Tag Archive for ghost bike

Morning Links: Adult trike needed for Whittier ghost bike, and Ventura wants to hide death records from you

Just five days left in the 5th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive! Donate today via PayPal, or with Zelle to ted @ bikinginla.com.

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A three-wheeled adult bike is needed to install a ghost bike for fallen bike rider Danny Martin, aka Whittier’s beloved Tricycle Man, who was killed in Whittier on Monday.

And speaking of Danny, there will be a ride in his honor this Sunday. 

Thanks to everyone who sent me this one.

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Ventura County officials want to block your right to know about bicycling and other fatalities, calling for a new law banning the disclosure of death records to both the general public and the media.

Thanks to Steven Hansen for the heads-up.

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Here’s your chance to help improve bike connections in the San Gabriel Valley.

https://twitter.com/ActiveSGV/status/1207390576263360512

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes is all too real.

A homeless German man who wanted to go to jail for free meals and a warm place to sleep got his wish when he was sentenced to life in prison for intentionally ramming a bike rider with the car he’d been sleeping in, seriously injuring the victim as well as inflicting long-lasting psychological trauma.

In a road rage incident seen ’round the world, a Singapore truck driver was convicted of deliberately swerving into a bicyclist and failing to report the crash.

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‘Tis the Season.

The San Luis Obispo sheriff’s department donated 250 bikes refurbished by honor farm inmates to kids in need.

The widow of North Carolina’s Bicycle Man is continuing his legacy, donating a whopping 1,500 bicycles and helmets to local children.

A Louisiana sheriff’s department gave away 100 bicycles to local kids in their 26th annual bike giveaway.

A Jacksonville FL foundation gave nearly 100 bikes to children from the local Police Athletic League and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

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Don’t make her suffer this indignity for nothing. Give to the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive today.

You can now count the last days of the BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive on one hand.

That’s right. Just five days left to show your support for SoCal’s best source for bike news and advocacy. Along with the late Corgi’s last days as spokesdog for this site.

So let me offer my sincere thanks to Andrew G, Joel S, Janice H and Thuan V for their generous donations to help keep this fund drive going strong in its final days

So what are are you waiting for?

Stop take just a minute to give something right now. Because time’s running out. 

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Local

Brooks McKinney interviews LADOT transportation planner Severin Martinez about his work creating a “safe, comprehensive and well-connected bicycle network.”

Streetsblog’s Joe Linton looks at the three bike, pedestrian and equestrian bridges nearing completion over the LA River. Although it’s probably just a matter of time before the horse people try to get us kicked off those, too.

Long Beach’s “whimsical” bike racks are celebrating their 10th anniversary on the streets of the bayfront city; designs include a yoga stick figure, skeletal fish and a cupcake, among others.

 

State

A member of San Diego’s Mobility Board questions if the city is doing more harm than good by removing 430 parking spaces to make room for protected bike lanes in the North Park neighborhood. Short answer, no.

Santa Barbara is preparing to roll out a traditional 250-bike docked bikeshare system aimed at local workers, rather than tourists.

Nice story. When someone stole a bike belonging to a high school student in Half Moon Bay, he soon spotted someone riding it and confronted the thief, but decided to let him keep it because the other kid probably needed it more that he did. When the local sheriff’s department heard about it, they found an abandoned bike, refurbished it and gave it to him as a reward for his selfless act.

 

National

Unbelievable. Omaha, Nebraska ripped out a bike corral after the bike shop it fronted closed down, preferring to regain one lousy car parking space instead of parking for a dozen bicycles; bike riders tried to halt the removal by rushing to lock their bikes to the racks, but the city took them out anyway.

Missouri works out a land transfer to build a 144-mile bike trail through the state — assuming supporters raise nearly $10 million to pay for it.

Kindhearted Wisconsin cops work with a local bike foundation to replace an autistic man’s three-wheeled bike after noticing the frame was broken.

Kinda sucks when your own aunt turns you in for stealing a bike, like this Minnesota man.

Life is cheap in Michigan, where a reckless hit-and-run driver got a whole year behind bars for killing a man riding a bike. With good behavior, he’ll probably get out in half that time.

A somewhat strange New Hampshire letter writer says only give your wife a Peloton bike if you’re a man’s man; otherwise, be a girly man and go to a jewelry store.

An upstate New York letter writer complains about a bike and walkway on a bridge over the Hudson River, somehow blaming it for the potholes caused by cars.

New York is looking for robbers who have stolen 22 ebikes after pepper spraying the victims.

The death toll just keeps going up in NYC, after the city notched its 29th bicycling fatality this year when a man on a bike fell on some ice, and was hit by the driver of a loaded school bus. That’s still better than Los Angeles, which has suffered 17 bicycling deaths this year, in a city half the size.

A Florida bike rider was lucky to escape with minor injuries when a 12-foot sinkhole caused by a broken stormwater pipe opened up under the roadway, which collapsed underneath him. Or maybe not; his boss says he’ll need facial reconstruction surgery.

 

International

Road.cc tells you how to avoid the pitfalls of bike commuting. Like skip the Strava KOMS and don’t wear your heavy jeans for more than a few miles.

The Guardian asks the burning question of what will British Prime Minister Boris Johnson do for bicyclists. Assuming the country survives Brexit, or course.

A three-year old girl from the UK born with a severe birth defect is now walking and riding a bike, after doctors had given her zero chance of ever walking.

Maybe they’ll take requests. London’s electric buses will now play music to warn bike riders and pedestrians they’re coming.

Life is cheap — and grossly unfair — in Australia, where a 20-year old Iranian refugee got just 10 months in a youth facility for falling asleep at the wheel and killing a 49-year old father riding his bike to work; his short sentence means he won’t be deported. His victim’s family won’t be so lucky; after losing their husband and father, they face deportation because they were in the country on his employment visa.

An Aussie website says the country’s road rules should be rewritten to put pedestrians first, with bike riders second.

Taipei, Taiwan will allow foreign expats to use its bikeshare system after all.

 

Finally…

No, throwing one at a passing cab whose driver won’t stop to pick you up is not the proper use of a bikeshare bike. Probably not the best idea to steal a bike from the local police.

And if you’re using a distinctive pink and purple kid’s bike as your getaway vehicle following an armed robbery, you probably don’t want to ride it back past the scene of the crime a few minutes later.

Seriously.

Morning Links: Big Easy drunk driver gets 91 years, Cathedral City bike rider critically injured, and safety in numbers real

Come back after 10 am today for a guest post from our anonymous courtroom correspondent, as she updates a number of recent stories — including the case of hit-and-run driver Pratiti Renee Mehta, who walked despite showing no remorse for her crime, or any sympathy for her victim. 

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Now that’s taking traffic violence seriously.

A New Orleans judge sentenced the drunk driver who killed two bike riders and injured seven others when he plowed through them at 80 mph during a Mardi Gras parade to 30 years for each death, plus 30 years and six months for the injured riders — and added another six months for also crashing into parked cars.

Then ordered the sentences to run consecutively, for a total of 91 years behind bars.

As others have noted, that’s a life sentence for the 32-year old man.

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More bad news from the Coachella Valley, where a 50-something bike rider was critically injured in a Cathedral City crash; he was hit by an SUV driver while in a crosswalk.

Meanwhile, a ghost bike will be installed a week from today for Raymundo Jaime, killed by a heartless hit-and-run driver while riding his bike in Palm Springs.

Thanks to Victor Bale for the heads-up.

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Seriously. Turn yourself in, already.

Because there’s a $25,000 reward if you don’t.

https://twitter.com/LAPDCTD24/status/1189417517371969536

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A new Rutgers University study confirms the safety in numbers effect, even while injuries are rising, especially among riders 55 to 64.

Although the latter stat is probably explained by the jump in ridership among older people.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes is all too real.

A witness got involved when a road raging DC driver got out of his car and pushed him off his bike, for the crime of taking up too much of the roadway while trying to make a left turn.

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Local

Today’s must read is great look at the failure of LA’s Vision Zero program due to the refusal of city leaders to implement it. Or as the author calls it, Vision Non-Zero.

More homeless people are dying on the streets of Los Angeles than ever before, with over 1,000 deaths last year alone; 9% of those deaths were due to bicycle and pedestrian crashes.

You may not see Uber’s Jump Bikes on the streets of Los Angeles soon, as the company files suit against LA after refusing to share bikeshare data with the city.

A Santa Clarita bike rider was hospitalized after getting hit by a motorist backing out of a driveway; no word on his or her condition.

A Long Beach-area paper profiles a Signal Hill bike shop dedicated to helping bike riders navigate their choices. Sort of like any good LBS.

