There is no information on how the crash occurred.
Video from the scene shows two cars, one with a shattered windshield and apparently missing a wheel; a broken white road bike lies in the center of the street some distance up the road.
Update 2: AIDS/LifeCycle has identified the victim as Andrew Jelmert, a five-time participant in the annual fundraising ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
April 12, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Utah crash victims identified as Whittier brothers, San Diego bikeway fail, and Santa Ana Karen assaults bike-riding boy
Sadly, our worst fears have been realized.
On Saturday, two men identified only as brothers from California were killed when they were run down from behind by a repeat DUI driver near St. George, Utah, who claimed to be on fentanyl from being hospitalized the day before.
And told police she lost control of her car after losing control of her bowels as she was driving.
He also reports a pair of teens in cycling gear were standing by their bodies, screaming about their dads.
Read into that what you will. But it fits with rumors that the Bullard’s teenage sons were among the first riders to come upon the scene shortly after the crash.
Adam’s last post is particularly heartbreaking in retrospect.
Their accused killer, 47-year old Julie Budge, faces twin counts of vehicular homicide, DUI and hit-and-run, as well as single counts of reckless driving and failure to stay in her lane.
She continues to be held without bail, no doubt to the relief of everyone else on the roads.
Budge was previously convicted of DUI seven years ago.
Like Los Angeles before it, San Diego has learned the hard way that traffic safety projects are doomed to fail if they’re not rolled out carefully.
In LA’s case, it was the failed installation of road diets and bike lanes in Playa del Rey, which were unceremoniously ripped out at the mayor’s orders when angry drivers got out their torches and pitchforks, after getting no advance notice the changes were coming.
Hey Long Beach! LA County will be performing maintenance of the LA River Trail between Ocean Blvd and Artesia Blvd starting today 4/4/2022 and expected to end Monday, 4/18/2022. Be advised you may need to take alternative routes due to potential closures during this time. pic.twitter.com/0OSXPwTjLh
No bias here. An Idaho letter writer complains about “arrogant” bike riders who hog the road by riding side-by-side, forcing drivers to — gasp! — actually slow down until it’s safe to pass. And he must know what he’s talking about, since his family owns two bikes.
The Kansas woman who pled guilty last month to running over and shooting a bike-riding because he smiled and gestured towards her has changed her mind, and now insists she didn’t do it; she’s asking the judge to allow her to change her plea.
New York City will shut down over 100 streets to celebrate Earth Day later this month. Meanwhile, Los Angeles officials will undoubtedly mark the day by making a few pronouncements about how important it is to save the earth, while doing absolutely nothing about it.
First, thanks for all the kind words and well wishes following my surgery. Things seem to have gone well and are progressing nicely; I have nearly full use of my left hand again, which is more than I could say before the operation.
We have a lot to catch up on. I’ll get through as much as I can today, and try to finish up over the next few days. Including the failed rollout of an innovative San Diego street design.
And my sincere thanks to everyone who sent in tips while I was out, especially for the story below. There’s just too many people to thank everyone individually this time, let alone keep track of.
But I’m truly grateful for all your help.
Fractured bike helmet photo by WikimediaImages from Pixabay.
The victims were found unresponsive, and died later at a local hospital.
There’s no information on their names, or where they’re from in California. However, rumors are circulating that at least one was a popular rider from the Los Angeles area.
Let’s pray it isn’t true.
Forty-seven-year old Julie Ann Budge faces two counts of negligent vehicular homicide, as well as double hit-and-run and DUI charges for the two needless deaths. Hopefully they hosed her down before booking her.
Manuel Aboyte was last seen stopping for lottery tickets at a Circle K gas station in North Long Beach on March 30th.
The 74-year old resident of Sinaloa de Leyva was in the city visiting his sister, who was suffering from illness, and was hospitalized just before he disappeared.
