case that the project has been thoroughly vetted, and if people didn’t know about it, it’s only because they weren’t paying attention.
Actual, verifiable facts: The Better Overland project has been in process since May of 2024, and has been approved twice by the Culver City Council. Twice.
City staff held eight public meetings for the community, in addition to multiple private meetings with smaller organizations that were stakeholders in the process.
There were QR codes posted along the entire length of Overland Avenue so that everyone using the street could post their thoughts and ideas regarding Overland directly to the project portal. They received more than a thousand public comments, the vast majority in favor of the project.
It’s typical whenever a project like this goes in that some people will somehow insist there wasn’t enough public outreach, no matter how many times they were given an opportunity to provide their input.
Or that they were never informed, despite repeated efforts to do just that.
That was what happened in Playa del Rey, when opponents said they were never informed about the road diets to Vista del Mar, Pershing Drive and Manchester Ave, or given a chance to voice their objections.
Even though the project was designed by local residents, part of a multi-year public process that included several meetings at a local school, as well as outreach efforts to contact local residents.
So if anyone didn’t know about it, it was because they had their heads firmly buried in the sand at Dockweiler Beach.
Never mind that any increased congestion usually goes away as motorists find other routes, or other ways to get around, like walking or riding a bicycle.
Then there’s the ultimate trump card for the driving public, which seems to be in play with Better Overland, that officials are coming for your parking spaces.
Even though most homes have driveways, and the curb space along the street belongs to the city, not local homeowners. And any actual loss of parking is usually mitigated nearby.
It’s inevitable that no matter what a city does to prepare residents for road changes, some people will always complain. It’s human nature to resist change.
But as former New York DOT director Janette Sadik-Khan put it, people always fight to prevent changes. Then once they get used to it, they’ll fight to keep it.
LADOT is looking for input on creating a low-stress bikeway along Marmion Way and Monte Vista Street, rather than implementing the road diet long planned for the deadly, high-speed North Figueroa corridor.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Sad news from Tulare County, where the CHP was quick to blame the victim when someone riding a bicycle was killed after allegedly veering left in front of an SUV driver — which a local paper TV station reported by saying “it” veered in front of the SUV. Talk about a great job of dehumanizing someone. Never mind that what actually happened depends entirely on whether there were any independent witnesses, or if the CHP relied entirely on the driver’s perspective.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Portland, Oregon is launching a $20 million ebike rebate program to help pay for more than 6,000 ebikes over the next three years. Which compares favorably to Los Angeles, which has invested exactly $0 in ebike rebates to help improve traffic congestion and air quality by getting cars off the road.
Washington State is rolling out another round of ebike rebates up to $1200 for a Class 1, 2 or 3 bike, with recipients chosen by lottery. That compares favorably to California’s ebike rebate program, which now only pays for electric cars after the funding was stolen by the California Air Resources Board, aka CARB. Thanks to Megan for the heads-up.
You’ve got to be kidding. A 52-year old Arizona man died in police custody after he was repeatedly struck and tased by cops for fleeing a traffic stop — because he didn’t have a damn headlight on his bicycle.
There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole the bike and belongings of Polish endurance cyclist Justyna Jarczok, which she described as everything she owns, including her house keys, when she stopped at a gas station after winning one of the UK’s toughest bikepacking events; her belongings were found at a local park, but her rare Kona mountain bike is still missing.
AB 1740 (Zbur) makes it easier to build bike lanes, bus improvements, infill housing, and other multimodal projects in urban coastal communities. Right now, even straightforward street safety projects can get bogged down in the coastal permitting process. This bill would let qualifying urban communities move more quickly on projects that improve safety and reduce emissions, while still preserving coastal access and protections.
AB 1837 (Mark González) extends transit lane and bus stop camera enforcement and makes that authority permanent statewide. Illegal parking in bus lanes and at bus stops slows buses, creates unsafe boarding conditions, and makes transit less reliable. This bill would help keep transit moving and make bus service faster and safer for riders.
AB 1976 (Wicks), the Safe Streets Streamlining Act, tackles the process barriers that delay or kill good street safety projects. It changes local input requirements, ends unreasonable petition requirements for traffic calming, updates the pedestrian mall law, and creates a clearer path for cities to actually deliver the bike, pedestrian, and transit projects they have already said they want. California cannot keep saying yes to safe streets in theory while allowing them to be endlessly blocked in practice.
SB 1167 (Blakespear) cracks down on high-powered “e-motos” being sold as e-bikes. It tightens definitions, changes labeling rules, and requires sellers to clearly disclose when a device is actually a motor vehicle and not a legal e-bike. Real e-bikes are an important transportation tool. But that only works if the category remains clear and trustworthy.
