Tag Archive for hit-and-run

The hit-and-run epidemic continues — and almost takes a local legend

May 20, 2009 / / One comment

Only by the grace of God, or good fortune, or karma, or whatever you happen to believe in, did local riders avoid yet another ghost bike ceremony this week.

Late Monday night, Roadblock, one of the original Midnight Ridazz and a leader in the L.A. bike community, was struck from behind at high speed while riding on Glendale Boulevard and flipped up onto the hood of the car. The driver then braked, dumping him onto the pavement, before speeding off without so much as pausing to see if he was injured or dead.

Fortunately — miraculously — he avoided serious injuries and was able to get the first six digits of the license plate number, along with a general description of the vehicle as it sped off.

And yes, he was riding legally, using both a headlight and rear light, as well as reflectors on his shoes, and was wearing a helmet.

In some ways, he may be lucky that the driver fled the scene, making it a crime rather than a mere traffic accident. Otherwise, the LAPD Traffic Division might be twisting itself in knots to come up with evidence proving he backed into the car at high speed.

There are two things that have to be done in response to this. The first is to get the a**hole who did this off the streets, and behind bars. Fortunately, the police take hit-and-run very seriously, and will do their best to catch the people responsible.

But we can help, too.

There are far more cyclists than there are police on the streets of L.A. So let’s be their eyes and ears, and keep a close lookout for a dark sedan — Roadblock describes it as dark gray — with a license plate reading 6GYC11-.

If you see it, don’t try to do anything yourself. Call the police and let them deal with it. And if you have any information, call the tip line at 213/972-1825 or email BikeHitAndRun@gmail.com.

Secondly, call or email your councilmember today and demand action to stop the epidemic of hit-and-runs in this city. There’s a reason that was the first question I asked both of the candidates for CD5 (which remains too close to call).

You can read more about Roadblock’s incident — based on his description, I can’t call it an “accident” — on Streetsblog and LAist, as well as the original thread on the Midnight Ridazz website.

And on a semi-related note, tonight is the annual worldwide Ride of Silence to honor fallen cyclists; maybe next year, we can hold one here. And maybe, with luck, we won’t have any local riders to honor.

I’ll leave the last words to Roadblock, on a comment he left today as part of that thread:

You guys are crackin me up. Love you guise seriously. Feels great to be part of this big family of caring ridazz.

Just fed myself a big ole breakfast and I’m on my way to grab some wood and spray paint…. gonna put up some big signs and see if I can get more witnesses. There was a witness last night who said she saw the driver and gave the cops a description, so that coupled with hopefully an accurate plate and boom, fingers crossed this guy gets caught…

Sorry for my angry words up there, I was so steamed up that someone could be that careless and ruthless. The law will run its course and hopefully this guy had insurance or something I can sue for in a civil suit. I’m hobbling around cause I’m sore as hell but again, I got lucky nothing broke.

Thanks everyone.

Wear your helmets, use bright bike lights in the daytime as well…. you need to be 100% and even then something like this can still happen and it won’t change until there is paint on the streets and traffic is tamed… wow.

 

According to Streetsblog, we may actually see an Expo Bikeway in our lifetime; they also ask if there’s too much emphasis on safety. Uh, no. Russ Roca offers good advice on how to introduce sharrows to the driving public. Ubrayj suggests that now may be the time to break up the LADOT. Green LA Girl calls your attention to the upcoming World Naked Bike Ride. Finally, an Aussie writer suggests cyclists should be forced to register their bikes, but only so the government knows where to send the checks for all the good we do — and adds that all drivers should be required to spend 100 hours on a bike before they can get a license.

And as for that post I promised on Election Day, it’s still coming. I promise. But somehow, this seemed more important.

Category: General / Tags: , , , ,

Ghost bike for Echo Park cycling fatality; Police-blessed vehicular assault Downtown

April 24, 2009 / / 2 comments

Stephen Box managed to get the information I couldn’t find anywhere else.