Costa Mesa wants a minute of your time — no, literally — to introduce a new bollard-protected bike lane, as they work to install “high-quality bicycling facilities” throughout the city.
Although as we’ve seen in Los Angeles, a bike lane isn’t really protected if the bollards are spaced widely enough for drivers to park in it.
………
This seems like a good time for a reminder that yellow traffic signs are advisory, and don’t carry the force of law.
Although you’ll definitely get blamed if something goes wrong after you ignore one.
A broadcaster for NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team is one of us, after suffering “significant injuries” in a bicycling crash. However, it’s not clear if he was struck by a motorist or fell off his bike.
Colorado’s state legislature has approved a true Idaho Stop Law, allowing riders to treat stop signs as yields and red lights as stop signs; the bill is now on the governor’s desk awaiting his signature. Hopefully it won’t suffer the same fate as California’s attempt to allow bicyclists to treat stop signs like yields, which was vetoed by Governor Newsom last year.
A British Columbia man is fighting back after the provincial driver’s insurance agency billed him $3,700 for damage to the Mercedes-Benz that ran him down as he pedaled through an intersection, somehow concluding he was 50% at fault for the crash — even though the driver ran the stop sign.
This is who we share the road with. In yet another example of authorities keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a 22-year old British man will spend 30 years behind bars for using a stolen car as a weapon to run down another man outside a pub, dragging him under his car; he was accused of using a vehicle as a weapon twice before, yet somehow kept driving until he killed someone.
Former German great Jan Ulrich raised the equivalent of over $43,700 for children in Ukraine by auctioning his custom yellow Pinarello from the 1998 Tour de France; the never-used bike was created for him to ride into Paris for what would have been his second consecutive Tour win, until he was upset by Marco Pantani.
March 25, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Hit-and-run driver busted in death of 15-year old Riverside boy, and Metro active transportation virtual meeting next week
Maybe there will be justice for Javier Gonzales after all.
SoCal’s killer highway continues to claim new victims.
I’m told the victim works at the Getty Villa, which leaves no viable option to commute by bike other than PCH, which continues to operate as a cut-through highway when it should be Malibu’s Main Street.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
In a prime example of too little, if not too late, Las Vegas area cops clamped down on drivers who endanger bike riders, enforcing traffic laws and educating motorists on how to share the road — for a whole four hours. Now they just need to do something the other 8,756 hours in the year.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Police busted a man who robbed a Kansas gas station, then made his getaway by bicycle. Maybe he was really just an anti-car freedom fighter raising funds for the rebellion. It could happen.
………
Local
No bias here. The Hancock Park Homeowners Association hosted a candidate forum for the people running to replace Paul Koretz in CD5 — but notably excluded former Mid City West Neighborhood Council chair Scott Epstein, a longtime supporter of a bike-friendly street on 4th Street opposed by the wealthy neighborhood.
Black and brown Colorado bike riders say the state’s proposed Stop As Yield law, aka the stop sign part of the Idaho Stop Law, would keep them safer from both cars and cops, reducing the risk of Biking While Black or Brown stops that target people of color, as well as reducing potentially dangerous interactions with police. Maybe that argument that would finally get a California bill past Newsom’s veto pen.
A Florida man was convicted — again — of killing a teenaged boy over a stolen bicycle when he was just 15 years old. The victim had purchased the boy’s stolen bicycle, not knowing it was hot, then offered to sell it back to him for just $10; he returned with a gun after riding the bike home because he felt disrespected. The original conviction had been overturned because police had questioned him after he requested a lawyer. We’ve said it before — no bike is worth taking or sacrificing a life. Period.
Life is cheap in Jersey, where a 67-year old driver walked with the equivalent of a $6,500 fine for the right-cross crash — the equivalent of a left-cross in the US — that likely left a bike-riding woman with lifelong pain from a broken back, fractured rib and collapsed lung.
Another day, another bike rider murdered by a hit-and-run driver.