AB 2015 (Wicks) helps cities keep slow streets actually slow by stopping navigation apps from routing cut-through traffic onto neighborhood streets that have been intentionally designed for local access, walking, and biking. If a city has decided that a street should function as a calm neighborhood street, app-based routing should not undermine that decision.
AB 1599 (Ahrens) creates a centralized California Transit Stop Registry. Transit stop data is often fragmented, inconsistent, and confusing across agencies. A statewide registry would make transit data more accurate and useful, improve coordination, and help create a better rider experience. The bill will also help us get more data on what amenities are at transit stops.
SB 1292 (Richardson) gives cities stronger curb management tools to enforce parking violations in places like loading zones, bike lanes, and crosswalks. Curb space matters, and mismanaged curb space creates safety problems, transit delays, and chaos on the street. This bill gives local governments more tools to manage that space better.
AB 2284 (Dixon) requires CHP to publish a list of devices that are being marketed as e-bikes but are not actually legal e-bikes. That kind of transparency would help consumers, schools, local governments, and law enforcement better understand what devices comply with California law and which ones do not.
AB 1833 (McKinnor), the Consumer Driving Data Protection Act of 2026,allows drivers to voluntarily opt into insurance telematics systems, with privacy protections, to better align insurance rates with actual driving behavior. This bill is about allowing safer driving to be reflected more fairly, while preserving strong guardrails around consent, data use, and consumer protection.
SB 1423 (Stern) would steer half of one of California’s biggest transportation funding sources toward projects that actually make streets safer. The bill would dedicate half of STIP funds, one of the state’s largest transportation pots of money, to projects that improve safety for people walking, biking, and taking transit. It would also simplify the application process for the state’s top safe streets grant program and elevate its identity as California’s flagship source of funding for street safety.
Budget Ask: A $200 million annual addition to the Active Transportation Program (ATP), which is our state’s premier pot of street safety funding. Last year, ATP only funded about 30 of the 350 projects that applied.
Meanwhile, Road.cc wrote that BP — the former British Petroleum — is encouraging drivers to deal with rising gas prices by skipping the pump and riding a bike instead. Which actually had me fooled at first.
No bias here. A San Diego letter writer says if you really want to help kids, skip the bike lanes and use the money for libraries, instead. Which sets up a false dichotomy between libraries, which should get better funding, and bike lanes, which improve safety for everyone on the streets, not just kids. Although you’ll have to find a way around the paper’s paywall to read it.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Great use of police resources. The Macomb, Georgia Police Department put their new drone to use in less than 24 hours by capturing a 14-year old kid speeding on his ebike. Next they’ll use it to bring in other dangerous desperados, like maybe a bunch of littering nuns.
Bodycam video is raising questions about a Texas cop’s takedown of a 16-year old kid, who make the simple mistake of trying to call his dad when the cop stopped a group of teens for rolling a stop sign; after taking the kid down, the cop then seized and searched the boy’s phone without a warrant.
A British bike rider is suing three police departments for the equivalent of $6.35 million, alleging they covered it up when a driver knocked him off his bike; the cops said he just fell off his bike, even though a witness said she saw the driver clip him. Which sounds a lot like when I was run down by a road-raging driver, and the LAPD concluded I somehow defied the laws of physics by falling to the left while making a right turn, but it never occurred to me to sue them.
China’s longtime bikemaker Flying Pigeon is shedding its traditional image as a self-destructing bicycle-shaped object, and using combination of flexible sensors, artificial intelligence algorithms and the internet of things to redefine the bikes from a simple form of transport into an “intelligent health management terminal.” Unless China Daily is pulling an April Fool’s joke, in which case they got me.
A 17-year British amateur, part of the country’s development team, was left brokenhearted when an insurance company refused to pay for three stolen Pinarello Dogma bikes worth a total of $20,000 because the thieves weren’t violent enough, and just walked away with the bikes instead of breaking in or causing major damage.
March 13, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Racism rears ugly head in bike community, road-raging man uses bike as weapon, and killer driver on trial for murder
The fourth-year student headed back to his dorm from the Black Student Union when he was approached by four teenaged boys and a girl on their ebikes.
After he asked to be left alone and tried to walk away, they started to chase him.
According to KNBC-4,
“They were close enough that they were spitting on me, trying to grab at me, trying to do all sorts of heinous things,” he said. “I’m being called ‘monkey,’ ‘blackie,’ completely out of my name. Obviously, this is stuff I never expected to hear.”
During the attack, the victim said he was also called the N-word and was struck on the back of his ankle by an assailant who accelerated their e-bike toward him.
“It was the worst pain I had felt in a very long time,” the victim said.
The campus police offered a description of just two of the five kids.
According to UC Irvine police, one of the assailants was described as a 16 to 17-year-old boy who was about 5-feet-8-inches tall and weighed about 160 to 170 pounds. He had a white T-shirt, black pants, a black helmet and was traveling on a black e-bike at the time of the attack.
