Almost needless to say, the driver fled following the crash.
KBCS-2 reports he was attempting to cross Alondra when he was run down. Although someone should tell them that hit-and-run is a crime, not an accident.
Parker was reportedly riding to a relative’s home when he was killed, leaving his children without a father.
Yes, this is the cost of traffic violence. And what happens when cowardly drivers leave their victims to die in the street.
Sheriff’s deputies are looking for video from nearby surveillance cameras, as well as possible witnesses. Anyone with information is urged to call the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s Compton station at 310/605-6500.
This is at least the 22nd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 11th in LA County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Darnell Parker and all his family.
May 15, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Driver arrested in South LA hit-and-run, and fake news from Venice Blvd traffic safety denier
She demands that Mayor Eric Garcetti and Westside Councilmember Mike Bonin keep their promise to remove the road diet if the data shows it’s not working after a year.
Even though that year won’t be up for another week. And the data for that full year probably hasn’t even been compiled, let alone released yet.
Not that any decent traffic safety denier would let an inconvenient little fact like that get in the way.
Instead, she relies on — and distorts — the stats released at the six-month point to make her case, noting that collisions and injury collisions both went up.
In fact, there were just two — yes, two — more minor injury collisions during the first six months of the trial period than in the same six months the year before.
And let’s not forget that the purpose of the often misconstrued Vision Zero is not to prevent collisions, but to keep those collisions from resulting in serious injuries or death.
Which, based strictly on the data she’s using, the Venice road diet seems have done pretty well.
Or that any major change, to any street, is likely to result in an increase in collisions until drivers get used to it.
Then there’s her bizarre — and demonstrably false — statement that the $91 million devoted to street safety improvements in the mayor’s budget will be spent on road diets.
Improvements to Vision Zero’s High Injury Network would only get a boost to a relatively paltry $37 million. With none of that specifically budgeted for road diets.
And with the way the city council has been cowed by the angry drivers Restore Venice Blvd and Keep LA Moving purport to represent, there’s not much chance of any many road diets getting installed in the near future.
Then there’s her claim that reducing the number of traffic lanes by one-third on Venice has resulted in gridlock, reflected by a nearly one-third drop in vehicles per day.
Yes, according to her, a substantial drop in vehicle in vehicle usage somehow managed to cause the entire street to become so congested that movement in any direction is impossible.
Or maybe she just doesn’t understand what gridlock means.
Never mind that those same six month figures show that average driver speeds remained unchanged from before the road diet. Yet miraculously, drivers still managed to exceed the speed limit, despite being unable to move at all.
But why let a little thing like facts get in the way?
Although I’d seriously like to know what kind of a person quotes herself in her own opinion piece.
Clearly, when you want to get the quote right, you go right to the source.
Unless you are the source, then you can write whatever the hell you want.
Tomorrow night is the worldwide observance of the Ride of Silence, with local RoS rides in the San Fernando Valley, the Rose Bowl, the Conejo Valley, and Orange County. My goal is to one day have a Ride of Silence that goes straight down Wilshire Blvd from Santa Monica to DTLA.
Life is cheap in Oregon, where the local DA determines that a FedEx driver didn’t commit a crime when he killed a bike rider by failing to yield, because he wasn’t drunk or distracted at the time. So go ahead and turn in front of that person on the bike; the worst you’ll get is a traffic ticket.
More proof bike riders just can’t win. A Massachusetts bus driver calls the police because a bike rider was tying up traffic trying to save a turtle in the roadway.
A Brooklyn driver gets three to nine years for the drunken, high-speed crash that killed a teenager riding his bike; the driver was at twice the legal limit after drinking all day, and doing 80 miles an hour on a surface street when he hit the victim head on. You have to really fuck up to get nine years behind bars, and make it seem like it’s not enough.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A Florida woman calls for an end to distracted driving after the March crash that killed her husband; remarkably, she asked that the driver not be prosecuted, because living with what he did was punishment enough.