 

State

Your next ebike could be a California bikemaker’s 36 mph bicycle made to look look like a vintage motorcycle, and designed by the grandson of the legendary Carrol Shelby. Although the 36 mph top end means it will require a helmet and a motorcycle license. And can’t be ridden in bike lanes or pathways.

 

National

The new HBO documentary Any One of Us focuses on the severe spinal cord injury suffered by professional mountain biker Paul Basagoitia at the 2015 Red Bull Rampage and his fight to recover from the injury.

A bipartisan bill in the US Senate would require automakers to build alcohol breath or touch sensors into all light vehicles by 2024, to keep intoxicated drivers off the road. Although I’d like to see some sort of cognitive test to detect any form of impairment. And include trucks and commercial vehicles, too.

Zwift wants you to help raise $25,000 for Movember to help fight prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health struggles and suicide prevention by riding your bike indoors.

Once again, Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss nails it, saying smart helmets won’t save bicyclists when the real problem is drivers who won’t put down their phones.

Cosmo says yes, the bizarre crash in this week’s episode of 9-1-1, where a driver hit a bike rider, the drove home and parked overnight with the victim embedded in her windshield, really happened; it was based on this equally strange 2014 crash. And yes, both the real and fictional victims survived.

Kindhearted Utah cops and school officials give a new bike and helmet to a teenaged girl after she was hit by a driver on her bike while leaving school.

Once again, authorities keep a dangerous motorist on the road until it’s too late, as an Ohio motorcycle rider faces vehicular homicide and vehicular manslaughter charges for killing a 15-year old boy riding his bike; he was riding on a on a suspended license and had several outstanding warrants for traffic violations.

We’ve seen a few bicyclists ride every street in their city or county lately. But how many do it pedaling an ice cream bike?

The New York Times explains why the city has committed to spending $1.7 billion — yes, with a B — to build 250 miles of protected bike lanes over the next ten years.

The New York Daily News says blame policymakers for the nationwide jump in pedestrian and bicyclist deaths.

 

International

Bike Mag reviews the updated Camelbak Podium bottle, and flips over now being able to disassemble the lid to clean it. However, the insulated Podium Ice water bottle remains the best bike bottle ever in my book.

Here’s a few more trips for your bike bucket list, as Travel & Leisure recommends 12 unforgettable vacations that are best done by bike, even for beginners.

No surprise here, as the family of the British man killed by an American diplomat’s wife while riding his motorcycle, who fled the country after claiming diplomatic immunity, is suing the Trump administration for its handling of the case.

A South African man made seven calls to his wife after he was knocked off his bike by a hit-and-run driver, saying the same thing each time, because a brain injury meant he couldn’t remember he’d already called her.

 

Competitive Cycling

So much for that. AEG has pulled the plug on next year’s Amgen Tour of California, saying they need to take a year off to figure out a business model that works better. Which is another way of saying we probably won’t see it again.

https://twitter.com/AmgenTOC/status/1189288363884503041

 

Finally…

Nothing like a fat tire Surly for surly weather. Lots of classical buildings have statues atop the dome; not many have bikeshare bikes there.

And seriously, don’t punch your foreign bus passengers when they have trouble with their bikes.

 

Morning Links: Sunland ghost bike tonight, limiting cars in city centers, and ATL rapper rides — and is — a Lil Bike

A ghost bike will be placed tonight for a 55-year old Tujunga man who was killed in a Sunland hit-and-run two weeks ago, one of two bicycling deaths that came to light over the weekend.

The second was an 82-year old man killed on a killer intersection on deadly Los Coyotes Diagonal in Long Beach.

Ghost bike photo by Matthew T Rader from Pexels.

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Today’s common theme is a mostly one-sided debate over whether it’s possible to encourage bicycling and other forms of so-called alternative transportation to reduce motor vehicle traffic. 

And for a change, the bikes are winning.

The short-sighted editors of LA County’s Antelope Valley Press say car-free streets are just an impossible dream, ignoring the fact that several European cities are already banning private cars from their urban centers.

A local paper says Spokane WA was built for bicycles, before those bullies in cars came along and took over the streets. But an Indiana college professor says we can get back there with a commitment to Complete Streets and better bike infrastructure.

And a writer for the Washington Post says European cities show it’s not only possible, but beneficial to limit cars and encourage bicycling.

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Trek develops an Aussie accent to introduce their new offroad bike in a tongue-in-cheek ad that just keeps going on…and on…

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When your rap name is Lil Bike, you’ve got to include at least one in your new video.

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Building your own DIY bike horn to scare the crap out of anyone.

Except, of course, for modern drivers in their hermetically sealed, virtually soundproof vehicles, who can’t even hear a firetruck bearing down on them.

Unfortunately, I lost track of who forwarded this to me over the weekend, so my thanks and apologies, whoever you are. 

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The war on cars is a myth, but the war on bikes is all too real.

A group of young men shouted profanities at an English bicyclist as they passed by in a car, then made a U-turn and came back to physically push him off the road, the fourth such attack in the area this year.

But sometimes its the people on bikes behaving badly.

It takes a major schmuck to just ride off on his bike after knocking a five-year old boy from the UK off his bicycle as he rode home from school; the middle-aged hit-and-run bicyclist left the kid lying in his own blood with a number of cuts and bruises.

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Local

LAist wants to know what’s up with the long-closed Arroyo Seco Bike Path, concluding a big part of the problem is a “virtual Russian doll” of intertwined jurisdictions. And don’t hold your breath on the promised September re-opening.

Santa Clarita’s mayor invites people to come out and bike the city’s numerous bike paths and trails, as well as the fourth annual Santa Clarita Gran Fondo later this month.

A new road project on Palmdale’s Rancho Vista Boulevard will widen it to three lanes in each direction, while adding five-foot bike lanes on both sides.

 

State

California’s ebike voucher bill was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Newsom; it will allow some low-income drivers to trade in their inefficient cars for vouchers good for bikeshare or ebike purchases. Unfortunately, I suspect my 1994 car is still one year too recent to qualify, dammit.

The co-founder of an Irvine-based kids bike maker says the whipsaw effect of Trump’s tariffs will force small businesses like his to go under.

It was a bad few days in San Diego, where a 64-year old man suffered life-threatening injuries when he was run down by a hit-and-run driver in a Point Loma bike lane. And a 22-year old woman suffered life-threatening injuries when she was hit by an SUV driver after allegedly veering in front of her vehicle.

San Diego officials plan to redevelop the city’s Mission Valley to accommodate 28,000 new homes, with new neighborhoods designed around bicycling, walking and the San Diego River.

Sad news from Bakersfield, where a man riding a bicycle was left lying in the road by a hit-and-run driver, and struck again by the driver of a second vehicle. As always, there’s no way of knowing if the victim would have survived if the asshole heartless coward in the first car hadn’t left him bleeding in the street.

A San Jose man is behind bars after a sharp-eyed Milpitas mall cop spotted the suspected burglar who rode off on a homeowner’s bicycle after an early morning break-in; police were able to return the bicycle just hours after the theft.

San Jose police bust an alleged hit-and-run driver who killed a man riding his bike in a crosswalk last month.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole the bicycle an 81-year old Sacramento man used to ride to the library.

 

National

A hard-hitting piece from Vice says bicycling deaths are exploding because American cities are car-friendly death traps, citing New York and Los Angeles as the nation’s deadliest cities for people on two wheels.

Inspired by a celebration of life after his brother’s death from leukemia, a 60-year old Los Angeles man with no bicycling experience is riding diagonally across the US, covering 4,764 miles from Neah Bay, Washington to Key West, Florida — including at least one mile a day on his brother’s 1982 bike.

A Washington bike rider says if drivers can’t afford a 15-second delay caused by someone on a bicycle, they need to plan their trip better.

A Reno bike co-op is expecting four truckloads of bicycles abandoned by Burning Man revelers, which will be fixed and recycled for use again next year.

A Montana newspaper doesn’t appear to be a fan of new Trump administration rules to allow ebikes on some National Park and BLM trails.

My favorite Scottish bike and bunny blogger takes a ride on Iowa’s 46-mile High Trestle Trail, so called because it takes you over a former railroad bridge.

A Fargo, North Dakota man is angry after getting hit with a special assessment on his home to pay for a new bike path, which the mayor says is needed to attract millennials to the city — even though it will cost him just $10 a year.

With Ohio bicycling deaths piling up, staff members for a Cleveland website debates what to do about it.

Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss says New York Mayor and mostly ignored presidential candidate Bill De Blasio’s call for mandatory bike helmets isn’t the answer, suggesting this is how Vision Zero dies.

A New York mother faces charges after her five-year old special needs son was found riding his bicycle alone in the middle of the night.

So much for that whole pedtextrian myth. A new study from New York shows there is “little concrete evidence that…distracted walking contributes significantly to pedestrian fatalities and injuries,” to which the windshield-biased New York Times responds, yeah, but it’s still annoying.