A second attacker was described as a 14-year-old boy who was 5-feet-5-inches tall and about 190 pounds. He wore a black shirt, denim gray pants, white Air Force 1 Nike shoes, a black helmet, a blue backpack and was also traveling on a black e-bike, police said.
We can assume the kids are white, but that’s not guaranteed. Because for some bizarre reason, there’s no mention of the teens’ race in their descriptions, which just might help identify them.
There’s also no word on what kind of ebikes the kids were on. But we can probably guess.
Anyone with information is urged to call UC Irvine Police at 949/824-5223.
“I just want to go home,” her daughter says in the video while kids yell racial slurs and other expletives. After about two-and-a-half minutes of tension, she rolled her bike backwards, away from the group. A young boy pulled her bike back in and then 30 seconds later, someone slapped the girl in the face before she got off the bike and fought back.
“She stood her ground,” Amor said. “I told my daughter, you don’t start fights, but you better finish them. And I’m proud. I’m proud of how she conducted herself.”
Amor said she was removing her daughter from the school district, and will be homeschooling her now.
Rocha also faces four counts of attempted murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of battery for a series of assaults, including intentionally plowing his car into a group of seven fixie riders.
Allegedly.
Rocha was reportedly still angry following a series of altercations a few minutes earlier when he encountered the group that included Valdez.
Just 10 minutes before the crash, Rocha is seen on camera at Queen Wash in Oxnard, confronting and then hitting a man and his wife in the laundromat. When another man follows Rocha outside to take a photo of his license plate, Rocha is seen driving his car into the man and knocking him over.
To make matters worse, he seemed proud of it.
Later in the evening, in a video from the back of a police car, Rocha rants about how he didn’t have a house to sleep in, while rich kids pretended to be poor. He said he didn’t care if he went to prison.
“I’m happy I ran over those fools today, dawg,” Rocha said, prompting tears from Pedro’s parents in the audience.
In a recorded police interview, an officer asks him if he took his anger from the laundromat fight out on the bicyclists and intentionally hit them, and Rocha replies, “Yeah.” He said he accelerated toward the bikes and didn’t stop after the impact.
The trial was delayed after Rocha was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, which seems to be his defense.
Because according to his lawyer, Rocha didn’t mean to slam his Lexus into the kids riding bikes; he just didn’t see them because he was so deeply psychotic and intoxicated.
The paper reports he’s being held without bail while the trial continues, which is expected to take four weeks.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Apparently lacking anything new to stir up outrage against bicyclists, British tabloids dig up an old survey that they twist to suggest half of bike riders “think they’re ‘too cool’ to wear a helmet.” Even though 31% actually said it’s not practical or needed because they’re only riding a short distance, and 13% don’t want to mess up their hair — which still only adds up to 44%. And while I wasn’t a math major, that seems like less than half. But what do I know?
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The family of fallen San Diego bicyclist Andres Gallardo want answers, after the 43-year old man was killed by a hit-and-run driver while riding in the city’s Clairemont neighborhood March 1st; a crowdfunding campaign to defray funeral expenses and send his ashes to his parents has raised the equivalent of just $144. And no, it doesn’t look like I knew about this one yet; I’ll try to get to it later today.
San Diego is on the verge of becoming the largest California city to crack down on ebikes, including a ban on kids under 12. Although like virtually every other attempt to rein in ebike riders, they continue to conflate ped-assist ebikes with higher speed and more powerful electric motorbikes and dirt bikes.
Santa Clara has adopted a Vision Zero plan, after 51 people were killed in traffic collisions over a five-year period in the city of just 120,000.
The parents of a four-year old boy are suing the city of Burlingame, as well as 19-year-old driver, her parents, and the parents of an 11-year old boy riding an ebike, after the four-year old was killed as his family exited a restaurant, collateral damage following a collision between the 19-year old driver and the boy on the ebike.
Uh, probably not. After a teenaged Utah girl miraculously survived a traumatic brain injury, her mother said “it would have made the hugest difference” and “she would have had such less trauma” is she had only worn a bike helmet when she crashed her ebike into a retaining wall at 40 mph, then landed head-first after falling 25 feet off a cliff. Even though bike helmets are only designed to protect against impacts up to 12.5 mph. And don’t even get me started on her grammar.
A Netflix doc about the life and murder of gravel champ Moriah “Mo” Wilson premiered at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas on Thursday, the city where she was fatally shot by a jealous Kaitlin Armstrong, who thought she was involved with her erstwhile boyfriend, pro cyclist Colin Strickland, in 2022.
March 11, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New LA bike lanes sprouting with the spring, and CA DMV fights to keep killer driver on the road and record secret
Maybe we’re making progress after all.
Suddenly, there’s news of bike lanes sprouting all across the Los Angeles area, albeit to the apparent chagrin of some.
