Sad news from Laguna Beach, where a prominent local resident was killed while riding his ebike.
According to the Laguna Beach Independent, 73-year old Norman Rest was found lying in the roadway bleeding profusely Monday evening, after apparently crashing his ebike into a dumpster.
The collision took place sometime before 5:44 pm near Canyon View Drive and Buena Vista Way. Rest reportedly went into full cardiac arrest as he was being treated by paramedics, and died after being taken to a nearby hospital.
The story notes that he was riding without a light, but it’s not clear at this time how long he may have been lying there after crashing his bike.
Canyon View appears to have a steep hill; if he was riding downhill, he could have picked up considerable speed before slamming into the dumpster.
It’s also possible that he could have been crowded off the roadway by a passing car, or that the dumpster could rolled into the street or been hidden behind a curve or some other obstacle.
Rest embarked on a career as a builder after building his own three-story home in Laguna Beach when he was just 21-years old. He went on to found a local sailing club with his father, and was co-owner of Lido Paddle Sports.
That led to co-founding a nonprofit organization with his wife last year dedicated to using paddle boarding to promote mental health for military vets and first responders.
This is at least the 60th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Orange County.
The last bicycling death in the county was also a solo crash, after a young mother of two crashed her ebike while riding with her family on the San Juan Creek Trail in San Juan Capistrano.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Norman Rest and all his family and loved ones.
November 23, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Likely 60% boost to CA Active Trans funding, a call for universal free ebikes, and Wisconsin attack ruled intentional
According to Streetsblog, that includes a 60% boost in the Active Transportation Program, which provides most of the funding for bike and pedestrian projects in the state.
It also contains $1 billion to mitigate the damage caused to communities affected by the too-often racist legacy of freeway building. Although that’s 300 times less than the funding in the bill to build freeways.
And while the it contains language requiring planners to “consider the needs of all road users” in designing new projects, California’s existing Complete Streets policies already carry a similar requirement.
So he says give everyone a free ebike, instead. Along with safe streets to ride them on.
According to Jay Caspian Kang,
City governments should purchase an electronic bicycle for every resident over the age of 15 who wants one. They should also shut down a significant number of streets to be used only by bicycles and a small number of speed-regulated, municipal electric vehicles.
The Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act includes a $4.1 billion tax break for e-bike purchases. It would let you save 30 percent via a refundable tax credit capped at $900. That may help with some e-bike adoption, but tax credits can feel a bit abstract, and even with the discount, e-bikes, which typically run between $1,500 and $4,500, will still be out of the budgets of most Americans.
He’s not totally giving up on cars, though.
By the way, I am not envisioning a world without cars. People will still need to go on longer trips, disabled people will still need to get around, and goods will still need to be delivered. Cars will be channeled through a few routes in each city. In keeping with Schimmelpennink’s vision, transportation within the bicycles-only areas will be handled by a fleet of electronic taxis that will travel at speeds below 25 miles per hour. As for deliveries, many package deliveries in the United States can be handled by cargo e-bikes, which can transport hundreds of pounds at a time.
Shutting down some streets for bikes is key not only for safety, but also because the more inconvenient driving becomes, the more people will start to consider other options. Available to them is a free-of-charge mode of transportation that will often be faster than sitting in traffic and having to find a parking spot.
The only place he misses the mark is when it comes to people with disabilities, failing to recognize that for many, an ebike can be an effective mobility device, giving them more freedom to get around than they can by other means.
As he points out, however, the biggest obstacle to implementing a plan like that is the political pushback leaders would face from people who can’t even imagine a world with fewer cars.
Thirty-nine-year old Milwaukee resident Darrell E. Brooks was reportedly involved in a domestic violence incident just minutes before the attack on a parade filled with innocent victims.
He is also accused of jumping bail for a previous incident.
………
Seriously, our institutions have got to do better.
Recall supporters have submitted nearly 12,000 more signatures for validation than the required 27,317 to qualify for the ballot.
Which means he could be recalled from office in May, then returned to office the next month, when the larger turnout in the previously scheduled primary election is likely to be more favorable to him than a single-issue recall ballot.
A reminder that there are still kind people in the world, regardless of how they travel.
A car stopped me while I was biking home in the rain this PM. I was confused & prepared for a confrontation, but instead the window rolls down and with a light in hand the passenger says 'hey, I think your light died.. do you want this one to get home safe?'
WeHoVille looks at the proposal to install peak hour bus lanes on La Brea Ave, including the brief three-block segment that runs through West Hollywood. Bike riders are allowed to use bus lanes in Los Angeles, though I’m not sure if the same rules would apply in WeHo.