According to My News LA, El Monte police are searching for a driver who didn’t have the basic human decency to stick around after running down a man riding a bicycle.
The victim, identified as 59-year old El Monte resident Ruben Vicario, was struck at Lower Azusa Road and El Monte Ave around 9 pm Tuesday.
He died at the scene.
The suspect vehicle was described as a red or burgundy 2019-2021 Toyota sedan; no description was given for the driver.
There’s no word on how the collision occurred.
Anyone with information is urged to call the El Monte Police Department at 626/580-2100.
This is at least the 25th bicycling fatality in Southern California already this year, and the eighth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
Ten of those SoCal deaths have been hit-and-runs, including the last four in a row.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Ruben Vicario and his loved ones.
March 22, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Bike-riding man left to die by hit-and-run driver in Cypress Park; 9th fatal SoCal bicycling hit-and-run this year
Yet another bike rider has been murdered by a hit-and-run driver.
According to the LAPD, the victim was riding east on San Fernando Road near Pepper Street when he was rear-ended by an unknown driver around 7:15 pm.
The victim was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was described only as a man in his 50s or older, which suggests that he has still not been identified three days after his death.
Police investigators have been unable to find any witnesses to the crash, but are attempting to identify the suspect vehicle from debris left at the scene.
The crash occurred somewhere near the park. It happened just minutes after sunset, so victim should have still been visible, with or without lights.
Anyone with information is urged to contact LAPD Detective Berdin at 213/833-3713 or email 31958@lapd.online.
This is at least the 24th bicycling fatality in Southern California already this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County. It’s also the fourth that has been publicly reported in the City of Los Angeles.
Nine of those SoCal deaths have been hit-and-runs.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
Thanks to Streetsblog’s Joe Linton for the heads-up.
March 17, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Driver leaves bike-riding woman to die alone in violent Riverside crash; 8th fatal SoCal bicycling hit-and-run this year
It never stops.
Yet another Southern California bike rider has been murdered by a hit-and-run driver.
According to LA’s FOX-11, Riverside police found a woman lying dead on the side of the roadway early Wednesday morning, her bike and belongings strewn for a full block behind her.
The officers discovered the victim, who has not been publicly identified, while responding to a call at Orange and Center streets in Riverside a few minutes before 2 am.
There was no sign of the driver, and no description of the suspect vehicle. It’s not clear if she was riding or walking the bike at the time of the crash.
The lengthy debris field suggests she was either struck at high speed, or she and her bike were dragged under the vehicle for at least a block.
There’s no way of knowing at this time how long she had been there, or if she could have survived if the driver had stopped and called for help, as both the law and basic human decency requires.
When and if the driver is found, they’ll face a maximum of just four years for felony hit-and-run resulting in death under California’s overly lenient hit-and-run statute.
The advantage of a rebate, rather than suspending the state gas tax, is that it won’t affect critical funding for road repair and improvements, according to Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.
However, a rebate targeting only people who own motor vehicles will miss everyone who choses not to contribute to the problem, by riding transit, riding a bike or walking. Even though everyone pays higher gas prices in the form of climbing prices for food, and everything else that’s transported by truck.
As he suggests, it would be interesting to see just what people actually choose. And getting people out of their cars would reduce some of the demand forcing prices up.
Although I want to see who people blame for high gas prices when oil companies start reporting record profits in a few months.
Meanwhile, blame once again falls on LA’s failed leadership, or the lack thereof.
Los Angeles has had a full decade to build out the city’s bike and mobility plans, which should have been 40% complete by now if city leaders plan on meeting their self-imposed deadline of 2035.
Instead, both plans are gathering dust in some dark corner of the city servers, instead of providing the safe, convenient alternatives to driving that Angelenos were promised a decade ago.
So if you or your loved ones feel like you don’t have any practical alternative to driving, despite the rising prices, you know who to thank.