A writer for the New Yorker says let’s just give up on climate change already, because the battle is already lost since people aren’t going to change their behavior. That’s the same kind of clear eyed, rational thinking that led John F. Kennedy to say, “Oh just forget it. The moon’s too far away anyway.” And Winston Churchill to tell the people of England “I have nothing to offer you but blood, sweat and tears. So just fuck it and start learning German.”

The motorcycle rider who fatally shot a man on a regular Miami group ride was formally indicted on charges of 2nd degree murder aggravated assault; his lawyer says he’s never been in trouble before and is devastated to be behind bars. There’s a simple solution to that — just don’t shoot people. 

 

International

Treehugger’s Lloyd Alter says ebikes are great; buying them online, not so much.

Road.cc offers advice on how to pick the right bike cam. Which is your best protection against drivers and cops who blame you for a crash or blowing a stop signal you actually observed.

She gets it. An Ottawa columnist says the trick to a healthier population is designing public spaces in ways that naturally nudge people into moving around more without having to think about it.

Truly horrifying video of a 15-year old Toronto sidewalk rider literally getting run over by a pickup driver blowing out of a parking lot, who somehow didn’t notice — or maybe didn’t care — they’d just knocked him over; thankfully, he only suffered minor injuries. Be sure you really want to see this before you click on the link; even though he wasn’t seriously hurt, this one is very hard to watch. And to forget.

Powerful protest from the UK, as hundreds of Londoners stage a funeral procession through Trafalgar Square led by three horse-drawn hearses to protest bicycling deaths.

British police tell a doctor “that’s not my problem, it’s your problem” when it comes it bike theft, saying people understand that it’s not a big priority compared to other crimes. Except for the people whose bikes get stolen, of course.

In calling the Netherland’s Utrecht a “cycle-crazed” city, an architecture website demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of people’s psyches in the Netherlands. It’s not that they’re crazy about bicycling — it’s just normal. People hop on their bikes in the morning the same way most Americans walk to their cars.

Bollywood movie star Salman Khan is one of us, riding a bicycle through rain-drenched Mumbai streets to get to the set of his latest film.

 

Competitive Cycling

You know you’re having a bad year when a kitchen knife puts you back in the hospital; four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome severed a tendon on his thumb, just months after a major crash in the Critérium du Dauphiné knocked him out of action for most of this year’s racing season.

After a chaotic first week, no new lead changes in the Vuelta, as 24-year old American Sepp Kuss solos to victory in stage 15, notching his first long-range climbing win.

VeloNews says 27-year old Norwegian pro tour rookie Carl Fredrik Hagen continues to impress in his first Grand Tour, holding on to eighth in the Vuelta after finishing 18th in the Tour of Poland.

 

Finally…

Probably not the best idea to hit a bike cop with your truck’s wing mirror. And who needs a water bottle when you can carry a six-pack and a spare on your bike?

No surprise it took an Aussie to figure that one out, either.

 

Morning Links: Arrest made in Boyle Heights hit-and-run, Jeff Jones ghost bike tonight, and bike tourism for a cause

The LAPD made fast work of its search for the hit-and-run driver who critically injured a bike-riding father of five in Boyle Heights last week.

They got their man one day after announcing a $25,000 reward, arresting 23-year old Canoga Park resident Luis Raya-Flores for the crime.

Police said Raya-Flores knew why they were there as soon as they showed up at his door, telling them he fled because he panicked.

Which doesn’t excuse a damn thing.

Or shouldn’t, anyway.

Raya-Flores was booked on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and being held in custody on an $80,000 bond.

The victim, 53-year old Boyle Heights resident Gabriel Lopez, was riding his bike to his job as a construction worker when Raya-Flores lost control of his speeding truck and smashed into him.

Now it will be at least a month before Lopez can return to the job he needs to feed his family.

And a lot longer than that before he gets justice in the case.

Photo from LAPD website.

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A ghost bike will be placed tonight for fallen cyclist Jeff Jones.

The well-known and well-liked bicyclist was killed Saturday on Griffith Park Blvd when a van driver made a U-turn in front of him.

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Today’s common theme is bike tourism for a cause.

The annual Bike & Build program is rolling across the US to raise funds for affordable housing — and actually build it.

A Michigan man is riding 3,100 miles through the upper Midwest to call for an end to gun violence, and promote a hotline for people thinking about using a firearm to harm others.

And a man is riding from Maine to California, by way of West Virginia, to raise awareness of brain injuries after he suffered major brain damage when he was run down by a drunk driver several years ago.

Although sometimes, just a well-planned bike tour without a cause is good enough.

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Take a four-minute mental health break and explore California’s undiscovered country with mountain biker KC Deane.

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Sometimes, it’s the people on bicycles behaving badly.

A white DC bike rider learned the hard way that justice goes both ways, after he gets a well-deserved three years behind bars for a racially fueled U-lock attack on a black motorist.

After bicyclists ignore a bike ban on an Aussie walkway, officials installed barricades that everybody hates.

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Local

Streetsblog’s SGV Connect podcast catches up with Active SGV director David Diaz.

Santa Monica police credit a reduction in e-scooters and a state law removing the helmet requirement to ride them with a nearly 500% drop in tickets to scooter riders.

 

State

San Diego bicyclists had their annual chance to ride the city’s iconic Coronado Bay Bridge over the weekend.

Speaking of which, here’s your chance to take a relaxed bike tour of Coronado with Ken “Fat Woody” McNeil and his handcrafted artisan beach cruisers.

Bakersfield police book a killer driver on DUI charges with a 12% BAC. Yet still manage to blame the victim for turning her bike in front of his car. As always, the credibility of the accusations depends on whether there were any independent witnesses to the crash, since the driver has an inherent bias to blame the victim and see his actions in the best possible light.

If only cars had brakes. A San Jose driver is shocked when a jogger yelled at him for not giving him enough room as he passed a parked school bus, insisting he couldn’t give the runner any more space because there was a car in the lane next to him (last item). Because evidently, it’s impossible to slow down or wait until it’s safe to pass.

St. Helena residents are being urged to ride their bikes during next month’s Walk and Roll to School month.

 

National

The New York Times offers tips on tourism using dockless ebikes, scooters or motorbikes to get around a city.

Bicycling lends an ear to complaints about bike shops. So if you own, run or work for an LBS — aka local bike shop — pay close attention, because bad service is the best way to drive customers online. And you know they’re already looking there.

Your next Specialized bike seat could be the result of lattice-structured 3D printing, for a cooler, shock absorbing ride.

A Portland bike park was damaged in a brush fire, but all the staff was able to escape safely.

A bighearted Arizona special needs van builder bought a new adaptive bike for one of their young customers after learning his bike had been stolen.

Police in Fayetteville AR tell pedestrians, bike riders and motorists that the way to avoid crashes is just pay attention.

A Minnesota city approves a controversial mountain bike trail through a nature park, despite fears it could compromise the habitat for an endangered bumble bee. I gotta go with the environmentalists on this one; no use should be allowed that threatens any endangered species, because once they’re gone, they ain’t coming back.

A Detroit columnist complains about the city’s “tepid” response to the death of a nine-year old girl who was mauled by a neighbor’s dogs as she was riding her bike.

Cincinnati is the latest city to roll out a mountain bike-mounted EMS unit to get paramedics to emergency situations faster.

No shit. A Rhode Island legislator urges the state not to take $37 million earmarked to improve safety for bike riders and pedestrians to fix roads and bridges for drivers.

No bias here. Yes, a Cape Cod bike rider may be at fault for a crash. But if he ended up on the hood and windshield of a car, he’s probably not the one who did the colliding.

The NYPD responds to a series of bike crashes in Central Park by turning out in force to slow riders down.

New York provides bike riders and pedestrians with a spacious, 20-foot wide path on a new bridge span. But neglects to give them a safe way to get there.

After kids in their early teens start a ride out group to keep away from drugs and gangs, Schenectady NY city leaders respond with an ordinance allowing police to impound the kid’s bikes, because they piss off drivers and are too young to ticket. Although one former cop would rather use an old Soviet tactic and just toss them in a psych ward.

South Philadelphia is one of the top bicycling neighborhoods in the US. But that doesn’t seem to matter to local residents, who refuse to sacrifice 24 parking spaces to protect human lives.

Sad news from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a 14-year old boy was fatally shot as he rode his bicycle, just days after making the football team at his middle school. Seriously, this shit has got to stop.

Either a Florida supermarket employs costume makers, or a local TV station doesn’t know how to spell customer. And apparently, neither one knows bike riders don’t have to ride in the crosswalk.

A Miami weekly says you can survive in the city without a car, but you have to bike at your own risk.

