October 30, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 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.
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.
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.
Bike Magreviews 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.
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.
I’m told the victim may be a homeless man who lives in the area.
Police suspect the hit-and-run driver may live in the neighborhood; they’re looking for a late model red Mini Cooper with a white roof and sunroof, with probable damage to the front-end and windshield.
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD Detective Juan Campos at 213/833-3713. As always, there is a standing $25,000 reward for any hit-and-run resulting in serious injury to the victim.
Let’s find the jerk.
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A surprising number of chefs in the Los Angeles area ride bikes.
This is a tragic reminder that while bicycling provides exceptional cardio-pulmonary benefits, it can also trigger underlying medical conditions.
It’s vital to see your doctor on a regular basis to make sure you’re up to the stresses you put on your body, especially those of us who like to ride hard.
It’s natural to think you’re bulletproof and avoid seeing a physician when you’re strong on a bike.
It’s also a mistake.
For nearly two decades after I started riding, the only time I saw a doctor was in the ER when they were patching me up after my latest two-wheeled wipeout.
If I had, it’s possible someone may have caught my diabetes before it did so much damage.
If you see a doctor regularly, good for you. Just push him or her to look a little harder and make sure everything’s okay under that muscular physique.
Well, muscular from the waist down, anyway.
If you don’t, what the hell are you waiting for? Stop reading, pick up the phone and make an appointment.
Studies have shown that business owners consistently overestimate the percentage of their business that comes from motorists, and underestimate how much comes from bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users — let alone how much more would if customers had more complete, livable streets.
Those same studies show that bike lanes are good for business, increasing sales, reducing vacancy rates and increasing property values in the surrounding area.
But who would want that?
As for the climate, we have to start somewhere.
And the best place to start is reducing the number of motor vehicles on the streets. Which means creating walkable, bikeable, transit-rich communities so people don’t have to drive.
If that also benefits businesses and residents, everyone wins.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes is all too real.
A Victorville man faces charges for pistol whipping a 16-year old boy with a semi-automatic handgun for the crime of simply riding a bicycle in the area. Apparently he did it with the gun loaded and the safety off — and it went off while he was beating the boy with it. Let’s hope they find a very deep pit to drop him in.
This is why people keep dying on our streets. A Berkeley woman walks without a single day behind bars after she left crossed a 69-year old man on a bike, dragging him under her car for several seconds, then got out, yanked his bike out from underneath her car, and drove off as the victim and a witness tried to stop her. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
New York’s senior senator, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, calls for a plan to replace all gas-powered motor vehicles with electric ones by 2040. Great idea, except that until the US achieves 100% renewable power, it just exchanges one form of carbon-burning power for another, and doesn’t take a single car or truck off the road.
New York City considers adopting a three-foot passing law to pre-empt the state’s requirement for a safe passing distance. But will only fine drivers a lousy fifty bucks for breaking it.
The DC City Council responds to bike and pedestrian deaths with proposals to lower speed limits, ban right turns on red lights and allow private citizens to ticket drivers blocking crosswalks and bike lanes, as well as require protected bike lanes anytime a street in the bike plan gets overhauled. Maybe we could get them to come teach their LA peers what to do to make Vision Zero work.
Tampa FL police say they’re getting a handle on the problem of biking while black, saying they’re stopping and ticketing fewer African American bike riders, though black riders are still more likely to get a ticket or warning than a white person.
This is who we share the roads with. Five people are dead and nine injured after a Shanghai driver went on a hit-and-run rampage, starting by hitting a taxi and an ebike rider, followed by crashing into an SUV after running a red light, and wrapping it all up by slamming into three non-motorized vehicles and several pedestrians. And yet, Xinhua still calls it an accident. Let’s hope that’s just a bad translation.
However, drivers can be heard racing through the streets of Hollywood all night, and frequently make the left turn off eastbound Hollywood Blvd without slowing.
Anyone with information was urged to call the LAPD at 213/527-3247. As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for any fatal hit-and-run in the City of LA.
This is at least the 63rd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 28th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; it’s also 14th bicyclist killed in the City of Los Angeles this year.