Continuing our Florida traffic safety trifecta, a woman wins her decade-plus fight for red light cameras in the state. Los Angeles cancelled its red light camera program, caving to drivers who claimed it increased the risk of collisions when drivers jammed on their brakes to stop. Because they couldn’t, you know, just drive at a safe speed that would allow them to stop for red lights, or anything.
No bias here, either. A writer for the Press-Telegram says the Long Beach start of the Amgen Tour of California on Sunday ruined Mother’s Day business for local restaurants. Or maybe some local restaurants. Or maybe having the race there was good for business after all. Seriously, there may be a good story about the effect the race had on local businesses, for better or worse, but this wasn’t it.
What kind of grownup attitude is saying if you break the law, I will too? So there. No, seriously, if you want safer streets, just stick a seat post up your ass.
The increase in bicycle deaths came despite what police officials said at the meeting was an across-the-board drop in serious traffic collisions in the city so far this year — fatal collisions and crashes resulting in serious injuries were down 10 percent, Moore said. Fatal vehicle-on-pedestrian crashes were also down significantly, falling 25 percent.
There were 18 cyclists killed in Los Angeles for all of 2017, and police officials said after the fatal collisions in April, the city appeared to be on track to match that total again…
Los Angeles statistics collected as part of the city’s Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic deaths showed that while all deaths from traffic collisions over the last three years, cyclist deaths continued to rise. In the San Fernando Valley, there were just three cyclist deaths in 2015, while last year there were eight.
In case you’re wondering, this is why I’m going to City Hall on the 18th, to demand our elected leaders have the courage to do the right thing.
It’s time to call the city council on their inaction on Vision Zero, and their repeated capitulations to traffic safety deniers in shelving vital lane reductions and other street safety projects.
And doing little more than talking about doing something to halt hit-and-run, while bicyclists and pedestrians — and even motorists — continue to suffer the consequences of their inaction.
………
Speaking of which, if you can’t join me on the 18th — or even if you can — feel free to send a letter demanding for safer streets for you, me and everyone else. Just email your letter to me by Wednesday, May 16th to ted at bikinginla dot com.
I’ll print them out and include them with the packages we’re giving each councilmember and the mayor, containing copies of Profiles in Courage and Do The Right Thing.
A couple quick tips if you plan to write a letter.
If you can, try to work in the theme of our protest by asking them to have the courage to do the right thing.
Mention what council districts you live, work or ride in.
Stress that safer streets benefit everyone, whether on bikes, on foot or in cars.
Feel free to (politely) express whatever anger or fear you may be feeling
Demand they take immediate action to protect us all
………
A new study from the LA County Department of Health concludes that if Los Angeles actually built out the city’s Mobility Plan 2035 — which seems highly unlikely at this point — it could prevent up to 4,600 cases of cardiovascular disease each year, while saving over $160 million per year in health costs.
Which is just one more reason city leaders need to do the right thing. And one less reason to wonder what that is.
The South Pasadena Police Department will be conducting stepped-up bike and pedestrian safety operations throughout this month. You know the drill — ride to the letter of the law until you’re outside their jurisdiction. You don’t want to celebrate Bike Month with a traffic ticket.
President Trump once again criticized former Secretary of State John Kerry for breaking his leg while riding his bike, saying you don’t enter a bike race at 73, and you’d never see him (Trump) in a bike race. Except Kerry was only 71 at the time of the crash, he was just out for a bike ride with full security during a break in tense negotiations, not competing in a race, and more than a few people older than that still race. And at least Kerry can ride a bike.
There’s a special place in hell for the red light-running driver who struck an Illinois bike rider with her car, then got out to pick up her license plate before driving off and leaving him bleeding in the street.
A London man was hospitalized in critical condition after a collision with a man riding a bike near a busy tube station. A reminder to always use caution around pedestrians, because they’re the only ones more vulnerable than we are. And they don’t always use caution around us.