 

International

Mexico’s biggest bikemaker is building a $25 million maquiladora plant with plans to begin exporting to the US. Which isn’t a bad idea in light of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese-made bicycles and parts.

Ottawa city councilors respond to a deadly year for bike riders by saying they want people on bikes to feel safe on the streets. Maybe Los Angeles city councilmembers could take the hint from them.

After getting back on his bike after breaking his leg in a major endo, a London writer finds drivers have gotten meaner. And hopes for a day when all city centers will be carfree.

Bike Biz takes a tour of Britain’s legendary Brooks saddle factory.

Time says the streets of Europe aren’t big enough for bicycle riders and e-scooterists.

 

Competitive Cycling

Watch two-time world mountain bike champ Danny Hart’s dream custom mountain bike build come together in 22 minutes.

Apparently, closing your eyes as you sprint for the finish in the fourth stage of the Vuelta makes you faster.

Evidently, Chloe Dygert Owen is doing a good job of overcoming her confidence issues, after demolishing the peloton to win all four stages of the Colorado Classic. Meanwhile, race organizers hope to add more European teams for next year’s edition of the women’s stage race.

 

Finally…

Who needs a bike path when you’ve got the Great Wall of China? Despite what the company says, Peloton is less than a bike because bikes have wheels.

And if you’re going to burglarize a store, don’t leave the keys in your truck where a bike-riding car thief can find them.

 

Morning Links: $25,000 reward for Boyle Heights hit-and-run, new candidate for LA CD8, and bike stolen every 15 seconds

LAPD Central Traffic detectives are looking for a hit-and-run driver who left a Boyle Heights man lying in the street with severe injuries.

And the city is offering a $25,000 reward to bring the heartless coward to justice.

The victim was riding his bike east on Whittier Boulevard near Calzona Street around 10:20 pm last Thursday, when a speeding pickup driver traveling in the opposite direction lost control and swerved onto the wrong side of the road, hitting him head-on.

The man, identified by KNBC-4 as Gabriel Lopez, a 53-year old father of five, was pulling a kid’s bike trailer behind his bike. Fortunately, no one was in it.

Lopez was released after just four days in the hospital, despite suffering a fractured back, blood clot and numerous scrapes and bruises. And can’t feed his family until he can get back to work as a construction worker.

Which is likely to take a very long time.

Police are looking for a distinctive white 2011-2018 Chevrolet/GMC full-size pickup with a red front bumper and lower valance air deflector, black rims and a black bed cover. The truck may have a custom white rear bumper, and possible aftermarket headlamps and tail lamps.

https://twitter.com/LAPDCTD24/status/1166071471032033281

The crash was caught on security cameras from two separate angles. However, be sure you really want to see it before you click play, because they’re not easy to watch. And you can’t unsee it once you do.

https://twitter.com/LAPDCTD24/status/1166072718145384448

https://twitter.com/LAPDCTD24/status/1166073297546530816

Anyone with information is urged to call the LAPD Central Traffic Division at 213/833-3713, or LAPD Detective Juan Campos at 213/486-0755; you can also email Det. Campos at 31480@lapd.online.

Let’s hope Lopez makes a full and fast recovery.

And the cops catch the jerk who did this to him.

Photo of suspect hit-and-run vehicle from LAPD. Thanks to John Damman and the LAPD Central Traffic Division for the heads-up. 

………

As long as we’re talking hit-and-run, City News Service offers more details on the march to honor 15-year old hit-and-run victim Roberto Diaz and call for safe streets in South LA.

Remarkably, Diaz has forgiven the hit-and-run driver who nearly killed him as he rode his bike in a crosswalk.

Which doesn’t mean he should escape justice, as the heartless coward is still missing, with a $25,000 bounty on his or her head, as well.

………

Which brings to someone who wants to help make those safer streets a reality.

Denise Francis Woods recently announced her campaign to represent South LA’s CD8 in the Los Angeles City Council, replacing Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

I offered her the chance to introduce herself to the bicycling community. Here’s what she had to say.

I am a life long resident of District 8 in Los Angeles, better known as South LA. I became aware of your site not along ago when Fredrick Woon Frazier was killed. I participated in a lot of the demands for change on several busy streets here, such as Manchester, to add efficient bike lanes. During those times I hadn’t even considered becoming a candidate, but over time, after not seeing any change in my community on many levels, I decided to take on the fight for social and economic justice for my fellow constituents.

I do not know a lot about the biking world. What I do know is that I’m an activist for doing the right things and fighting injustice for all. In regards to the biking world, I see a serious injustice in our local biking community here in South LA, where the bikers have not been given what is required in order to be safe while riding. As the councilwoman for the this district, I will make sure bike lanes are added to our major streets, in particular to Manchester, in honor of “Woon” and the other gentleman whom was also killed on Manchester recently.

Sounds like we could do a lot worse. Especially with someone who seems willing to listen and learn.

Then actually do something about it.

………

A new study from the Project 529 bike registry shows a bicycle is stolen in North America every 15 seconds — which works out to two million to bikes every year.

It also shows only 20% of those thefts are reported to the police. One reason just 5% of stolen bikes are ever returned to their owners.

Meanwhile, fellow bike registry Bike Index says they’ve helped recover over $8 million in stolen bicycles since 2013. And now they’re promoting stolen bike alerts on Facebook to help get more people on the lookout, and more bikes back home where they belong.

You can get free lifetime registration with Bike Index’s nationwide database right here on this site; Project 529 also offers free registration, though I don’t know what, if any, restrictions apply.

Best advice is to register your bike with every service you can to maximize your chances of getting your it back.

Especially if it doesn’t cost you a cent.

………

Be careful scanning those QR or bar codes for dockless bikes or scooters.

………

CiclaValley’s Zachary Rynew is looking for help fixing up a ghost bike and honoring 15-year old Sebastian Montero, who was killed by a speeding driver on Easter Sunday last year.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bike keeps on going.

Company officials gave the “psychotic” driver of a Mr. Softee ice cream truck a stern talking to after he reportedly parked in a bridge bike lane and threatened riders who complained, telling him to “knock off the stupid stuff.” Yeah, that ought to do it. Sure.

………

Local

Streetsblog says the new ultra-modern suspension bridge over the LA River is nearing completion.

A new map shows block-by-block and hour-by-hour how Los Angeles belches smog into the air — and into your lungs. But sure, let’s keep fighting bikeways and alternative transportation, and demanding our God-given right to drive until we all die and take the Earth with us.

Area residents call for protected bike lanes on Sunset Blvd from East Hollywood to Dodger Stadium; the Sunset4All proposal would replace painted lanes with protective devices, improving safety while creating a prime bicycling corridor — and keeping parked trucks out. Thanks to Jeff Vaughn for the tip.

 

State

It was a rough summer at Orange County’s Chapman University, as three students died during the break — including Pablo Valdez, who was killed by a pickup driver while riding on Oso Parkway in Las Flores last month.

This is why you shouldn’t try to intervene if you see someone stealing a bicycle. A woman is on trial for first-degree murder for shooting a Bakersfield man who tried to stop her from stealing a bike. Call the police and let them deal with it. And take pictures or video if you can do it safely.

Maybe Facebook isn’t entirely evil, after all. Robert Leone sends word that the massive Menlo Park company held a free bike repair clinic over the weekend to get kids and adults rolling again.

I want to be like him when I grow up. A 73-year old bike rider successfully tackles a hill climb challenge on NorCal’s Old Priest Road, a road so steep even the Amgen Tour of California said no thanks — and boasting an elevation gain of 1,630 feet in 2.5 miles, with a grade of up to 15.4%.

 

National

Writing for Bicycling, Peter Flax turns fashion critic, concluding he was wrong about Primal’s bike jerseys being the Nickelback of cycling apparel. Although they have some new competition coming from Australia.

A new study shows spending time in urban green space — aka parks and trails — can make you as happy as Christmas Day. But is that Christmas as a kid when you got exactly what you wanted, or sad adult Christmas when your significant other dumps you and all you get is underwear from your folks?

Denver votes to boot e-scooters off the sidewalk and onto the streets, reversing the previous rules that required them to be ridden on sidewalks.

After officials posted notices urging bicyclists to use caution on a Denver-area trail, someone trolled them with their own — and better — signs.

A Kansas man was a one man crime wave, stealing a man’s car, cellphone and wallet, followed by making off with a woman’s bicycle, assaulting a police officer, and threatening to shoot up a bar.

In what may be the best video you see today, a 12-year old Oklahoma boy with cerebral palsy rides an adaptive bike for the first time, thanks to a Tulsa nonprofit.

Now that’s a good kid. A Northern Michigan girl is collecting cans to buy new bikes for less fortunate kids.

After a Columbus, Ohio boy’s bike was stolen from a friend’s porch after the first day of school, bighearted teachers at the school pitched in to buy him a new one.