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CityLab reports several American cities, including Oakland and Bakersfield, are experimenting with universal basic mobility programs that subsidize transit, bikeshare and scooters; Los Angeles may follow with a pilot program in South LA.
Some Texas bike riders have reportedly taken to carrying guns on their bikes for protection from “entitled, enraged” drivers. I had a friend in Louisiana who strapped a .22 to his handlebars for exactly the same reason, and reported drivers showed him a lot more courtesy on the roads afterwards.
New York State changed the law two years ago to allow people on bikes to use leading pedestrian intervals to get a safe head start on traffic, but someone apparently neglected to tell one NYPD traffic cop, who continues to illegally ticket riders obeying the law.
More British companies are using cargo bikes to make deliveries to avoid traffic congestion and parking problems, including a London flower shop that replaced its delivery vans with Dutch-made ebikes capable of carrying up to 45 boxes of flowers at a time.
A Welsh man will spend the next six years behind bars after leaving a party “severely drunk” and plowing into a young father riding his bike, while driving over twice the speed limit; the man fled the scene, but returned an hour later pretending to be a friend of the victim, before turning himself in the next day after he sobered up.
An Aussie driver was speeding, driving erratically, and high on crystal meth, amphetamines and cannabis when he ran down a bicycling grandmother last year, then abandoned his car and screaming passengers to flee the scene on foot. But swears he doesn’t remember it because he was sleeping at the time of the crash, and only fled because he panicked.
The woman was riding with her husband on the San Juan Creek Trail north of Creekside Park around 8:30 pm, when she somehow lost control of her bike, and tumbled onto the rocks.
Her children, who had been riding in front and rear bike seats, were also thrown onto the rocks. However, they are expected to fully recover.
An Orange County Sheriff’s sergeant indicated that, unlike her children, Macy was not wearing a helmet, though there’s no indication at this time that she suffered a head injury.
Tragically, Macy’s husband was riding behind on his own ebike, and reportedly watched the crash that took his wife’s life, and nearly his entire family.
This is at least the 50th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 6th that I’m aware of in Orange County.
The news likes to blame e-bikes for everything, but in this case it’s not wearing a helmet that probably killed the woman, while helmets saved her two kids. They were returning from the Ohana Music Festival (Pearl Jam, Beck, etc) at the beach, and it was dark. San Juan Creek Trail there is wide and flat but is bounded by boulders lining the channelized creek below, and it seems she fell over and hit her head on them. Ironically they had passed the most dangerous part of the path, where it dips steeply under Stonehill Dr and speeds accelerate down the hill. I am a frequent user of that important trail, it’s a bicycle highway to Doheny State Beach for thousands of Orange County residents. I agree there is a problem with speeding e-bikers on this trail, especially kids on their Class III speeders, but there’s also plenty of non e-bikers in their kits racing through there. There are a few posted 10 mph signs that no one pays attention to. It seems too slow for a trail like this, 15 mph would be more reasonable, including where the woman fell over.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Jennifer Lee Macy and all her family and loved ones.
They will ticket anyone who commits a violation that could endanger someone walking or riding, regardless of who commits it.
So ride to the letter of the law until you cross the city limits, so you’re not the one who gets ticketed.
Nothing unusual there.
But then the city added this highly problematic paragraph.
In addition, users of dockless mobility devices are reminded that only one person is allowed on a device at a time and e-scooters and e-bikes must be ridden on the road, never on the sidewalk – riding dockless mobility devices on the sidewalk is subject to citation. Users of e-scooters and e-bikes must have a valid driver license or instructional permit and must wear a helmet while riding. Users are advised to ride as far to the right side of traffic lane or in designated and marked bike lanes whenever possible and users must always ride in the direction of traffic. Dockless mobility devices should never be parked in a way that blocks pedestrian activity and access. Concerns about dockless mobility devices may be submitted to the City through its website or through the West Hollywood Official City App, which is available as a free download for iPhone users on the App Store and for Android users on Google Play. Feedback may be submitted by email, as well, at parkingconcerns@weho.org or by phone at (213) 247-7720.
Yes, dockless e-scooter users are required to have a driver’s license or learner’s permit, since the state somehow equates riding a tiny scooter with operating a deadly multi-ton machine.
But there is no license requirement for ebikes, dockless or otherwise, unless they are throttle controlled and capable of going up to 30 mph. And there is no helmet requirement for anyone over 18 years old.