The North Westwood Neighborhood Council voted to approve plans for a protected bike lane on Ohio Ave, which offers the only practical east-west route between Westwood and Santa Monica that does not require riding past on-and-off ramps for the 10 Freeway, where at least two bike riders have been killed in recent years.
Streetsblog’sJoe Linton offers more information on a number of bike projects in Los Angeles, including Crystal Springs Drive and Pershing Drive below, as well as plans for new bike lanes on Terra Bella Street after the East San Fernando light rail project results in ripping out 2.8 miles of bike lanes on Van Nuys Blvd.
Crystal Springs Drive in Griffith Park is looking a lot better, too, four years after Andrew Jelmert was killed in a hit-and-run while training for the former AIDS/LifeCycle Ride. Although I remain adamant that cars don’t belong in parks. Period.
And even the death of a pregnant mom isn’t enough to get protected bike lanes on Pershing Drive.
Bluesky post
………
This is why people keep dying on our streets.
Cal Matters reports that the California DMV not only kept a driver on the road, despite at least 16 previous moving violations and four crashes, they fought to keep his driving record a secret.
Even from persecutors after he was charged with vehicular manslaughter for killing a two-year old boy.
And adding insult to grievous injury, the DMV renewed his license just a year later, while the manslaughter charge was still pending.
Surely, the DMV did some sort of review before deciding it was safe to let (Kostas) Linardos stay on the road.
Right?
The DMV spent close to a year fighting to keep the answer to that a secret, refusing to release information on Linardos without a court order and then urging a judge not to issue such a decree. The agency’s lawyer argued in a filing that prosecutors wanted records “for the improper purpose of smearing the DMV for alleged and unfounded wrongdoing.”
Prosecutors said they wanted the DMV records to help show Linardos knew the risks of driving recklessly, which is something they needed to prove to make a felony vehicular manslaughter charge stick.
When the issue finally made it to court this year, the attorney representing the agency made a shocking admission: The DMV had no records of any investigation into a longtime reckless driver who killed a 23-month-old boy. The agency didn’t even appear to have held a hearing before deciding it was fine to let Linardos stay on the road.
Although once again, there’s no attempt to differentiate between ped-assist ebikes and electric motorbikes.
According to the study, the hospital recorded 262 ebike-related trauma cases last year, with most of the victims 11 and 14 years old, with a noticeable spike among 13‑year‑olds.
While that likely corresponds to the increase in ebike use, the hospital also reported ebike injuries were likely to be more severe than those caused by regular bicycles.
It’s also questionable how many of those ebikes were actually street legal, or could legally be ridden by children that young, who are limited to Class 1 and 2 bikes with a maximum speed of 20 mph.
And as studies have shown, sharrows are worse than nothing when it comes to preventing injuries to bicyclists, and shouldn’t be used on streets with speeds above 35 mph.
Actions speak louder than words, Lucy pulls the football away again; whatever aphorism or metaphor one wants to use, Caltrans proves once again that it’s run by bad actors who betray the public in their relentless pursuit of auto-über alles policies.
Then there’s this.
With the removal of the painted bike lanes, which were woefully inadequate on a multi-lane street such as Oak Street to start with, Caltrans now expects cyclists to share a lane with traffic. Keep in mind that this is also a major route to I-880 and is plagued with non-stop speeding traffic and red-light running. The removed bike lanes are on a major bike commuter routes that connect the Oakland ferry terminal, Lake Merritt BART, and thousands of residential units…
Nobody, really, should be surprised. Caltrans, Alameda County, and the consultants who work for them have acted in bad faith throughout this project.
Never mind that Caltran’s ostensible Complete Streets policy requires the state transportation agency to “provide comfortable, convenient, and connected complete streets facilities on all projects and in all project phases, including construction and maintenance,” according to Jeanie Ward-Waller, Director of Transportation Advocacy at Fearless.
She should know, since Ward-Waller was the whistleblower who was “reassigned” from her position as Deputy Director of Planning and Multimodal Programs at Caltrans after warning that a Sacramento highway project violated that same policy.
Just one more reminder, if we needed it, that the agency’s Complete Streets requirement needs to be codified into law, since they only seem to follow it when it’s convenient for them or the public demands it.
………
I had the time to rip into this piece from a rightwing Irish site, as a writer complains about the “fetishization” and “relentless promotion” of the government’s “obsession” with bicycling.
According to Vincent, from the “perception of the average person”, the number of cyclists in Dublin using the city’s bike lanes “is so small that it is set completely off balance with the amount of space they take up”.
“Hardly anyone uses these lanes, and yet we are forced to swallow it when an entire lane from a road is sacrificed – often with the result of creating an infuriating one-way system in the area – to make space for more bikes; the same bikes that seem never to fill the lanes they are currently provided with,” he continues, failing to grasp the point of cycling infrastructure entirely.