A New York condo owner says a lawsuit from the building’s board intended to halt a Central Park West bike lane is out of order, because the board violated the building’s by-laws — and possibly state law — in not one, not two, but three distinct ways.

An ebike rider was critically injured in a collision with a 72-year old pedestrian  in New York’s Central Park; the pedestrian, who wasn’t seriously injured, was in a crosswalk, though it was unclear who had the right of way. Three other bike riders were injured within feet of the first crash site, suggesting the problem goes way beyond mere carelessness. Which didn’t stop a local TV station for blaming bike riders for an “alarming rise” in collisions with people on foot. Never mind who’s actually at fault. Thanks to Mike Cane for the tip.

A Lafayette, Louisiana man started a bike kitchen to keep fixable bikes out of landfills, after turning to one in Oakland when he was the victim of a home invasion and mugging.

 

International

Seriously? A Canadian driver insists there are no written rules for what bike riders are supposed to do when bike lanes end before intersections, apparently never having studied the rules of right-of-way. And that bicyclists put drivers in harms way by traumatizing them when we make them kill us.

He gets it. The founder and executive director of a Canadian transportation policy institute says “There is no war on cars. Everybody, including motorists, benefits from a more diverse and efficient transportation system.”

The Brits do have a way with words. An English bike rider calls new barriers blocking the entrance to a pathway a “potentially lethal abomination.”

Norway proposes spending $1 billion on bike highways through the hilly country.

Add this one to your coming bike bucket list. The European Union is helping to fund a 437-mile bike path though “the Amazon of Europe,” connecting Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary and Serbia. Hopefully this one isn’t on fire, unlike its Brazilian counterpart.

As long as we’re in the Balkans, Slovenia is creating the country’s first e-mountain bike bikeshare network in the mountainous Upper Sava Valley. If it’s a pretty as the picture, why the hell aren’t we all there already?

A Taipei, Taiwan paper calls for educating bicyclists, noting that half of all crashes involving bicycles are the riders’ fault. Which means that half of them aren’t. But oddly, they don’t call for re-educating drivers, too.

 

Competitive Cycling

Sad news from Colombia, where a 16-year old junior cyclist was killed when she was hit by a truck driver while riding home from a training ride with six other cyclists.

A Boulder CO paper offers a trio of photos — and a few more photos — of the “iconic mountains and cityscapes” from the recent Colorado Classic, calling it the only standalone women’s pro cycling race in the Western Hemisphere.

Retired Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi received a two-year ban for his role in a doping ring run by a German doctor; Austrian cyclists Stefan Denifl and Georg Preidler both got four-year bans earlier this year for their involvement in the ring. But thank goodness the doping era is over, right?

American mountain bike world champ Kate Courtney looks back at her year in the rainbow jersey.

VeloNews says former elite runner Leigh Ann Ganzar has enjoyed a remarkable rise through the ranks of women’s pro cycling.

 

Finally…

Apparently, mediation is the ebike of the business world. No, you don’t have to lose your driver’s license to get an ebike, but it helps.

And forget Peter Sagan. It takes major skills to whack off while you’re riding.

Not to mention a callus indifference to going blind.

………

Thanks to Denice H for her very generous donation to help defray the Corgi’s vet bills.

Your support is always welcome and appreciated, whether to help maintain this site, pay down massive corgi vet bills, or help get a new one…someday.

 

Morning Links: Taking traffic safety deniers seriously, walking bikes on the Troutdale bridge, and Bruce Lee was one of us

Good to see you back after the long holiday weekend. 

Now grab your coffee and buckle in. We’ve got a lot of territory to cover, and a lot to catch up on.

Today’s photo captures an e-bakfiets used as an expensive marketing gimmick for a perfume pop-up at the Grove, photobombed by a hot and tired corgi.

………

Call it a major misfire on this one.

A Sacramento-based reporter for the LA Times appears to take traffic safety deniers at face value, giving them a platform to complain about gas tax funds being used for active transportation.

Two years after state lawmakers boosted the gas tax with a promise to improve California streets, some cities have raised the ire of drivers by spending millions of the new dollars on “road diet” projects that reduce the number and size of lanes for motor vehicles.

Projects have touched off a debate as taxpayer advocates and motorists complain that the higher gas taxes they are paying for smoother trips will actually fund projects that increase traffic congestion.

Especially if those funds go towards reducing excess road capacity for motor vehicles, which increasing overall capacity by installing bike lanes.

Also known as the dreaded — to them — road diet.

Not to mention knee-jerk opposition from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn, which never met a tax they liked.

Gas tax money can legally go to such projects, but that does not mean it should, said David Wolfe, legislative director for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which opposed the original gas tax increase and supported an unsuccessful statewide ballot measure last year to repeal it.It has since continued to watch and criticize how state and local governments are spending the money.

“When Proposition 6 was on the ballot, all voters heard was money would go to road repair and maintenance,” Wolfe said. “They want roads to be repaired. They don’t want roads to be taken away with their taxpayer dollars.”

Never mind that road diets have been shown to reduce overall crashes by 19% in the Golden State, and as much as 47% elsewhere.

So they’re complaining about using gas tax funds to save their own lives and repair bills.

Smart. Real smart.

Never mind also that $2.27 billion of the gas tax increase went to repair and maintain roads, while $750 million a year was set aside for transit projects.

And a paltry $100 million went to bike and pedestrian projects. Most of which benefit drivers, as well.

But try telling that to angry motorists and traffic safety deniers while they light their torches and sharpen their pitchforks.

“It’s creating gridlock on Venice Boulevard, which is then causing cut-through traffic into our neighborhoods,” said Selena Inouye, board president of the Westside Los Angeles Neighbors Network, a group formed in response to the project…

Inouye, a retired social worker, said having motorists pay higher gas taxes so the money can be used to reduce the capacity of roads is contradictory.

She and her husband are paying more than $4 a gallon for gas at her local service station, she said, a price that has been increased by the state gas tax.

“The money should be used to help with congestion overall, and I don’t think that road diets help congestion. I think they cause congestion,” Inouye said.

Even though no one else seems to be able to find that gridlock they keep complaining about. Or that only 12 cents of that $4-plus for a gallon of gas is due to the gas tax increase.

But those are just facts.

And facts just get in the way when you’re insisting on having yours.

………

Malibu Hills resident Chris Willig forwards his observations on the absurd, and possibly illegal, attempts by LA County to force bike riders to walk over the newly reopened Troutdale bridge.

Mulholland Highway had been closed in Cornell for about 6-months since the Woolsey Fire which caused the Troutdale Bridge to melt. The catastrophe has vexed cyclists. They’ve been forced to use a detour of about 6 miles on Kanan Road to go around the closure.  And that route is plagued by increased traffic particularly 1,000’s of heavy debris laden trucks hauling the remains of burned out houses.

A temporary one-lane bridge opened Wednesday afternoon, but the celebration from the cycling community has been short lived. Cyclists have been banned from the main road bed with LA County officials trying to force people to walk their bikes on a pedestrian sidepath. This strange traffic configuration can been seen in the photo (viewing north from the south bank of Triunfo Creek) with all of the signage required to direct traffic. It seems ridiculous since the crossing is now controlled by a traffic light system to allow only oneway passage at a posted 10 MPH. As cyclists using this route are normally in road shoes, walking the 230 feet required seems dangerous. More importantly, if many cyclists take the detour trudging across the bridge as instructed, it is clear traffic will be interrupted by all the dismounting and remounting in the street, especially at the south terminus (pictured).

The safest and most convenient routing for road cyclists would be using exactly the same rules for auto traffic. Ironically, the only change from pre-fire norm would be we’d have to cut our speed in half to accommodate the cars slowed by the new speed limit.

………

A ghost bike will be installed for fallen Valencia bicyclist Kori Sue Powers tonight.

………

Bruce Lee was one of us.

………

The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps going on.

And this time, the other side is armed.

A Boyle Heights bike rider was shot in the arm in an apparent gang shooting Friday night.

San Diego’s boardwalk turned into a shooting gallery when an emotionally troubled man pulled out a rifle after getting into an argument with a bike rider, shooting at him several times — and missing, thankfully. Then tried to order an Uber to make his escape.

After someone in a passing Mercedes shot an Oakland woman in the ass with a pellet gun as she was riding her bike, she waited on the side of the road for the police to show up. Then gave up and went home, and waited another 12 hours before they finally bothered to stop by to take a report.

An Iowa bike rider was lucky to remain upright when a driver internationally swerved onto the shoulder of the roadway to sideswipe him, as a passenger leaned out the window to scream insults. And he’s got the video and a hole in his glove to prove it.

After someone shot an Arkansas bike rider in the leg, he refused to go to the hospital because he was afraid someone would take his antique bike.