Paris is demanding emergency action after a disastrous change in management companies for the city’s famed Vélib’ bikeshare system has left much of it inoperable.
A 20-year old student at Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia is now a double U.S. Collegiate Cycling champ, after winning the road championship to go with the mountain biking title she won last fall.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A 70-year old Kiwi cyclist keeps a deathbed promise to his friend to compete in race around a New Zealand mountain and finishes second, despite saying he’s not a racer; his friend had won the same race over 60 years earlier.
Once again, a pro cyclist has been injured in a crash with a race moto, as British hill climb champ Joscelin Lowden suffered a broken clavicle after crashing with a security bike. Maybe someday, race organizers will finally figure out that motor vehicles don’t belong in the damn peloton.
A new study from AAA shows that hit-and-run crashes are at an all-time high in the US. Something that is born out by simple observation these days.
It should also come as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of fatal hit-and-run victims — nearly two-thirds — were bicyclists or pedestrians.
And 20% of all pedestrian deaths are the result of hit-and-run drivers.
The only surprise is California was not one of the worst states for the crime, which was led by New Mexico, Louisiana and Florida.
Then the report dips into absurdity by offering drivers advice on how not to flee the scene following a crash.
AAA said drivers can avoid hit-and-run crashes by being aware of their surroundings, yielding to crossing pedestrians even if they’re not in designated crosswalks and giving cyclists “plenty” of space when passing them on the road. Should drivers get involved in a crash with a pedestrian or cyclist, AAA State Relations Director Jennifer Ryan said they should stay on the scene because the penalties for fleeing are “significantly” more severe, regardless of who is at fault for the crash.
Actually, the way drivers can avoid being involved in a hit-and-run is to just take their foot off the gas and stop their damn car.
Seriously, is that so hard?
But the problem is, while the penalties for fleeing may be more severe than the drivers might otherwise face, they may be less severe than other factors, such as driving under the influence or without a valid license or insurance. Which can actually give a driver an incentive to flee.
And some drivers just assume that they’ll never get caught — and in most cases, they’re right.
Of course, while AAA did a great job of highlighting the problem, they were silent on any real solutions.
Apparently there’s not much reasoning going on at Reason these days, as the conservative website says don’t blame WAZE for shifting traffic onto neighborhood streets, blame local officials for not building more freeways and traffic lanes. In other words, keep doubling down on the auto-centric planning and induced demand that got us into this mess.
An Aussie state scraps a proposal for presumed liability after police stats show bicyclists were at fault in 41% of traffic collisions involving bikes. Which has little to do with it, of course; presumed liability simply assumes the driver of the more dangerous vehicle has a greater responsibility to avoid crashes, and should be held at fault unless it can be shown that the other party was responsible. But that last part usually gets ignored in the resulting uproar anytime someone proposes it.
Former Dutch pro cyclist Karsten Kroon admitted to doping during his career, which ended four years ago. At this point it probably makes more sense to do breaking news stories on the riders who didn’t dope. If they can find any.
Evidently, shorts-clad bike cops chasing miscreants is comedy gold. When you have no idea what the hell you’re doing, the easiest solution is just to ban something — like ebikes, for instance.
Another bike rider has been killed in a South LA hit-and-run, the third person murdered by heartless, cowardly drivers in the last week.
All on streets identified as part of the city’s High Injury Network.
And all in CD8 Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s district.
According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the victim was struck by one driver and run over by at least one other motorist at the intersection of South Avalon and East Century Boulevards — all of whom left the scene.
KNBC-4 adds more detail, saying the victim, identified only as a man who appeared to be in his 60s, was crossing Century headed south in the crosswalk on Avalon when he was struck around 12:15 pm.
Both drivers fled the scene, before a second driver in a Lexus SUV, eventually returned and talked with police.