Which means you’re allowed to ride outside the door zone, and take the full lane on any street where the right lane is too narrow to safely share with a motor vehicle, while providing at least a three-foot passing distance.
It’s more than a little frightening when the people responsible for the laws don’t seem to know them.
Maybe someday Los Angeles will get serious about getting people out of their cars, and make bus lanes 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just like a real city.
Or not.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
You’ve got to be kidding. Police in Yorkshire, England evidently have better things to do than deal with a teenage driver who hit a woman on a bicycle, then stole her phone to keep her from taking pictures after the crash; the cops said she should have just swapped information with him and left them out of it. And let him keep her phone, evidently.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A plan to improve safety and add bus lanes and bike lanes to a pair of Mountain View streets has hit a roadblock, after it was revealed that the project would require removing 120 trees, including 27 irreplaceable heritage trees. Maybe they should consider removing parking spaces or traffic lanes before they start chopping down trees.
An Irish walker and sometimes bicyclist says put a bell on your bike, already. I’m not a fan of bike bells, since all they tell you is a bike rider is nearby, and an angel just got its wings. Use your voice instead, and politely tell pedestrians what side you’re passing on, or ask them to move one way or the other.
Seven-time Grand Tour winner Alberto Contador set off on a 1,000-mile ride from Madrid to Milan to celebrate his pro team’s first stage victory in the Giro, in their first year on the WorldTour; Contador is co-owner of the Spanish-based team, along with former cycling great Ivan Basso.
September 14, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Bike and transportation bills pass in final days of legislature, ebikes as mobility devices, and unholy upside down lock job
You can stick a fork in this year’s state legislative session.
Amid the flurry of bills passed in the final days of the session were bills legalizing stop as yield for bike riders — aka the stop sign portion of the Idaho Stop Law — a bill legalizing jaywalking, and one that should allow local governments to lower some speed limits.
Ralph Durham briefly returns to California from his usual German haunts, just in time to discover this unholy upside down San Francisco locking job.
Photo by Ralph Durham
Then again, the owner did secure the front wheel and frame to the rack with a U-lock, with another locking the rear triangle and wheel, and a cable offering extra support.
It just looks strange.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A Santa Cruz man was lucky to escape injury when he lost control of his bike on a steep descent, and plunged 250 feet down the hill; he was rescued by sheriff’s deputies after local residents heard him calling for help.
Fifty-seven-year old NorCal bike shop chain Mike’s Bikes has been sold to Dutch conglomerate The Pon Group, parent company of Santa Cruz Bicycles, among other bike brands. But you may be out of luck if you ordered a Specialized bike from them, after the bikemaker abruptly pulled their account following the sale.
Private land owners are blocking access to Colorado mountains in the wake of a 2019 appeals court ruling that upheld a ruling making the US Air Force Academy liable for a mountain biker who crashed after hitting a sinkhole on a washed out trail.
Police in Alberta, Canada crack down on bike thieves, busting four bike boosters by using bait bikes. Which serves as your periodic reminder that the LAPD still doesn’t use bait bikes to combat the ever-rising tide of bike theft, due to a flawed city attorney ruling that warned it might be seen as entrapment — even though bait bikes are successfully, and legally, used elsewhere in California.
Glasgow, Scotland drivers are up in arms demanding the removal of new bollards marking a bike lanes, insisting they have serious road safety concerns. Because the bollards apparently interfere with their God-given right to park in the bike lane, and they’re apparently unaware they can just drive over the plastic car tickler bendy posts, anyway.
Home deliveries have soared in recent years, spurred by online shopping and the coronavirus pandemic. Vans can travel along clear stretches of road at higher speeds than cargo bikes but are slowed by congestion and the search for parking. Cargo bikes bypass traffic jams, take shortcuts through streets closed to through traffic and ride to the customers door.
“Recent estimates from Europe suggest that up to 51% of all freight journeys in cities could be replaced by cargo bike,” said Ersilia Verlinghieri at the Active Travel Academy at the University of Westminster and lead author of the report. “So it’s remarkable to see that, if even just a portion of this shift were to happen in London, it would be accompanied by not only dramatic reduction of CO2 emissions, but also contribute to a considerable reduction of risks from air pollution and road traffic collisions, whilst ensuring an efficient, fast and reliable urban freight system.”
In other words, cargo bikes for the win.
………
Speaking of which, our German correspondent Ralph Durham forwards photos of the the wide variety of work bikes he found on a recent visit to Strasbourg, France.
Starting with a food delivery bike for a Japanese restaurant…
A postal bike…
And what appears to be a bakery bike.