A road raging Florida driver is under arrest for shooting a man riding a bicycle — for the crime of riding in the traffic lane, just like he’s supposed to.

A road raging Aussie man was busted for apparently following a bike rider home after a collision, pulling out a rifle and shooting at the rider’s home. Then leaving and coming back to do it again. And again.

Then again, not all the drivers used guns.

Some used weapons weighing a couple tons or more.

A Winnipeg bike rider watched as a semi driver flattened his bike, running over it in a road rage incident; fortunately, the victim had already gotten off to confront the angry driver.

A road raging Australian driver got mad after following a group of bicyclists, then cut in front and brake-checked them before turning into a driveway.

………

Then again, it’s not like people on bikes are automatic candidates for sainthood.

A Massachusetts man rode up to a convenience store on his bike, robbed it with a meat clever, and rode away again.

New York police are on the lookout for a bike-riding Bronx thief snatching smartphones from women.

You know we’re making progress when even an Irish mob hitman makes his getaway by bike.

And French authorities are searching for a bike-riding man who planted a nail-filled parcel bomb in Lyon, injuring 13 people.

………

Local

No surprise here, as The Eastsider says bridge construction has turned the LA River bike path into an obstacle course.

The LA Times looks at the latest gear and bikes for bikepacking, and examines the utter bliss of bikepacking in the backcountry.

CiclaValley concludes his Best Bike Weekend Ever trilogy with a look back at the recent 626 Golden Streets open streets event.

A Bakersfield man visits LA for the recent Culver City to Venice CicLAvia, and discovers the best part of traveling is the people and animals you meet, while learning that his pug really likes riding a bike.

The LAPD is introducing sand-riding fat tire ebikes and ATVs to Venice Beach in an attempt to stop running over any more people sunbathing on the beach.

Chris Pratt’s six-year old son is one of us, as the actor and fiancé Katherine Schwarzenegger bought him a fat tire bike in Santa Monica.

If you’re a fan of riding a bike without actually going anywhere, head to the Santa Monica pier on Sunday for the annual Pedal on the Pier fundraiser.

Fans of the long-running British soap East Enders will be happy to learn that Patsy Palmer is one of us, as the actress went for a bike ride with her husband in the ‘Bu.

 

State

Three cities in North San Diego County — Encinitas, Solana Beach and Del Mar — will team together for a 500-bike docked e-bikeshare system.

Sad news from Santa Cruz, where a 66-year old man was killed when he was struck by three separate cars while riding his bike on the coast highway.

Great op-ed in the New York Times from a Berkeley man, who considers the “inconvenience” posed by a lifetime of riding bikes as a one-armed black man.

A San Francisco man live-streamed his confrontation with a bike thief who was using a loud power tool to cut a lock and snatch a bike in broad daylight; the thief gave up and walked away after being challenged.

 

National

People for Bikes says inclusiveness is the way to grow the bicycling community.

Your next MIPS helmet could be full of fluid. Or you could wear one that looks like a baseball cap and folds to the size of a water bottle. Meanwhile, Forbes points out the obvious, noting that bike helmets don’t do a lot to protect your face.

Your next fat tire ebike could have three wheels — with two tandem tires in front.

A former Seattle cop and bike rider gets it almost entirely wrong, arguing that motorists automatically have the right-of-way on sharrows. And insisting that road diets and efforts to get more people on bikes are just a leftist plot. Never mind that there’s a pretty good conservative argument for bikes, too.

Great idea. A Seattle program gives bicyclists discounts at over 150 businesses in the city after buying a $5 sticker to put on their helmets.

It takes a major schmuck to steal an adaptive adult tricycle a Phoenix man used as his only form of transportation following a pair of strokes.

The architect behind the proposed Tucson AZ bike ranch across from the entrance to Saguaro National Park explains his plan in the face of local opposition. 

Police have issued an arrest warrant for an Austin TX woman who left the scene after running down a bike rider earlier this year after the victim picked her out of a lineup; apparently thinking she was getting hit on in a singles bar, she gave the victim a fake phone number before driving off. Thanks to Stephen Katz for the heads-up.

Kansas will install a beautiful permanent memorial to honor a fallen bicyclist who was killed in a collision while participating in the annual Trans-Am cross-country bike race last year.

A Kansas teen jumped into swollen flood waters to save the life of a 12-year old boy who was swept away while riding his bicycle.

Five hundred Detroit second graders got new bicycles, thanks to Chevrolet and the NHL’s Red Wings.

A new community garden will honor the victims of the Mardi Gras parade crash in New Orleans, where a drunk driver killed two bike riders and injured seven other people.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole 10-year old autistic Florida boy’s $5,500 adaptive tricycle — and just the opposite for the Good Samaritans who replaced it.

 

International

Mark your calendar for Monday’s World Bicycle Day.

How to be a good citizen of the bike lane.

Bicycling looks back on how bicycles helped defeat the Kaiser and win the war to end all wars. Which sadly didn’t.

A new Canadian study suggests your best protection could be a high-vis vest with a left-pointing arrow to tell drivers to move over to pass. Although that doesn’t replace the need for safe infrastructure.

Canadian advice for anyone thinking about dating a hardcore cyclist. Or maybe it’s a warning.

A Canadian man got his hot bike back after someone bought it for $60, not realizing it was stolen; the original owner used it to traverse the length and breadth of Canada. No, literally.

They get it. A Vancouver paper says “no civic bureaucrat or politician should approve a bike lane they wouldn’t feel safe taking their kids for a ride on themselves.”

A Montreal op-ed explains how bike lanes benefit everyone.

While we were busy observing Memorial Day yesterday, Londoners celebrated their first-ever Bike to Work Day.

London is moving to protect bike riders and pedestrians by dropping the speed limit in the central financial district known as the Square Mile to just 15 mph. Your move, LA Mayor Garcetti.

Participants in an organized English ride complain about routing the ride onto a roadway with speed bumps on a steep descent and no warning signs — with predictable results.

Uber wants Brits to Jump.

After a Glasgow woman is killed riding her bike, a man does some soul searching, wondering whether bicycling is worth the risk. And concluding he may keep riding, but can’t recommend it to a friend.

A couple hundred people turned out for an interfaith bike ride to remember the victims of the Christchurch, New Zealand terrorist attacks, led at the start by one of the victims, who also lost his wife, in his new wheelchair.

I sort of want to be like him when I grow up. A Michigan man gave up his comfy retirement to ride his bike across the US, and in countries around the world. And spent New Years Day riding a fat tire bike on the ice and snow of Antarctica. No offense to our southernmost continent, but I’d prefer a more temperate climate. Which Antartica will probably be in a few years, if we all keep burning fossil fuels.

 

Competitive Cycling

Slovenian cyclist Primoz Roglic considers himself lucky to have lost just 40 seconds to Giro race leader Richard Carapaz, despite Sunday’s debacle when he crashed on a too-small bike borrowed from a teammate, because he just happened to have a mechanical when the team race director was relieving himself.

You, too, can be a hard man or woman, and ride the routes of the cobbled spring classics.

Big mistake. The largest promoter in bike racing is slowly backing away from supporting women’s cycling.

Lance says he did what he had to do to win, and he wouldn’t change a thing. Except, you know, maybe like getting caught and all that.

Cycling Tips talks with the inimitable Peter Sagan.

Cycling Weekly remembers the legendary Fausto Coppi, calling him a cycling icon like no other.

And seriously, don’t try to snatch a pro cyclist’s water bottle out of his face, no matter how much you want a souvenir.

 

Finally…

Probably not the best idea to ride a stolen bike to the courthouse to be sentenced for stealing another bike. The next driver to run you off the road might do it from above.

And we may have to worry about LA drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about bears.

Or, uh…Bigfoot.

Morning Links: Hope for LACBC, Paul Smith ghost bike removed already, and study on the dangers of e-scooters

One quick note before we get started.

Last Friday, I had a very pleasant talk with Communications Director Dana Variano and new Executive Director Eli Akira Kaufman of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, aka LACBC.

I won’t go into details, since everything we discussed was off the record. But we had a very frank and open discussion about the state of bicycling in general, and the state of the LACBC in general.

Suffice it to say that Kaufman recognizes that he’s got a steep learning curve to get a firm grasp on LA bike culture and street safety.

And he’s well aware of the problems facing the LACBC after drifting far too long without effective leadership.

But he’s committed to listening and improving communications, which has been a major problem as long as I’ve been involved with the coalition, as a member and former board member.

And to making the hard decisions the LACBC will need to return to being an effective voice for LA bicyclists.

I left the meeting feeling like the LACBC is in good hands.

And with a little hope for the first time in a long time.

………

Disappointing news from Seal Beach, where Eric Dalton reports the ghost bike for Paul Smith has already been removed, less than three weeks after he was killed.