Never mind that those “empty” bike lanes have resulted in a 50% increase in bicycle trips.
But that inconvenient fact probably wouldn’t fit his narrative.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The LAPD is looking for a suspect in a bike-by shooting in Historic South Central Los Angeles, after a 36-year old man was shot by someone on a bicycle while sitting in his car at Washington Blvd and Santee Street.
If you left your bicycle, cellphone, blowtorch or prosthetic leg on a Metro bus or train, they may be holding it for you to reclaim. Although it makes sense that someone would leave their bike behind after losing their leg on the bus, which would make it kinda hard to pedal.
Momentumhails Santa Monica resident Caro Vilain, aka mobilityforwho on Instagram, for her “viral videos steering a fun-fueled cycling revolution.” I would have embedded some of her videos, but Insta was being uncooperative tonight.
A North Carolina newspaper offers an in-depth report on last month’s 950-mile Remember the Removal bike ride to help members of the Cherokee Nation reconnect with their heritage, while retracing the northern route of the horrific Trail of Tears; an estimated quarter of the 16,000 tribal members died along the way when the Cherokee people were forced to walk to Oklahoma from their Southern Appalachian homelands.
March 3, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 52-year old man dies 19 days after February 10 ebike crash in Oceanside; 17th SoCal bike death already this year
Today, we got the sad news that he didn’t make it.
According to The Coast News (scroll down), the victim, identified as Oceanside resident Scott Weiler, died 19 days after he was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.
Apparently, Weiler somehow lost control of his ebike and crashed into a light pole near Coast Highway and Seagaze Drive sometime before 12:11 am on Wednesday, February 11th.
Although The Coast News oddly places the crash shortly after noon the day before.
Unfortunately, there’s no word on what kind of ebike Weiler was riding, so we don’t know if it was a ped-assist bike or an e-moto. But either way, his death is no less tragic.
This the 17th bicycling fatality that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the second in San Diego County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Scott Weiler and his loved ones.
Facebook post from the Oceanside Police Department
February 24, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Bloodless account of CA Ebike Incentive killing, LA’s most dangerous intersections, and new CA bill redefines e-motos
Evidently, CARB’s cold-blooded murder of the California Ebike Incentive Program was just one of those things.
Take this remarkably mild-mannered introduction to the story.
To offset the cost of the e-bikes, which can run in the thousands of dollars, the state launched a generous voucher program — one that heavily subsidized, and in some cases completely offset, the purchase price. Demand soared.
That’s when the problems began.
Vouchers were quickly snatched up. A website set up to manage applications crashed amid heavy demand.
Despite wide public interest, the program quietly and abruptly ended last year — a victim, in some ways, of its own success.
Now the state is pivoting, leaving cycling advocates disappointed and those who were able to snag e-bike vouchers counting their lucky stars.
No mention there, or anywhere else in the story, of the three years it took the California Air Resources Board to even issue the first voucher.
Let alone the alleged malfeasance by, and investigations into, San Diego nonprofit Pedal Ahead, which was hired by CARB to manage the program. And failed miserably.
And then the whole damn thing collapsed, apparently because getting cleaner cars on the road mattered more than getting more cars off it.
The demand was apparent. Some cycling advocates say they were under the impression additional vouchers — that would have been funded by the subsequent $18 million in state funding — were on the horizon as soon as a new administrator of the program was secured.
But those dollars were instead diverted to CARB’s Clean Cars 4 All program, which helps lower-income Californians trade in their gas-fueled vehicles for new or used plug-in hybrid electric, zero-emission vehicles or motorcycles, she said.
“California is committed to supporting e-bikes as a clean mobility alternative to vehicles. But, ultimately, the state has a limited budget and many competing priorities,” CARB spokesperson Bradley Branan told The Times.
That’s it.
Apparently, they couldn’t find a single disgruntled applicant willing to go on the record with a single complain against how the program was (mis)managed.
And yes, that’s me over here waving my hand until it falls off.
The whole program was the very definition of a clusterfuck and a shitshow from beginning to end. Because calling it a complete and barely mitigated disaster is being far too kind.
Instead, the Times very belatedly and very politely suggests that it was just one of those unfortunate things.
You, just another California program gone bad. Nothing to see here.
And don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
And once again, they couldn’t seem to find a single traffic safety advocate to talk to. Evidently, no one picked up the phones at Streets For All and Streets Are For Everyone.
Or maybe the Times just lost their numbers.
The best they could do was a traffic engineering expert from USC, who evidently doesn’t consider traffic speed or road design a contributing factor when it comes to collisions.
Consider these milquetoast stanzas.
Many of the worst intersection were designed to take a lot traffic. They’ve been optimized for car movement (so pedestrians, buses cyclists come second to moving cars). This is controversial because some feel the city needs to prioritize getting solo drivers out of cars and onto mass transit and other alternatives. But most of these intersections lack protected bike and bus lanes.