Earlier in the week, I’d written about the cyclist killed by an intoxicated hit-and-run driver in Echo Park early Sunday. Despite my best efforts, I wasn’t able to learn any more about the victim than had been included in the initial reports; Box reports that he was a day laborer from Sonora, Mexico, who used his bicycle as his primary means of transportation.

Just one of the countless nameless, faceless workers we Angelenos pass every day without a second thought.

Yet he died as one of us. 

And he is being memorialized this evening where he was killed on Glendale Blvd. As Box put it:

Let’s work together to make sure this is the last Ghost Bike placed in our community.

Meanwhile, the local cyber wires are buzzing with the news that a cyclist was injured late last night when he was struck by a driver in Hummer with no license plates — apparently intentionally. The occupants of the vehicle then threatened the other riders with guns and gang violence, and ran over several of their bikes when they tried to block the vehicle until police arrived.

But the real injustice came when the lead officer let the driver go, and told the cyclists that he would have done the same thing the driver did — and suggested that he might have used a gun, as well.

So who exactly is he trying to “protect and serve”?

As a number of people have commented on the Midnight Ridazz forum, some of the other officers on the scene were far more sympathetic. But this represents an anti-cyclist bias that seems far too common in the L.A.P.D. — one that I’ve experienced myself, when I was threatened with arrest after being the victim of a road rage incident a few years back.

The difference is, now there really is a cycling community in Los Angeles, and protests are already being planned for next week. And in fact, may be occurring right now, as there were plans to extend the Ghost Bike ride into a protest at Parker Center.

And less than a week after Jesus Castillo was killed in Echo Park, another cyclist was the victim of yet another hit-and-run in Orange County today.

Some run away.

And some just get away with it.

Category: General / Tags: , , , , , ,

Another drunk driving hit-and-run fatality; CD5 candidates duke it out tonight

April 20, 2009 / / Comments Off on Another drunk driving hit-and-run fatality; CD5 candidates duke it out tonight

Two seemingly unrelated items.

First, a cyclist was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Echo Park early Sunday morning. As of the time I’m writing this, no real information has been released.

All we know is that he was a 44 year old man, riding south on Glendale Blvd around 1:45 am, when he was struck by a driver and pinned against a car.

He could have been anyone; commuting after a late shift in a bar or restaurant, or riding home after a night out. He could have been making his way home after Saturday’s C.R.A.N.K. Mob, or just out for a late night ride.

In other words, it could have been any one of us.

Like the recent incident in Orange County, the driver appears to have been intoxicated. And like the driver in that incident, a suspect has been arrested, based on an eye witness who wrote down the license number.

Just another needless death, and another chapter in Southern California’s recent rash of high-profile hit-and-runs. Except this time, it wasn’t a famous athlete, or a beautiful young college student.

Just another dead cyclist, which means we’ll probably never hear another word about it.

With that in mind, I’m going to attend a debate between the candidates for Los Angeles 5th Council District tonight.

We know where David Vahedi stands on the subject of bicycling. Paul Koretz is, so far, has been another matter.

If I learn anything worth repeating, I’ll let you know. And if I get a chance to talk to Koretz or his campaign manager, I’ll invite him once again to contribute his comments about cycling and transportation issues.

Because we’re finally starting to make some progress here in L.A. And this election will go a long way in determining whether that progress continues.

Or whether more cyclists will have to die before we do something about it.


City Attorney candidate Jack Weiss — the council person Vahedi and Koretz are competing to replace — completes Streetsblog’s candidate survey. Green LA Girl comments on bicycling and mean bus drivers. A New York writer complains about the return of the bicycle menace. Ireland announces a new national Policy Framework to encourage cycling. An officer of the LACBC says both cyclists and motorists must obey the law, while a RAGBRAI rider says bicycle courtesy goes both ways. Evidently, baseball season brings out an extreme form of harassing cyclists. And finally, hit-and-runs against cyclists clearly aren’t just a SoCal problem these days.