The popular church leader was riding on PCH at Seal Beach Blvd when he was run down from behind by an allegedly speeding driver.

At this point, there’s no word on who removed the ghost bike, or why.

But it’s heartbreaking that someone apparently didn’t think he was worth remembering for even a month.

Let alone reminding drivers of the dangers of SoCal’s killer highway.

………

A new UCLA study shows e-scooters pose pretty much the same risks you might think.

Of the nearly 250 people treated by UCLA medical centers in Westwood and Santa Monica as a result of scooter injuries, the overwhelming majority of injuries were suffered by the people riding them — not pedestrians struck by them, as we are so often led to believe.

“In this study of a case series, 249 patients presented to the emergency department with injuries associated with electric scooter use during a 1-year period, with 10.8% of patients younger than 18 years,” says the January 25 paper by Tarak K. Trivedi, Charles Liu, and Anna Liza M. Antonio.

“The most common injuries were fractures (31.7%), head injuries (40.2%), and soft-tissue injuries (27.7%).”

“Only 10 riders were documented as wearing a helmet, constituting 4.4% of all riders,” the report notes. “Twelve patients (4.8%) had physician-documented intoxication or a blood alcohol level greater than 0.05%

Of course, there’s no word on the severity of the head injuries, which could have been anything from simple cuts to concussions, skull fractures or cranial bleeding.

And no way to know whether helmets could have prevented them.

Then there’s this from Forbes.

Not all of the injured patients had been riding scooters. Eleven had been hit by scooters, and five had tried to lift scooters. Another five had simply tripped over parked scooters, which is what can happen when there are Bird or Lime droppings on the sidewalk.

In other words, despite the panicked response to this study in the media, over 90% of the injuries were to the people riding them. So just like with bicyclists, even the most careless riders are a danger primarily to themselves.

Just wait until the study authors discover how many people get hurt by cars every day.

Which is not to say everyone shouldn’t ride safely, so they don’t pose a risk to themselves or anyone else.

And for chrissakes, don’t leave your damn scooter on the sidewalk, or anywhere else it can pose a danger to anyone.

Especially people with handicaps.

Thanks to David Drexler for the heads up.

………

NHL All-Stars Marc-Andre Fleury and Kris Letang apparently didn’t get the memo that scooters are dangerous, arriving at the game on a pair of Lime e-scooters.

………

Howard Valai forwards video of what it looks like when an LA Metro bus passes about a foot off your handlebar.

If anyone had opened the door on any of those cars, he could have seriously injured. Or worse.

………

Life is cheap when you ride a bicycle.

A Colorado truck driver gets an all-too-brief 90 days behind bars, and 120 days work release, for running down a 17-year old boy from behind as he rode in a bike lane, then fleeing the scene and leaving his victim seriously injured in the street.

A speeding hit-and-run Maryland driver got just 18 months behind bars for running a red light and killing a Smithsonian IT specialist who was riding his bike to work last September.

A teenage driver walked with community service for killing a bike rider in the UK by trying to pass on a narrow country road at 60 mph — which the driver’s lawyer wrote off as a simple misjudgment. One that cost an innocent man his life.

But sometimes justice gets done.

Like the Florida driver who got over 13 years behind bars for the drunken, high-speed crash that killed a man on a bicycle.

Or the Japanese man who got a well-deserved 18 years for the road rage death of a motorbike rider, intentionally slamming into him after briefly chasing his bike. Thanks to Norm Bradwell for the link.

………

I don’t even know what to make of this one.

In a video posted to an anti-bike group, an Aussie driver drove down a bike path to swear at a couple of cyclists for riding in the roadway instead of on the parallel path.

No, seriously.

Needless to say, opinions on the auto-centric site ran in favor of the foulmouthed driver, with one poster calling for him to be named Australian of the year.

………

If you haven’t already, mark your calendar for International Winter Bike to Work Day on February 8th. We should be able to show a good turnout here in Southern California, where Viking Biking means you might have to put fenders on your bike.

UCLA will host a panel discussion on Transportation as a Public Health Issue this Wednesday, with Dr. Muntu Davis of the LA County Department of Public Health, Juan Matute of UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, and LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds.

The LACBC will hold a historic tour of San Fernando and Pacoima Sunday morning as part of their monthly Sunday Funday rides, which promises to get you home in time for the Super Bowl.

………

Local

Cycling scion and three-time national time trial champ Taylor Phinney takes his new team on a tour of the City of Angels and prove he knows it well, including stops at Bicycle Coffee and Golden Saddle Cyclery.

The editor of USC’s Daily Trojan takes a very auto-centric view of Metro’s proposed congestion pricing, saying transportation will always be a citywide struggle. Meanwhile, that Metro proposal also includes possible ride-hailing fees on Uber and Lyft, and shared-mobility fees on dockless bikeshare and e-scooters.

South Pasadena has accepted $332,000 from Metro to pay for the upcoming 626 Golden Streets open streets event through South Pas, Alhambra and San Gabriel this May.

A Santa Clarita letter writer says please leave your bikeshare bikes in the racks where you’re supposed to, rather than abandon them anywhere.

Long Beach police are looking for a serial groper on a distinctive lime green bicycle who’s attacked four women in separate assaults.

Former pro cyclist and current Long Beach Bike Ambassador Tony Cruz had his bicycle stolen last week; be on the lookout for an $8,000 Felt FR1 carbon bike with Sram e-Tap shifters and $1,300 Mavic Carbon Cosmics wheels.

State

State workers can now get reimbursed for their dockless ebike and scooter rides.

Some things never change. Nice to see the OC Register is still giving voice to ridiculously conservative anti-transit op-eds, despite layoffs and ownership changes, and a Congressional map that’s turned solid blue. The paper also says drivers probably don’t know what a sharrow is, which is probably true.

Bike advocate Roberta Walker has begun a rehab program after suffering extensive brain and spinal injuries when she was run down by a driver on PCH in Leucadia last month, while Encinitas has begun rehabbing the roadway to keep it from happening to someone else. A crowdfunding page has raised over $97,000 of the $125,000 goal to help pay her hospital and rehabilitation expenses.

Camarillo police are looking for a man in his 20s who assaulted a woman who was walking on a bike path; fortunately, she was able to fight them off.

An Oakland woman has been charged in the hit-and-run crash that critically injured a 14-year old boy, who was dragged three blocks under her car after she hit his bike; she was already on probation for a DUI conviction last fall.

As we mentioned last week, Marin transportation officials want to cut the four-year pilot program for a bike and pedestrian lane on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to just six months, so they can declare it a failure and turn it back over to people in cars.

There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole 24 bikes from a bicycling club at a Modesto elementary school. And just the opposite for a kindhearted people who replaced 20 of them.

The CHP does more than catch speeders on the freeway. A Redding mountain biker was airlifted to a hospital after apparently breaking his leg in a fall.

National

Great. The plague of LA-based traffic safety deniers has gone national, forming the new agitprop group Keep the US Moving to spread their virtually fact-free campaign to keep our streets deadly and halt all road diets, anywhere. Thanks to Peter Flax for the tip.

Okay, now I’m impressed. Idris Elba is one of us, going for a casual bike ride with his fiancé in Hawaii.

The route has been announced for this year’s 450-mile Ride the Rockies, featuring 28,000 feet of elevation gain through the Colorado high country.

A Minnesota singer found the inspiration for her debut album in the hum of her bike chain.

She gets it. A columnist for the New York Post says drivers are getting away with murder.

New York is still trying to figure out how to deal with ebikes and scooters.

Big Apple Mayor Bill de Blasio says the city doesn’t have the resources to go after drivers who block bike lanes. Which is odd, since most of them seem to be NYPD cops.

Mississippi bicyclists ride 6.6 miles in honor of fallen cyclists.

International

Drivers and doors aren’t the only things we have to worry about. A Vancouver bicyclist was killed when he somehow collided with the friend he was riding with, and fell into the path of a truck.

Canada has cancelled plans for a $65.9 million bike path paralleling a scenic highway through the Rocky Mountains due to environmental concerns and high costs. But all those cars spewing smog are just fine, thank you.

Calgary’s new e-assist bikeshare is a huge hit, even in the winter cold and snow.

The UK could save the equivalent of over $420 million if bicycling could be made as popular in the rest of the country as it is in London.

Well deserved. A British triathlete was fined the equivalent of more than $1200 for aggressively passing a horse and rider on the curb side, colliding with them as causing the horse to bolt, injuring the rider.

The German ambassador to Pakistan went out of his way to find a locally made bike, because he wanted that Made in Pakistan stamp to show his support for the country’s people.

A bighearted South African boy broke open his own piggy bank to buy a new bicycle for a gas station attendant he befriended.

Sad news from New Zealand, where a 32-year old elite cyclist is dying of intestinal cancer, saying she should have pushed harder for a diagnosis after suffering from years of stomach pain.