As frustrating as the waits at these intersections can be, Moore argues that the city has generally done a adequate job of moving so many cars and is skeptical much more can be done short the type of “congestion pricing” system being tried in New York and European cities.
While I’m all in favor of congestion pricing, I doubt there are many people who would give LA traffic even an “adequate” grade.
That said, here’s the list in all its glory.
Highland and Sunset
Sepulveda and Lincoln
MLK and Crenshaw
3rd and Alvarado
El Segundo and Hoover
Los Feliz and Griffith Park
Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset
Santa Monica and Highland
Fountain and Hyperion
Crenshaw and 9th
La Cienega and Centinela
Vermont and 28th
Wilshire and Sepulveda
Pacific Coast Highway and Channel/Chautauqua
Two of those are walking distance from my apartment. Which probably explains why I feel like my life is in danger every time I walk the dog.
And I’ve ridden, driven of bused through most of the rest, and can attest that they do, indeed, suck.
But I don’t think you can evaluate any intersection without considering the design of the roadways leading up to it, or the speed of the drivers approaching it.
This list should be a call to action to fix each of these. But if we only address the intersections themselves, we won’t solve the problems that put them on it.
The bill would require that an electric bicycle must have fully operational pedals and an electric motor capable of no more than 750 watts; anything else could not be legally called, marketed or sold as a bicycle or ebike.
What is currently termed a motorized bicycle would be redefined as a moped, with clearer definitions of vehicle design, power output, and a top speed of 30 mph on level ground.
The term motor-driven cycles would include electric motorcycles offering less than 3,750 watts and 5 brake horsepower.
Both categories would require that manufacturers and marketers clearly specify that they are not electric bicycles.
Dirt bikes and other electric motorbikes intended for off-highway use will be treated as off-highway motor vehicles and must display identification plates or devices, and be certified by an accredited independent lab.
And perhaps most importantly, it would not require licenses, registration or insurance for ped-assist ebikes — a requirement that would be the best way to kill the growth of ebikes, and limit their ability to replace motor vehicle use.
Four people were hospitalized with major injuries.
The driver then fled the scene, crashing into the curb as he made his escape. After which, someone in the crowd got their revenge by shooting up a couple of nearby businesses, neither of which probably had anything to do with it.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
He gets it. A North Carolina letter writer patiently explains that bike riders already pay for the streets, and that anyone who wants to exclude bicycles from the state’s roadways because they don’t pay gas taxes might as well exclude EVs, too — then signs off that he’s “Not a cyclist or an EV owner.”
Los Angeles city leaders have apparently managed to get their collective heads out of their metaphorical asses long enough to request an extension on $100 million in funding from California Active Transportation Program, rather than give the money back to the state after concluding that city staff reductions meant they couldn’t meet the deadline to finish projects in Wilmington, Boyle Heights and Skid Row.
Locals are enraged when an English bike path is closed for two years because someone living in van community did some unauthorized digging in an embankment next to the path.
A travel website says Kyoto and Hokkaido, Japan have joined better known locations like Amsterdam, Tuscany and Mallorca, Spain as the world’s best bicycling destinations. But they bizarrely feel the need to illustrate it with an AI-generated photo of bicyclist riding in front of a spectacular mountain range and temples that don’t exist.
They would not, however, have to have to take a driving test or have a driver’s license.
Bauer-Kahan says the so-called E-Bike Accountability Act is needed because there is no accountability for riders on the streets and “on our bike paths where e-bikes are going upwards of 30, 40 even sometimes 60 miles per hour.”
Except anything that can go that fast is already classified as a motorized bicycle or motor-drive cycle, since Class 3 ebikes are capped at 28 mph, and already requires a) a driver’s license, and b) registration with the DMV.
Either that, or they are illegally modified ebikes, or electric dirt bikes that are being illegally ridden on the roads.
Key word there being “illegally.”
So what the hell is the purpose of this bill, since everything it regulates is already required and/or illegal?
Never mind that the DMV can’t seem to manage their current workload just licensing drivers and motor vehicles, so this would require untold millions in additional staffing and resources, unless we want to watch the DMV slowly grind to a halt, as if it isn’t already.
Not to mention that the idea of registering bicycles has already been studied to death, and found to cost more to do than it would bring in to the state.
The practical effect of this bill would be to virtually halt all sales of Class 2 and 3 ebikes, at a time when the need to replace motor vehicles with some other more viable form of transportation is greater than ever.
This appears to be nothing more than an asinine political stunt to score points with the ebike-hating crowd.
Or looking at it in the kindest possible light, a sincere attempt by someone who is hopelessly uninformed, and has not bothered to look at the laws already on the books before submitting needless and ill-conceived legislation.