Finally, he sends this photo of an electric flatbed bike towing a trailer, which was picking up food waste from a restaurant for treatment offsite.
But as drivers and NIMBYs keep reminding us, you can’t carry things on a bicycle, let alone make deliveries.
This is who we share the road with. Three innocent people were killed in a violent Burbank collision when a speeding driver slammed into their car on a quiet surface street; the killer driver may have been racing with the driver of another car, who also crashed.
Sad news from San Jose, where a man died a day after he was struck by a driver when he allegedly ran a red light on his bike. As usual, the question is whether anyone saw him run the light, other than the driver who hit him.
Good news from Tokyo, where BMX cyclist Connor Fields was released from the hospital just five days after a horrific crash during a preliminary heat put him in the ICU with a brain hemorrhage, collapsed lung and broken ribs.
According to NBC7, some people have complained on Nextdoor — as if everyone on Nextdoor doesn’t complain about something — and circulated a petition demanding that ebikes be banned from Moonlight Beach.
But the station widely misses the mark when they try to make the case that ebikes are somehow dangerous, by lumping them together with e-scooters and hoverboards to argue that 41 Americans were killed due to the devices over a three-year period.
Not that ebikes have anything in common with the other two, aside from having a battery.
And never mind that an average of 13.6 deaths a year pales in comparison to the 42,000 people killed in traffic collisions last year alone.
Yes, some people on ebikes may ride in a rude or unsafe manner. Just like some people do on regular bikes, on foot or in motor vehicles.
However, many of those scofflaw ebikers likely stem from their popularity with new riders, and people who haven’t ridden in years, if not decades, and haven’t learned decent bicycle etiquette yet.
So just use a little common courtesy and common sense, however you get around.
But don’t try to ban ebikes just because you don’t get it.
And someone please tell North County residents to get their collective ebike-hating heads out from whence the sun don’t shine.
The new and improve Golden Gate Bridge railing isn’t exactly working out that way for people on bicycles.
Yes. I biked on the GG bridge on a windy, howling day and thought I was going to die. The wind blew my helmet off—almost choking me—and my bike rammed into the railing. I'm absolutely terrified of biking on the bridge, but it's the only route out of SF. ☠️ https://t.co/fBAedfSFq1
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton rides the Expo Bike Path, and complains that Culver City abandons bike riders on a short gap in the bikeway near the Culver City Metro station, forcing people to take a poorly marked half-mile detour along city streets. And offers a long list of recommended fixes.
Speaking of the SDMBA, the group is partnering with Canyon Bikes and the founders of the popular Canyon Belgian Waffle Ride for a new fundraising campaign to support local trails, with a grand prize of $4,000 towards any Canyon bike.
June 14, 2021 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Carlsbad GOP candidate gets proposed ebike bill all wrong, sexist anti-bike bias, and the high cost of traffic violence
The proposal, AB 117, is supported by current Assembley Member Tasha Boerner Horvath, whom she hopes to unseat.
At a price-point anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000, they are a noteworthy investment, but should the government be subsidizing these purchases without accountability? Absolutely not. Yet Assemblymember Tasha Boerner Horvath wants to spend unlimited amounts of money to do just that.
Maybe someone should tell her about the massive rebates the state already gives to people who buy electric cars.
But rudeness, rather than money, seems to be her chief objection.
Worse, many of us have witnessed near collisions between e-bikes or e-scooters and vehicles. Personally, I have been almost struck while crossing the street in a crosswalk, and many people have observed near-catastrophes on a daily basis.
So, from her point of view, we should make it harder to buy ebikes, because someone almost struck her while riding one.
Because apparently, no one on a regular bicycle — or a scooter, skateboard, roller skates or running shoes — would ever do such a dastardly deed.
And she’s evidently never experienced the way rude, aggressive and/or inattentive drivers treat people in crosswalks, either.
But the most frightening part, from her bizarre perspective, is that the bill would provide up to $10 million in state tax rebates. Never mind that California currently has an $85 billion — yes billion, with a b — tax surplus.
Which, by my English major math calculations, works out to less than 0.012% of that surplus.
Now the state government wants to fund incentives for purchasing electric bicycles — atop significant out-of-control spending already happening at the state level.
Think I’m kidding? One of Boerner Horvath’s latest bills — Assembly Bill 177 — states that the purpose of her newest taxpayer-funded program is to “fund…incentives for purchasing electric bicycles” under the guise of an “air quality improvement program.”
But wait, there’s more!