After being rushed into surgery Sunday night, Ignacio suffered a pair of heart attacks Tuesday morning; the second one was fatal. He died without ever waking up.
He was just 23.
The crowdfunding page says the investigation is ongoing, which means there is now an automatic $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the heartless coward who left him there to die.
This is at least the 62nd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 27th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; Ignacio is also 13th bicyclist killed in the City of Los Angeles this year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers Armando Felipe Ignacio and his loved ones.
Police are looking for a dark-colored compact with likely front-end damage; the driver fled south on Palm Canyon. There’s no description on the driver or make of car.
Jaime’s family called on the driver to turn themself in.
Someone’s sitting at home knowing that they hit someone, they hit a person, and they know that they killed him. They know that; there’s no way on God’s green earth can they not know,” said Jeanette Jaime, Raymundo’s aunt and godmother. “I can understand the fear in them, but it just sickens me that someone can just do this to another person, to a human being.
He leaves behind his wife and a four-year old daughter.
“She is going to grow up without a father,” Jaime said. “It means that she will cry herself to sleep. They had a very awesome relationship.”
As well as clarifying that while this site is about advocacy, I’ve been the only one behind it since the Corgi died.
We might have started out with this observation.
Two girls, one about eight, the other about six, rip along in the middle of streets on motorized scooters that — and I am not making this up — zoom along at a solid 10 miles an hour.
Now, 10 mph may not seem like a lot if you’re tucked safely in a car. But hitting the asphalt at 10 miles an hour can destroy flesh, bone and skull, especially if a child is struck by a vehicle.
Yet that’s not what terrifies me.
What terrifies me is that these kids don’t wear helmets, an occurrence I see more and more.
I would have pointed out that, yes, anyone under 18 is required to wear a helmet on a scooter, just like on a bicycle.
There’s good reasoning for that. Children’s skulls and brains are still developing, and they lack the judgement to make an informed decision on whether or not to use a helmet.
Then the conversation might have moseyed along to this study.
Rosenthal and Kreeger is a California law firm that specializes in injuries, but also does actual research that tilts toward actually saving lives.
“Since helmet laws have been instituted in the majority of states, at least for children the death rate for that age group has decreased,” the firm points out. “But research shows that over half of adult bicyclists still do not use a helmet at all.
However, there have been studies that suggest the reason bicycling death rates have declined for children is simply that fewer children are riding bikes these days, as parents ferry them to and from school and soccer practice. And everywhere else.
Some people blame helmet laws for that decrease, saying it makes bicycling seem dangerous.
I’m not sure I buy that argument; I think the reason is the just the dangers on our streets, real and imagined.
But that would have led to discussion of the mandatory, and much hated, bike helmet laws in Australia and New Zealand.
Using bikeshare is often a spur of the moment thing, and no one wants to cart around an awkward helmet all day on the off chance they might rent a bike or scooter.
That would lead us to this discussion.
Between 2010 and 2017 (the latest year available), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports cycling fatalities increased by a whopping 35%.
In 2017, nearly 800 people were killed riding bicycles. Not surprisingly, there has been a corresponding increase in bicycle injuries — many of which are never reported.
I’ll add that California has one of the highest death rates in the nation, and Los Angeles and San Francisco made the top 10 list for the most deadly cities.
Yet there is no helmet law for adult cyclists.
Yes, the increase in bicycling fatalities is frightening, and has to be addressed.
But banning SUVs, with their deadly flat grills, and preventing cellphones from working in moving vehicles for anything other than directions and calling 911, would probably be more effective at reducing deaths than putting a bike helmet on every head on two wheels.
The problem with citing figures like that is that we have no way of knowing how many of the people who died were wearing helmets, or how many suffered head injuries.
We can project that from various studies, but at best we can only achieve a very rough estimation.
We also have no way of knowing if those people died as a result of head injuries, or if those injuries would have been survivable if they’d been wearing a bike helmet. Or if they suffered other injuries that would have cost them their lives anyway.
And that’s the last point I would have made.
Because bike helmets aren’t designed to protect against crashes with a car going 70 mph. Or 30, for that matter. And they don’t protect against injuries to any other part of the body.
Even the most expensive helmets are only required to withstand relatively minor impacts.