Which means the first driver should face a murder charge for leaving his victim lying in the street to be run over at least one other time.
We’ll never know if the victim might have survived if the first driver had stopped. What we do know is that after leaving him sprawled and bleeding in the road, he probably never had a chance.
We’ll also never know if he would had survived if the city had moved forward with the safety improvements called for as part of the LA Vision Zero’s High Injury Network.
But we do know that the failure to take any action after identifying the problem could leave the city with a greater legal liability for this death, as well as the two previous deaths in the district this past week.
This is at least the 17th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the ninth in Los Angeles County; it’s also the seventh in the City of Los Angeles.
There is an automatic $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect in this case.
While the story mentions the $50,000 reward for the hit-and-run death of Frederick Frazier, there should also be a similar reward in this case under the city’s hit-and-run reward program.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Christopher White and his loved ones.
A group of Frazier’s friends gathered to block the intersection at Manchester and Normandie with their bicycles to call attention to the death and demand justice for their fallen friend.
The protest got out of hand after several people attacked an LAPD SUV when police arrived to break it up, smashing its windows with their bikes.
According to Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman, the young men were angered after graphic photos of the man they knew as Woon were posted online overnight, showing their friend splayed out on the street as another rider attempted to comfort him in his final moments.
She then gunned her engine and fled the scene as Stallings stumbled to the curbed.
He was taken to a local hospital; reports are he was not seriously injured.
Now police are looking for two hit-and-run drivers.
One with a $50,000 bounty on his or her head for leaving Frazier to die in the street; another who could — and should — be facing a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.
Twenty-one-year old Ronnie Ramon Huerta Jr. is accused of driving up to 100 mph while stoned before slamming into 49-year old Mark Kristofferson, killing him almost instantly. He was taken into custody after the arraignment hearing, and held on a $1 million bond.
He’s also charged with driving on a suspended license and driving under the influence of drugs.
The piece tells bicyclists to “Always ride in single file,” even though there’s nothing in state law that prohibits riding two or more abreast. And riding abreast is often safer in lanes that are too narrow to share with a motor vehicle by increasing visibility and preventing unsafe passes.
The piece also says riders should walk their bikes across busy intersections, which increases the risk by decreasing mobility and exposing riders to careless and distracted drivers for a longer period of time.
And never mind that a bike helmet may be a good idea, but it’s not required for anyone 18 or older.
But if the point is to increase awareness of bike safety, where is the companion piece telling drivers to always watch for bikes, pass with at least a three foot distance, and open doors with your right hand to prevent dooring?
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Local
Metro released their draft strategic plan for the next ten years, as they transition from a transit provider to focusing on the entire mobility ecosystem.
Another good piece from Bike Snob’s Eben Weiss, who considers the ethics of breaking traffic laws, noting that obeying the letter of the law isn’t always the safest way to ride.
A transportation technology project from the University of Melbourne says to improve safety and performance on our streets, we’ll all have to be connected in a single network including cars, buses, pedestrians and bicyclists.
A photo from the scene shows a shattered bike with debris scattered across the roadway.
No other information is available at this time.
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD South Traffic Detectives at 323/421-2500, or anonymously at 800/222-TIPS (8477)
This is at least the 16th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the eighth in Los Angeles County; it’s also the sixth in the City of Los Angeles.
Update 2: Streetsblog’s Sahra Sulaiman has written a moving — and graphic — description of the final moments of the man known as Woon to his friends, described as a strong an experienced cyclist.
She also reminds us that, thanks to LA’s hit-and-run reward system, there is a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of his killer.
And in a tragic irony, after several people blocked the intersection where Frazier was killed in an impromptu bike protest the next day, one person suffered minor injuries when a driver deliberately slammed her car into his bike.
And naturally, fled the scene.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Frederick Frazier and his loved ones.
April 9, 2018 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: 15 years for Oceanside drunk driver, ebike regulations, and young cyclist dies in Paris-Roubaix
For once, the charges — and the conviction — fit the crime.