Let’s hope her peers in the legislature see through it, and give this bill the swift death it so richly deserves.
It’s funny how cities in cold-weather climates can manage to encourage people to bike to work in the middle of winter, while normally sunny Los Angeles seems to buy the dual myths that biking to work just isn’t practical here, and no one would ever ride a bike in the winter.
Then again, those chilly cities also offer decent bike infrastructure that provides those people with safer places to ride, making winter bike commuting much more practical.
Or maybe Los Angeles just doesn’t want all those people on bicycles clogging up the streets, and impeding the God-given right of motorists to use their handheld smartphones without, you know, actually killing someone.
Usually.
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Um, okay.
Legislation passed by the US Congress last year and signed into law by President Trump gives the National Park Service three years to complete a study of turning the Los Angeles coastline into a national park.
The study, required by Public Law 117-328, examines coastline from Will Rogers State Beach to Torrance Beach, including areas around Ballona Creek, the Baldwin Hills and the San Pedro section of Los Angeles. The public comment period runs through April 6, 2026.
Which means it could soon cost you $15 to $20 a day, or $80 a year, for the privilege of riding your bicycle on the beachfront Marvin Braude bike path, which will inevitably be renamed the Donald J. Trump Bike Path.
Same with commuting along Ballona Creek, where the proposed extension will inevitably be halted once it starts requiring federal tax dollars from a bike-averse administration.
And if you think maintenance is bad now, just wait until the job is turned over to the DOGE-gutted park service.
But whether or not you agree it’s a terrible, horrible, very bad, no good idea, you now have two months to get your comments in.
According to SMDP,
The National Park Service is seeking feedback on five questions: what nationally significant cultural and natural resources should be protected, what role NPS should serve, what concerns exist, and general comments.
Comments can be submitted online at parkplanning.nps.gov/LosAngelesCoastal or mailed to National Park Service, Denver Service Center, Attn: Los Angeles Coastal SRS, One Denver Federal Center, Building 50, Denver, CO 80225.
A second virtual public meeting is scheduled for March 11 at 6 p.m. Pacific time.
No bias here. A Conservative member of the British House of Lords not only says there’s too much London road space dedicated to bike lanes, but there’s no corresponding space dedicated to cars. But subtract all the bike lanes in the entire city, and it would still leave the overwhelming majority road space dominated by motor vehicles.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Look for these three Croatian guys in 2028, when they plan to continue a two-decade tradition of bicycling to international Olympic sites by riding Route 66 from Oklahoma City, where some of the Los Angeles Olympic events will inexplicably be held, to the City of Angels for whatever events OKC doesn’t do.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m just glad this damn week is over.
I mean, it is over, right? Tell me it’s over.
It’s just been one damn thing after another. And as soon as you think you’ve caught your breath, something even worse happens.
But on the plus side, Sunday offers one of the best days to ride a bicycle, with virtually traffic-free streets until the game is over. Or gets out of hand, anyway.
At least the guy on the bike walked away, as did the woman behind the wheel.
So far, police have termed it a tragic accident.
You know, just another oopsie.
Just a kindly old lady who just got confused, lost control of her car, and didn’t mean to cause any harm.
Not one word, at least to this point, discussing whether someone that old should have even been behind to begin with. Never mind that for most people, cognitive abilities decline with age, eyesight weakens, and reaction times slow.
No one is saying she’s not a nice person, and no one can say whether she was at fault for the initial crash with the bicyclist. Or that she doesn’t need a car in this damnably car-centric city.
But it’s hard to believe that a younger driver wouldn’t have been able to come to a stop before plowing into a building a full block away.
We continue to allow elderly people to continue driving, even as their abilities to do so safely decline. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?
Just the normal cost of getting from here to there, I guess.
Thanks to Andy for the heads-up.
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No surprise here.
A new study on the effect of cycling in older adults published in the PLOS One medical journal shows that bicycling improved cognitive function and mental health in the test subjects, whether they rode regular bicycles or ebikes.
According to the abstract,
For executive function, namely inhibition (the Stroop task) and updating (Letter Updating Task), both cycling groups improved in accuracy after the intervention compared to non-cycling control participants. E-bike participants also improved in processing speed (reaction times in go trials of the Stop-It task) after the intervention compared to non-cycling control participants. Finally, e-bike participants improved in their mental health score after the intervention compared to non-cycling controls as measured by the SF-36. This suggests that there may be an impact of exercising in the environment on executive function and mental health.
In fact, the ebike riders actually showed more improvement than the regular bike riders.
Perhaps because ebikes are easier on older bodies, encouraging people to ride both more, and more often.
We don’t have a problem with cities enforcing some sensible rules and reminding e-bike riders that they have a responsibility to be respectful of pedestrians and those who use traditional bicycles. Still, we worry that in their zeal to regulate, cities are tamping down on the core benefit of these e-bikes: providing people with that wonderful freedom of travel.