In other words, a fall off your bike, not a collision with a bus.
They also do nothing to protect against a traumatic brain injury, as I learned the hard way, unless you spring for the more expensive MIPS or WaveCel models.
And the jury is still out on those.
So yes, a bike helmet may help reduce the force of impact in a collision, as well as the severity of any head injury.
Or they may not, depending on the speed of the vehicle and angle of impact.
That’s if the straps don’t break and the helmet stays on. And if it’s still effective, and not degraded due to age or previous impacts.
A bike helmet is a single use device. Hit the pavement or bounce off a bumper just once, and it needs to be replaced.
That’s when I’d tell Whiting that I never ride without mine.
But I also recognize its limitations, and don’t count on a bike helmet to save my life. A helmet should always be seen as the last line of defense, after everything else — from street design to defensiveriding skills — have failed.
There are also arguments that they actually increase the danger to riders, whether as the result of closer passes from drivers and riskier behavior by riders, or the dangers of rotational injuries.
Regardless of my own choices, however, I respect people who have made the decision not to wear a helmet, and I respect their right to choose.
Which is what adult bike helmet use should be.
A choice. Not a law.
So I would have ended by saying I respect you, David. I think you’ve done a lot of good for the bicycling community.
A San Francisco letter writer says forget cars rolling stop signs, the real problem is people on bicycles. And apparently has a speed gun built into his glasses. Seriously, if you’re not going to stop, always obey the right-of-way, especially around pedestrians. And ride carefully around people on foot, who can be unpredictable, and are the only ones more vulnerable than we are.
Life is cheap on an Albuquerque Air Force base, where a truck driver got two and a half years for a) running a stop sign, while b) talking on his cellphone, and c) killing a man riding his bike.
Heartbreaking story from Aukland, New Zealand, where an 18-year old champion track cyclist will never be the same after a driver ran a stop sign and slammed into his bike, leaving him with a major head brain injury and nearly costing his life.
October 21, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Uber & Lyft blamed for traffic deaths, file LAPD theft and hit-and-run reports online, and lots of bike videos
Curbed’s Alissa Walker calls for emulating San Francisco’s closure of Market Street to private motor vehicles, and suggests seven LA-area streets that should be closed to cars and opened to people. It would be hard to make a case for closing Sunset, Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards, as she suggests, since they represent three major parallel crosstown routes; a better case could be made for closing Wilshire and Hollywood to cars.
Surprisingly, Yahoo says you can’t power an entire city with your bike. It’s not surprising you can’t generate that much power with your bike; it’s surprising that Yahoo is still around.
The best laid plans of mice and bike thieves. A pair of Aussie thieves steal the security cameras from a Sydney parking garage, then come back the next night to steal a bicycle — unaware they were being recorded by dash cam.
Thanks to John L for his generous donation to support this site.
As we noted before, it would take just $10 from everyone who visits BikinginLA today to fund it for an entire year; John says he says he gave extra to make up for a couple people who didn’t.
Stephen Taylor Scarpa’s arraignment, scheduled for last Friday, was delayed again.
There are so many facets of this case that don’t look good for him: his status as an addict; his admission during interrogation that he should not have been driving; the amount and sheer number of drugs in his system; the presence in his vehicle of drugs obtained from an alleged overprescriber; his crash after “passing out” behind the wheel earlier in the year… etc.
He’s going down.
What perplexes me is the murder charge, because I can’t find any evidence of a prior DUI conviction — within LA or Orange County, at any rate. He could have priors elsewhere.
The Watson law is specific in its requirements: party has to be informed upon a DUI conviction of the possibility of a murder charge if said party kills someone while DUI.
So, this would mean, wouldn’t it, that Scarpa’s been convicted in some court at some point within the past 10 years?
A Watson advisement notwithstanding, PSA’s, American alcohol ads, and the DMV paperwork you sign before the state issues you a license all tell you that DUI is dangerous. But is that bombardment of facts enough to define malice, which is a required component of murder?
There’s one other thing that might convince a jury that Scarpa was aware of the dangers of DUI, enough so to convict of murder and not just manslaughter.