Despite Horvath’s empty virtue signaling to the environmentalists, the government should not be incentivizing us to purchase electric bicycles when they are already affordable and available. That’s the job of Lime, Bird, and other companies in the San Diego region. Plus, those companies are held accountable by the cities in which they operate — not by nameless bureaucrats in Sacramento.
Maybe $1,500 to $4,000 — or a lot more, actually — is affordable to her. But it’s a major stretch for many of the constituents she hopes to represent.
And she apparently has no idea what Lime, Bird and other e-scooter providers actually do.
Or what bikeshare is, for that matter.
Then she trots out the usual bike hater screeds.
This legislation is a disaster in the making. Beyond the notion that this isn’t the role of government, there are no safety precautions, no spending limits, and no licensing requirements. Above all, there is no accountability to determine the efficacy of the program or its reduction in air pollution.
So, she wants to license ebike riders. Or maybe all bike riders.
Never mind that California already regulates ebikes into three distinct classes, with increasing levels of safety restrictions and requirements.
And did we mention that $10 million spending limit?
As for reducing air pollution, she’s got a point. Everyone knows the paltry electricity consumed by a little ebike, and its burrito eating rider, would create far more emissions than your average massive gas-guzzling SUV.
Right?
Let’s hope that, contrary to her wishes, AB 117 does see the light of day.
And the very confused and uninformed Melanie Burkholder doesn’t.
When white men start using a bike, I often think they experience a sort of status shock. They see what marginalisation feels like: the dehumanisation, the fear, the threat of violence. If you ride a bike and you belong to another group who already lives with this threat, there is a familiarity to it all…
Being a cyclist often reminds me of being a woman. If someone hurts me it’s my fault because I didn’t wear the right thing, I didn’t defer to them and “know my place”, and I didn’t just smile and put up with their abuse. Power imbalances foster bullying.
So, avoid them if you can, the dehumanising stereotypes. All the comparisons to vermin this past fortnight on conservative radio and social media – cockroaches, rats, lice, etc – have been way out of line. Even the fixation with lycra. It’s something male sports cyclists usually wear. The obsession with men wearing tight revealing clothing in public so often veers into an obviously homophobic place. Just don’t.
One of the top dog handlers missed out on this year’s Westminster Dog Show after his van was rear-ended in Laramie, Wyoming while driving ten canine competitors cross-country to the show; he ended up in the hospital, but fortunately, the dogs were uninjured. Which goes to show how much safer cars could be if everyone inside just rode in the human equivalent of a dog crate.
In another form of violence due to motor vehicles, the grave of Robert Meacham, who rose from slavery to Florida state senator and helped establish the state’s public school system, is likely buried unmarked and unremembered under a Tampa parking lot, along with the bodies of hundreds of other Black people.
A year ago, LA Times readers were asked to envision life post-pandemic, but only one lonely response addressed how nice life was with fewer cars on the streets. The simple fact is, if we go back to life as normal pre-pandemic, with cars maintaining hegemony over our streets, we will have failed. And looking outside, it appears we already have.
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Two armed Orange County men were busted after blocking the path of a pair of Garden Grove bike riders with their car, robbing the woman of her bike, pack and cellphone while her male companion bravely rode away; police seized six guns from their home, was well as gun parts.
Even though anti-bike critics invariably claim that bike lanes, or any other bicycle infrastructure — or even just bicycles themselves — somehow pose a risk to people with disabilities.
Or that disabled, older or out-of-shape people can’t ride bikes, so bike lanes won’t do them any good.
Meanwhile, a study from a Colorado university shows that ebike users in the state tend to be older, and like being able to ride longer and farther than they could otherwise.
Which can help keep them riding years after they might otherwise have quit.
Presenting the best bike helmet ad in at least the last 1,200 years.
Thanks to W Corylus for the link.
………
Shoulda used Bike Index.
And maybe not done whatever it was that pissed her off so much.
Thanks to Tim Rutt for the photo.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
There’s a special place in hell for the Ypsilanti, Michigan man who threatened a young boy with a sledgehammer, then went back inside and shot him through a window, for the crime of briefly leaving a bicycle on his lawn. Fortunately, the kid was only hit in the arm; the man who shot him faces an attempted murder charge, albeit with a measly $10,000 bond.
Bike Snob’sEben Weiss celebrates older bicycles, with their seemingly endless supply that flies in the face of shortages of new bikes caused by the bike boom.
A Colorado letter writer asks if it’s legal to drive with a bike rack covering your car’s rear license plate; not surprisingly, the answer is a resounding no. It’s not legal here in California, either. And probably isn’t most places.