Which, at its core, is exactly what ebikes offer. Whether you’re young or old, healthy or otherwise.
It’s not that ebikes are better than regular bikes. They just meet different needs for different people.
And that shouldn’t be taken away just to rein in a relative few out-of-control kids.
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In better news, Gravel Bike California takes in the gravel and wine experience riding around Temecula.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
The Los Angeles Daily Newsprofiles the owners of Spoke N’ Wheel, the oldest bike shop in the San Fernando Valley, as it nears the half-century mark. Which is only four years older than my ’81 Trek.
Volunteers maintaining the La Jolla Bike Path are calling on the city to post more signs to discourage people from building their own unauthorized bike trails, after discovering a number of such trails carved into the hillside. Because as we all know, posting a sign is almost as effective as a sternly worded letter to the editor in deterring scofflaw behavior.
An opinion columnist for the Seattle Times relates how he took his stolen ebike back from someone who claimed he bought it for 400 bucks, recognizing it as the man rode by and confronting him at a red light.
Well, no shit. The annual Minneapolis Frostbike trade show was cancelled due to ‘current law enforcement activities.’ Apparently, they didn’t want to risk anyone getting inadvertently deported or shot by ICE agents.
No surprise here. Immigrant advocates and older adults decry New Jersey’s draconian new ebike law as discriminatory; the law requires licensing and registration for every ebike, without distinguishing electric motorbikes and dirt bikes from ped-assist commuter bikes.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A 73-year old Georgia man is planning to ride 950 miles to Washington DC to honor fallen service members and support the families they left behind. As we’ve noted before, however, there’s a big difference between planning to do something and actually doing it. So wake me when it’s over.
Jens Voigt says we live in a golden era of cycling, adding “Every now and then you have Pogacar or Einstein being born.” Although I’d take Pog over Einstein on a hilly descent any day.
January 22, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Long Beach traffic deaths doubled since 2015; LADOT installed pathetic 30 lane miles of bikeways, ignores Vision Zero
Welcome to our world.
Traffic fatalities in Long Beach have more than doubled in the ten years since the city vowed to eliminate traffic deaths within a decade, rising to the highest level in the last ten years.
That corresponds with the City of Los Angeles, which adopted a Vision Zero program that promised to end traffic deaths by last year.
And you know how that worked out.
Now LA’s Vision Zero is a forgotten program, trotted out only when the city wants to assure us that they are really, truly doing something to reduce traffic violence, without actually holding themselves accountable for it.
Like Los Angeles, most of Long Beach’s traffic deaths have been inflicted on people who weren’t encased in a couple tons of steel and glass.
According to the Long Beach Post story in the above link,
Their greatest toll has been on people outside of cars. Last year, 32 people were killed while walking, biking or riding an e-scooter. That eclipses the number of people murdered here last year: 29.
At least in LA, it’s only the total number of traffic deaths that exceeds the city’s murders.
Including a rather underwhelming, if not pathetic, total of 31 lane miles of new bikeways installed during the last fiscal year. Which includes 1.3 lane miles of sharrows, which studies have shown are literally worse than nothing.
According to the judge, the law in Idaho defines a bicycle as a “human-powered” vehicle, and it wasn’t clear to his or her honor if an ebike is actually human powered.
And that’s the problem. Some ebikes are human powered with an electrical assist, while others are strictly throttle controlled, or a combination thereof.
So defining an ebike as human powered could be the solution to the current dilemma of cities cracking down on ped-assist ebike riders for the problems caused by people on electric motorbikes and dirt bikes.
Now Marvin forwards word that Trumed will be the source you’ll have to use.
He adds,
The reason I really like this is because it supports the middle class. if I was poor, I could get help purchasing an e-bike. If I was rich, I could get help purchasing an EV. Finally, with FSA/HSA benefits, I can finally qualify for something that helps me.
The only downside I see is that no one can establish a new or add to an existing FSA/HSA until Nov 2026.
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Streets Are For Everyone will hold a die-in on the steps of City Hall this Saturday to protest the unacceptable level of traffic violence in this city.
In 2025 alone, 286 people were killed on our streets — deaths that were preventable.
This Saturday, SAFE and partner nonprofits will gather to honor lives lost and demand action after a decade-old City pledge to eliminate traffic deaths was missed.
Next City says Victoria, British Columbia is one of the best bike cities not traditionally known for it, after tripling its rate of bicycling in just 11 years. Although they can’t seem to spell Victoria correctly. Or British, for that matter.
A Scotsman resigned from the rat race, quitting his high-stress job as a communications director for a renewable energy company for a much calmer career fixing bicycles. As I know all too well after a career in advertising, the problem with the rat race is the rats usually win.