Evidently trees are out to get us, too, with today’s photo of fallen tree limbs attacking the Metro Bike dock at Runyon Canyon. And a dog, too.
………
Maybe Octavio Mendoza will see justice, after all.
It’s not yet clear whether this was a random case of road rage, or if the men knew one another.
………
Apparently, if Obama hadn’t worn a bike helmet, Ukraine might not be under attack today.
BoingBoing looks back to the good old days of 2014, when Fox News blamed the then-president for Putin’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas by insisting his bike helmet made him look weak.
No, really.
………
For some reason, I still can’t embed tweets on here, so we’ll have to settle for a few semi-decent descriptions.
Really disappointing that we can’t embed this one, since it features a really cool short video of a 1956 handcycle, with the hand crank awkwardly mounted on the crossbar of a standard bicycle frame.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Mountain View police are looking for a suspect who slapped a pair of women on the butt as he rode past them on his bike, while making suggestive comments. And for anyone unclear on the concept, that’s not flirting, it’s not a prank, and it’s definitely not funny. It’s sexual assault. Period.
Someone stole a teenage boy’s ebike in a strong-arm robbery on a La Jolla bike path, shoving the victim off his bike and taking off with it; police are looking for multiple high school-aged kids, including the primary suspect who rode off on the victim’s bike wearing a full motorcycle helmet and moto goggles.
Wiredtalks with the woman who was behind the wheel, but allegedly watching videos on her phone, when a self-driving car prototype killed a bike-riding woman in Tempe, Arizona four years ago.
Cambridge, Massachusetts will intentionally miss a deadline to build out quick-build separated bike lanes by May 1st, saying they need more time to engage local stakeholders. Evidently, they don’t understand the concept of “quick-build.” And somehow couldn’t manage to engage those stakeholders in the six years since a bike rider was killed there.
In an all-too familiar story, the Colorado Classic women’s stage race is on life support, unless a sponsor steps up with $3 million to keep the race alive; otherwise, it will follow the late, lamented Tour of California, Tour of Utah, and the USA Pro Challenge into the “ever-growing graveyard of American pro cycling races.”
March 5, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Fullerton man riding DIY ebike killed in possible hit-and-run; 5th Southern California bike death this week
Please make it stop.
After a terrible start to the year — and one of the worst weeks in memory — yet another bike rider has lost his life on the mean streets of Southern California.
Borstens was discovered suffering from serious injuries, next to a mountain bike that had been converted to an ebike.
He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police are investigating the crash as a possible hit-and-run, but acknowledge it’s possible that Borstens may have fallen off his bike for some reason.
Officers stressed that Borstens’ bike had been modified to add an electric engine, rather than manufactured as an ebike. There are any number of conversion kits on the market that can turn any bike into an ebike.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Fullerton Police Department at 714/738-6812.
This is at least the 23rd bicycling fatality in Southern California already this year, and the sixth that I’m aware of in Orange County. It’s also the fifth SoCal bicycling death in just the last week.
If this turns out to have been a hit-and-run, it would be the eight fatal bike hit-and-run since the first of the year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Ivars Borsteins and all his lived ones.
Security cam video acquired by KCBS2/KCAL9 shows Gonzales was riding against traffic with three other boys when he was struck by the driver of a speeding pickup, who kept going without slowing down.
His friends immediately dropped their bikes and chased after the driver, but weren’t able to catch him or get the license plate.
Police are looking for a black or dark-colored full size pickup. Anyone with information is urged to call Riverside Police Department Traffic Detective Jeff Derouin at 951/826-8722, or email Jderouin@riversideca.gov.
They note that this is the fifth fatal crash in the city in just six days. But the other drivers at least had the basic human decency to remain at the scene.
Ironically, the driver would have been unlikely to face charges in this case if he or she had simply stopped after the crash. Now they face up to four years behind bars for felony hit-and-run.
This is at least the 22nd bicycling fatality in Southern California already this year, and the fifth that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