In an extreme case of heartlessness, she drove over a mile with the victim’s body embedded in the seat next to her. Then parked the car around the block from her house and walked home.
And did all that after her friends warned her she was too drunk to drive, but got behind the wheel anyway.
At least she’s not likely to be driving again for a very long time.
Drunk or otherwise.
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Today’s common theme is ebikes and the rules governing them.
He had posted this moving photo on Instagram just two weeks ago.
Michael Goolaerts, who died today at the age of 23, posted this beautiful shot on Instagram two weeks ago. Just a kid living a dream. Life can be cruel. pic.twitter.com/4OEnfzKDZw
An Op-Ed in the LA Times says almost no one walks to or from LAX because the airport has made it virtually impossible to do. But those who do may find some hidden gems. Thanks to Mike Wilkinson for the heads-up.
Seattle’s new mayor puts the brakes on plans for a promised bike lane on 4th Street, delaying it until at least 2021 over fears of slowing traffic. Because everyone knows people on bikes don’t count as traffic. Right?
Denver’s bikeshare system is adopting a hybrid program to compete with dockless bikeshare, allowing riders to leave bikes in hundreds designated bike corrals, or leave them anywhere for a small additional fee. Something Metro may want to consider as dockless bikes expand through Los Angeles.
Treehugger says you could solve the problem of New York’s salmon cyclists by getting rid of one-way streets. Or at least installing contraflow bike lanes.
A Vancouver Op-Ed says bicycling is often more convenient than driving in major cities. I’ve found that true in Los Angeles, where I could commute from Westwood to DTLA in the same time it took to drive, with far less hassle and aggravation.
Milagro cómo sale el @Ride_Argyle sin que aparentemente le pase nada (el coche está bien aparcado y la curva no es peligrosa. Es un descuido) pic.twitter.com/xCGQW4jyCG
Despite the city’s lip service to Vision Zero, it’s clear, to paraphrase Casablanca, that the deaths of a few innocent people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy town.
Now neighboring Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has joined him, citing a lack of significant, widespread support for the vital safety project.
If that’s going to be the standard, we might as well toss Vision Zero in the scrapheap of Los Angeles history right now. Because we may never get a majority of Angelenos to believe that saving lives trumps saving a few minutes on their commute.
City officials are elected to do the right thing, not the popular thing. And make the difficult choices that they know will prove correct down the road, even if they initially lack “significant, widespread support.”
Like saving lives, for instance.
Instead, O’Farrell became just the latest LA councilmember to back down in the face of organized opposition from angry motoring activists, settling for a number of incremental improvements to the street that may make it a little safer and slightly more pleasant, but likely do nothing to stop speeding drivers from running down more innocent people.
In part, because of attitudes like this from Rachael Luckey, a member of the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council.
A road diet on Temple, Luckey says, would have been too extreme.
“I hate to use the words ‘acceptable loss,’ but we do live in a metropolitan city, and it’s a dangerous world we live in,” she says. “As far as Temple Street is concerned, I don’t know that it is a crisis per-se. If we were seeing 20, 30, 50 people run over, I would be a lot more alarmed.”
A California Highway Patrol collisions database shows that from 2009 to 2017 on the stretch of Temple Street between Beverly and Beaudry, 34 people have been severely injured and five people have died in traffic crashes.
I wonder if she’d still consider it an acceptable loss if one of those victims was a member of her own family.
And once again, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti was too busy running for president to weigh in on one of his own signature programs, exchanging pledged commitment to Vision Zero for zero involvement.
When Vision Zero was first announced in Los Angeles, I questioned whether the city’s leaders had the courage to made the tough choices necessary to save lives, and help make this a healthier, more vibrant and livable city.
The answer, sadly, is no.
………
On a related subject, a new journal article from Chapman University assistant law professor Ernesto Hernandez Lopez examines the legal aspects of the LA Mobility Plan.