In 2011, as a student at Esperanza High, he participated in an Every Fifteen Minutes event, which is pretty comprehensive. In addition to pulling “dead” students out of classrooms every 15 minutes, a simulated collision is set up on campus, with the driver “arrested,” and moulaged “injured” & “dead” students extricated from the wreckage. These actors don’t go home that night; they’re sequestered overnight at a hotel, where they write a “Today I died” letter to their parents. (The parents also write to their dead kids.) The next day, these letters are read aloud at a school assembly.
Scarpa was one of the dead who was extricated from a mangled vehicle, who told his parents he died, who read this letter to his entire school.
I hope, every night before he falls asleep, he thinks of all the letters Mike Kreza never gets to write.
Pratiti Renee Mehta is back from her vacation in Chowchilla Women’s Facility. She’s in custody in County, awaiting a court appearance this morning. I will be there, because I am a horrible person and will enjoy seeing her violent, unrepentant ass in saggy jail-issued fashion and shackles. The sentencing was in July, and I missed it. How it wasn’t on my calendar, I dunno. (Busy week with the PAC on the 18th and the Caltrans D7 BAC on the 19th, but I wouldn’t have skipped the sentencing for anything.)
Due to a “clerical inadvertency,” Mehta had been sent up to state prison prior to a required sentencing assessment.
According to court records, on July 17th, the Defense’s request to reduce the felony hit-and-run count to a misdemeanor was denied, and then the judge sentenced Ms. Mehta to 3 years in state prison.
Two other things surprise me about the sentence: (1) The judge actually threw the book at her, wow. (2) The People didn’t request anything close.
That’s right, the People actually requested leniency: 90 days in County and an additional 200 hours of community service. For a woman who broke a guy’s bones, left him in the street, and then put in deliberate effort to lie to the cops about it. I remain furious that the ADW charge didn’t stick.
Hannah Jordan suffers from an unknown metabolic disorder that prevents her body from storing glucose; when she started on an intravenous formula from a Santa Barbara company, she began to thrive — and kick ass on her bicycle.
She’ll compete in Phil Gaimon’s hillclimb competition on Gibraltar Road with the feeding tube attached, then may train for international competition at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs CO.
And yes, her tube has been approved for competition.
There’s a special place in hell for a Japanese man who rode his bike up from behind a bike-riding 17-year old girl and groped her breast as he rode past, telling police he just couldn’t control his lust for her. Which should be read as a confession from a total asshole.
Streetsblog says Gavin Newsom’s veto of the state’s Complete Streets bill stinks, and that Caltrans’ reasoning for fighting it is “hogwash.” Someone suggested that we should now call getting hit by driver on a Caltrans-controlled street “getting Newsomed,” just like we called a close pass “getting Jerry Browned” after he repeatedly vetoed the three-foot passing law.
Virgilio Lemus Garcia, the 60-year old victim in Sunday’s Santa Ana hit-and-run, remains in grave condition; police are looking for a dark blue mid-’90s, four-door Honda Civic with probable front end damage and a possible shattered windshield.
Apparently never having heard of induced demand, Caltrans will close San Diego’s Friars Road this weekend in preparation for adding a fourth lane in each direction, along with sidewalks and bike lanes. Hopefully, they’ll also consider how the hell pedestrians are supposed to cross that massive monstrosity.
Apparently, it’s okay to be nuts for nuts. But don’t eat too many because they can cause kidney stones, as I learned the hard way.
A new survey from Lime says scooter users don’t want to ride on the sidewalks, but do it anyway because they don’t feel safe on the street. Which is exactly the same reason many bike riders do. And the answer isn’t threatening or ticketing them, it’s building more and better bike lanes.
Kansas City’s mayor wants to rip out a new protected bike lane less than a month after it was installed, saying it’s made things very difficult for businesses and residents. Apparently, it must have been installed on a whim, without any studies, since he wants to remove it the same way; any change to a roadway requires time for people to adjust to it before you know how its going to work out.
A new British study shows a cheap, widely available drug could save hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide if given in the first few hours after a head injury; the medication, called tranexamic acid, costs the equivalent of less than $8 in the UK. Which means it will probably sell for a couple thousand dollars a dose in the US.