Category: General / Tags: , , , , ,

Is this our Howard Beale moment?

August 5, 2008 / / Comments Off on Is this our Howard Beale moment?

Sometimes I think I’m too political. Then there are times when I don’t think I’m political enough.

This is one of those times. Though which one, I’m not quite sure.

You see, I was always one to fight for my right to the road. A driver cuts me off or passes to close and he was going to hear about it, and I was never reluctant to give an unfriendly driver a friendly wave. Except I usually used just one finger. And it usually wasn’t that friendly.

Then one day I gave that one finger wave to the wrong woman, and she tried to shove her car up my ass. And nearly succeeded.

I had a lot of time to think as I recovered from a broken arm, and the 18 months my mangled bike was tied up as evidence in a civil case — which got me a settlement of a whopping $2500, most of which went for attorney fees.

I realized that, justified or not, things like that were counter productive, at best. All my ranting and raving never convinced a single driver that I was right, or they were wrong. Just that I was an obnoxious jerk. So now I try to keep my mouth closed, with hands firmly planted on the handlebars — though sometimes I fail, as this post from last week would suggest.

But now it seems like maybe it’s time to fight. To throw open a metaphorical window, and like the Howard Beale character from the movie Network, scream “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Seems like every time I check the news online, I find another article like this one from Winston-Salem, describing the hit-and-run accident suffered by a local bicycling doctor. Another cyclist was killed by hit-and-run in Hawaii, but the prime suspect gets released. Michigan riders fighting for a piece of the road. Or this one from Forth Worth, that says cycling in Texas is more dangerous than it need to be — although chances are, you could change the location to anywhere else in the U.S. and it would be just as appropriate.

And that’s just from this weekend.

Even the more positive pieces, like the recent Times editorial, or  this one from Carson City, Nevada, ask drivers to share the road — and stop harassing riders or running us off the road.

Then there are the recent stories that tell us what we already know, that the police — whether here in L.A., Seattle or across the country — don’t seem to take our safety seriously. And too often, the local press doesn’t dig any deeper than the first page of the police report.

To their credit, L.A.’s finest and the local press come through for us in the wake of the good doctor’s Mandeville Canyon brake test. Whether the D.A.’s office and the court system will do the same remains to be determined.

But what happens next time, when it’s you — or me — writhing on the asphalt?

And yes, there was a lot of talk from local politicians about moving forward with the Cyclists’ Bill of Rights following the good doctor’s arrest. But now we can’t even get the Mayor and the rest of the MTA board to devote a lousy 1% each from their proposed sales tax increase to help keep cyclists and pedestrians alive. And after a brief flurry of coverage of cycling issues, the local press has moved on to more important issues, like whether Lindsey is or isn’t gay.

So I find myself getting fed up with it all, and like Howard Beale, feeling mad as hell and ready to do something about it.

And I wonder if it’s just me, or is this, finally, our moment — the time when we join together and scream at the top of our lungs, we’re not going to take it anymore. When we finally take action as a group to demand the respect of drivers, politicians and law enforcement. To insist on our rights as cyclists and as Americans. And ensure the safety of every rider, here in L.A. and around the country.

Or are we just going to get back on our bikes and let this moment — and our anger — pass forever, like all the other such moments before?

 

Streetsblog covers the exceptional police protection at last Friday’s Critical Mass in Santa Monica. The stupidest bike lane in America has been discovered right here in Westwood (though personally, I’d vote for the bike lanes on the new Santa Monica Blvd. that end without warning in Century City, leaving riders to fight for space on an over crowded, high speed thoroughfare). A student at Humbolt State may or may not have been fatally injured in a traffic accident. As if road rage wasn’t enough to worry about, someone is shooting cyclists on Long Island. Riders in New Jersey share our complaints about crowded and inadequate roadways. Finally, a writer for the Concorde Monitor suggests cyclists and drivers can all get along if we just use a little common sense and think more like fishermen.

Category: Advocacy & Politics, General / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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