A Singaporean news channel examines why the island city has yet to become a bicycling paradise, pointing a finger at the heat and rain, and a lack of safe space on the road.

Competitive Cycling

Long Beach will host this year’s Paratriathlon National Championships in June.

Cycling Tips looks at how a little known cyclist from Cuba beat the world’s best women’s riders in the Cadel Road Race.

Road.cc offers advice on how to step up from riding sportives to your first actual bike race.

The LA Times says Zwift’s new esports league is just like pro cycling, but without the turns or crashes, and with actual pro cycling teams.

Finally…

You may not have to worry about drivers on a bike path, but keep your eyes peeled for pigs. How to build a bicycle sidecar out of an empty beer keg; make it a full keg, and you’ve got a deal.

And nothing sells Danish beer like a good bike ride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vh_ipdt2y4

Morning Links: Trinh ghost bike ceremony, Lance settles with the feds, and the golden age of cycling this ain’t

My apologies again for yesterday’s unexcused absence. 

Let it serve as yet another reminder that on a scale of one to ten, diabetes sucks. If you’re at risk, do everything you can to avoid getting it — ride your bike, stay active, lose weight, eat better. 

Whatever it takes. Because you don’t want this crap. 

Trust me.

………

Let’s start with Wednesday’s ghost bike ceremony for Lenny Trinh, the Burbank postal worker and father killed in a dooring on Monday.

Steve S sent moving photos from the installation ceremony, which appeared to draw over 100 people.

Meanwhile. CiclaValley agonizes over the recent rash of bicycling deaths as he helped organize the ghost bike ceremony for Trinh. 

………

In today’s most surprising news, Lance Armstrong has settled the $100 fraud lawsuit against him for a relatively paltry $5 million.

A quarter of that could go to former teammate and fellow doper Floyd Landis, with the balance going to the federal government.

Meanwhile, Business Insider catches up with where the members of Lance Armstrong’s US Postal Team are now, most of whom have also admitted to doping.

Although Landis appears to be the only one who went from doping while pedaling to pedaling dope.

………

Bike Snob asks if this is the golden age of cycling, before concluding probably not. For reasons that should be obvious.

On the other hand, you’ve got the cars. Some call them “freedom machines,” others call them destroyers of cities and harbingers of impending environmental apocalypse. But no matter how you feel about the automobile, there’s no getting around the fact that cars and bikes have an intensely symbiotic yet ultimately disastrous relationship. They’re like George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or that couple at the party who are always one more cocktail away from either hurling crockery at each other or having hate sex on the dining room table, and you never know which until it happens.

………

Local

In addition to the $91 million in Vision Zero funding announced earlier this week, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s new budget for the City of Los Angeles includes increased funding for street safety, repairing LA’s crumbling streets, and fixing broken sidewalks.

Curbed examines the rash of hit-and-runs in South LA.

Retired UCLA parking meister Donald Shoup has a new book. ‘Nuff said.

KCRW wants to know what it’s like for you to ride a bike in Los Angeles. Go ahead, don’t hold back.

Speaking of KCRW, the station’s Madeleine Brand talks hit-and-run with with Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman in a short seven-minute segment.

If you’re headed to Sunday’s Heart of the Foothills CicLAvia, MetroLink is offering additional bike cars, while Metro is providing free bus and train service for Earth Day.

A columnist for the Daily Bulletin attempts to learn how to ride a bike to before Sunday’s CicLAvia. And fails.

 

State

Sunset ranks the top ten bicycling towns in the west, with Davis coming in fourth and San Francisco tenth; not surprisingly, Portland took the top spot. Needless to say, Los Angeles was not on the list.

Not only did the driver who killed Grossmont College professor Brian Jennings as he rode near El Cajon in East San Diego County tell police she fell asleep at the wheel, she also had four children under the age of ten in her minivan at the time of the crash.

Two bicyclists suffered minor injuries when they apparently were collateral damage in a crash between two cars in Thousand Palms; the wreck occurred on the same road where Mark Kristofferson was killed by an alleged speeding DUI driver during the Tour of Palm Springs. Thanks to Victor Bale for the heads-up.

Bakersfield is in the process of adopting new wider standards for bike lanes, though they won’t apply to existing lanes.

An 18-year old Los Osos woman has been sentenced to seven years behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run death of a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student as he was riding to class last year.

San Francisco is extending the carfree pilot program for the Twin Peaks road by another two years.

Sad news from Shasta County, where a bicyclist was killed in a head-on crash with a motorcycle rider; the victim was a grad student at UC Davis.

Chico is experimenting with a pilot bike lane project for the next few weeks, using electrical tape to mark off buffered bike lanes instead of paint.

 

National

Bicycling says it has the facts on concussions and what to do if you think you have one. But in talking about helmets, they fail to mention that only MIPS helmets are designed to prevent concussions, and cite the long-discredited study claiming bike helmets reduce the risk of injury by 85%.

Great news, as The Inertia website says cycling only ranks fifth on the list of sports most likely to kill you, behind things like BASE jumping and extreme skiing.

The Wall Street Journal discovers the nationwide bikelash, with motorists fighting for their convenience over everyone’s safety. As Treehugger’s Lloyd Alper put it, anywhere there’s a bike lane, it seems there’s a backlash.

Arizona becomes the ninth state to follow California’s lead in passing regulations for ebikes.

Colorado’s legislature passed a bill allowing local jurisdictions to decide whether to allow bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields and red lights as stop signs, aka the Idaho Stop.

Houston’s mayor continues his efforts to make the auto-centric city safer and friendlier for people on bikes, committing another $10 million to the effort. Anyone who’s spent any time in the Texas city can attest that if they can do it, so can Los Angeles.

An Ohio man has gotten the death sentence for abducting and killing a 20-year old woman as she was riding her bike last year; he had committed an almost identical crime nearly 30 years earlier.

A bicyclist was killed by a hit-and-run driver at New York’s La Guardia Airport back in February. So naturally, they respond by restricting bikes, not cars.

A Charlotte SC writer concludes that dockless bikeshare bikes don’t suck after all.

A New Orleans man faces up to 10 years behind bars after being convicted of the hit-and-run death of a 65-year old bike rider.

A new report says Florida’s 1984 Complete Streets law saved as many as 4,000 lives over a 30-year period, even though the state remains one of the most dangerous for bicyclists and pedestrians. And it didn’t end auto-centric design.

 

International

The UN’s Share the Road program released their 2017 Annual Report. Although it would help if the link actually worked.

If you’ve questioned whether World Bicycle Relief is worth supporting, consider that they gave out nearly 55,000 bicycles to change lives in nine nations.

Bike Radar considers the all-time worst bike tech.

If the price of that new bike seems too good to be true, it probably is.

A Vancouver bike nonprofit says riding a bike to work may be the key to happiness.

A new study says swapping cars for European bikeshares could save 73 lives a year.

The UK’s largest grocery chain is now experimenting with delivery by e-cargo bike.

If you build it, they will come. Aukland, New Zealand experiences its busiest bike month ever, with 430,000 trips taken on the city’s bikeways.

A Kiwi columnist says people who stir up road rage against bicyclists are dangerous. Someone please tell that to KFI’s John and Ken.

An Australian professor says forcing bicyclists to register to prevent bad behavior would cause more problems than it would solve.

A Korean physician says the dangers of bicycling under the influence is underestimated, but has no figures to back that up.

 

Competitive Cycling

Swiss businessman and BMC cycling team owner Andy Rhis passed away Wednesday at age 75; he was also behind the Phonak team that disbanded after team member Floyd Landis was stripped of his Tour de France title.

Austrian cyclist Marco Haller will miss this year’s Tour de France after suffering multiple fractures in his left knee when he was struck by a driver who ran a stop sign, while on a training ride.

More bad news, as New Zealand cyclist Alexander Ray faces facial reconstruction surgery after he was left crossed by driver, leaving him fighting for his life.

A 25-year old Belgian cyclist died in his sleep, the second rider from that country to die under questionable circumstances, after Michael Goolaerts died of a heart attack during the Paris-Roubaix classic.

Heartbreaking news, as a 21-year old Palestinian cyclist lost his leg to an Israeli bullet after joining what he thought would be a peaceful rally in Gaza, ending his hopes of competing in the Asian Games.

Perhaps overstating the obvious, world champ and Paris-Roubaix winner Peter Sagan says being the pope is much harder than being a cyclist. Although you do get to wear more interesting hats.

 

Finally…

A new study from the University of Duh shows bike crashes happen for exactly the reasons we already thought. We may have to deal with angry drivers, but at least we don’t have to worry about road raging elephants. Or bison, for that matter.

And get those applications in; you have just five more days to become the bicycle mayor of Bengaluru.