And it’s not a record jump if you don’t stick the landing.
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Thanks to John Hall for his generous donation to support this site, and help keep SoCal’s best bike news and advocacy coming your way (nearly) every day.
October 14, 2019 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: More of same as Newsom vetos Complete Streets bill, and Santa Ana hit-and-run gravely injures bike rider
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Evidently, not much has changed with a new, more progressive governor in Sacramento.
Former Governor Jerry Brown became famous for obstructing bicycle safety bills, to the point that “Jerry Brown” became a pseudonym for a dangerously close pass after Brown vetoed two versions of a three-foot passing law before finally agreeing to the watered-down version we have today.
And yes, I may have had something to do with popularizing that term.
Which is the primary reason Newsom gave for vetoing it.
But anyone who’s followed Caltrans for any length of time knows they’re notorious for promising change, then continuing with the same deadly, auto-centric policies.
Newsom’s veto message says Caltrans is already committed to Compete Streets “where reasonable and feasible.”
Which is simply another of saying if it gets hard in anyway, or anyone complains, just forget it.
And we’re left with a few minor changes to add sidewalks or bike lanes here and there — the “low hanging fruit,” as LADOT described it.
Newsom also cited Caltrans’ brazen, and successful, attempt to sabotage the bill, despite their many pledges of support for Complete Streets. The agency cited an absurdly high projected cost for the measure, claiming it would cost the state an extra $1 billion a year.
Add that to the bike lanes, and double it for both sides of the street, and you’re looking at less that $375,000 per mile.
Just a tad less than that $4.5 million.
Maybe they were planning on some very expensive crosswalks, and a shitload of Share The Road signs.
Or maybe they just didn’t want to finally be held to account.
So once again, people who choose not to drive, for any length of time and for any reason, are left holding the bag.
Along with the communities these roads pass through. And the earth they’re built on.
And once again, we’re left with a self-proclaimed climate governor, like LA’s ineffectual climate mayor, who’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect the environment and fight climate change.
As long as that doesn’t mean inconveniencing drivers in any way.
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Yet another bike rider is barely clinging to life, thanks to yet another heartless coward behind the wheel.
If the name doesn’t mean anything to you, this spectacular stunt from his self produced video series probably will.
The 36-year old British Columbia native was riding a trail in Cabo San Lucas when he fell, suffering a fatal head injury.
He started racing BMX at 11 before switching to mountain bikes at 15, rising to become the second-ranked North American rider in the 2003 World Cup standings.
He also became the first rider to land a Cork 720 a few years later. Even if he misses it here.
Sometimes the problem is just bald-faced bigotry directed to someone made more vulnerable by being on a bike. A British man intervened when a handful of teenagers surrounded a Jewish man, shouting anti-semitic slurs and threatening to take his bicycle. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with some people?
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A man was fatally stabbed in South El Monte Friday evening after three men got out of a passing car, knocked him off his bike, and repeatedly stabbed him; the victim tried to get back on his bike and ride for help, but only made it another block.
Life is cheap in New York State, where authorities plea bargained a case of vehicular manslaughter in the drunken hit-and-run death of a bike rider down to a simple hit-and-run injury case; the driver could be out in as little as 18 months. Also good to know that driving at nearly three times the legal limit is just an effing misdemeanor in the Empire State.
The University of Alabama football team has sent a football and jersey signed by star quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to the family of a 12-year old boy who was recently shot and killed by another boy because he wouldn’t give his bicycle; his family plans to have him buried with both.
According to the Ventura County Star, a 45-year old man was killed when he was struck by the driver of a semi-truck while riding his bike against traffic on an Oxnard street.
The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was struck just after 11:30 am as he was riding east in the westbound lane of East Wooley Road, west of Saviers Road in Oxnard
He was dead at the scene before emergency personnel arrived.
The driver of the truck continued west without stopping. When Oxnard police stopped the truck shortly later, the driver reportedly cooperated with investigators, claiming he was unaware of the crash.
Unfortunately, they don’t explain how the crash happened. It strains credibility to believe the driver could have been unaware of a head-on collision; however, it’s possible he may not have known if he sideswiped the victim or hit him with the truck’s wing mirror.