And the auto-centric bikelash that threatens to derail it.
Here’s how he summarizes the paper, titled Bike Lanes, Not Cars: Mobility and the Legal Fight for Future Los Angeles:
Examines LA’s Mobility Plan 2035
Summarizes lessons from biking scholarship
Uses these lessons to make sense of the litigation on the Mobility Plan 2035
Suggests how law and politics can help city bike lane policies and advocacy and policy making for these
Relates bike lanes to Vision Zero (safety), “first and last mile” (intermodal), and mobility (de-car)
Correlates the litigation and LA experiences with Vehicular Cycling and Automobility theories
The San Gabriel River trail will be closed at Carson Street in Long Beach today for an emergency repair due to water damage. Riders will be detoured to Town Center Drive.
The path should be reopened on Saturday, unless they run into unexpected problems.
If not, take a few minutes to see if you can reconcile what you see with the local police chief’s insistence that the victim, a homeless woman walking her bicycle across the street, darted out of nowhere into the car’s path.
Right.
Then look closely at the interior view, which shows the clearly distracted emergency human driver looking down the whole time, until just before the moment of impact.
The car should have been able to detect the victim; the fact that it didn’t indicates a major flaw in the system. And the woman behind the wheel definitely should have, if she’d been paying the slighted bit of attention.
Correction: The initial stories identified the driver as a man, Raphael Vasquez. However, it appears that Vasquez has been living as woman, Raphaela Vasquez, since being released from prison in 2005. Thanks to Andy Stow for the correction.
The head of a European bike industry trade group responds that bike riders will have to wear beacons to identify themselves to autonomous vehicles. Why stop there? Why not implant all newborns with transponders so self-driving cars can see them regardless of how they travel, and choose to kill the one person crossing the street rather than the three people in a car.
A former Los Angeles Times staff writer calls LA streets a contested space where no improvement — such as the Venice Blvd Great Streets project — goes unpunished.
You’ve got to be kidding. Life is cheap in Yolo County, where a garbage truck driver walked in a plea deal in the death of a bike-riding college professor after pleading no contest to vehicular manslaughter. And was rewarded with a deferred judgement and a lousy 80 hours of community service.
Eugene, OR decides to make a six-block test road diet permanent, concluding it was worth the effort despite initial concerns. Sort of what might happen here if more city officials had the guts to actually try it.
Traffic delays caused by highway construction enticed an El Paso, Texas man to sell his truck and buy a motorized bicycle, improving his health and saving at least $800 a month.
Cycling Weekly considers the symptoms, tests and recovery for concussions. Sooner or later, everyone comes off their bike, and chances are, you can’t count on your helmet to protect you from TBIs, because that’s not what most helmets are designed to do.
A new reports says 43% of the Ontario, Canada bike riders killed between 2010 and 2015 were struck from behind. And 25% were under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Police have found the suspected FedEx driver, who has been detained for questioning.
According to KTLA-5, LAPD Capt. Alfonso Lopez suggested he could be looking at a manslaughter charge.
It was not immediately known whether the driver saw the cyclist, but “based on the physical evidence at scene and based on the officer’s expertise, and the construction of the traffic collision, it is our belief that the driver of the vehicle would have, or could have, or should have known that he had struck an individual,” the captain said…
“Had this individual stayed at scene and rendered aid — or at least called somebody and cooperated — and remained at scene, it would be looked at as a traffic collision,” Lopez said. “The fact that his individual failed to stay at scene and then fled makes us look at it now like a hit-and-run investigation, leading to a manslaughter case.”
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD Detective Calvin Dehesa at 213/486-0750 or the Central Traffic Division Detectives 213/833-3713.
This is the eleventh bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth in Los Angeles County. It’s also the fourth in the City of Los Angeles since the start of the year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Elisa Gomez and all her loved ones.
