May 24, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 23-year old man killed in South Park hit-and-run last month; police looking for silver 2008-2013 Mercedes
This is what keeps me up at night.
Too often, we may not learn about the things that happen on our streets until weeks later, if at all.
That’s what happened in this case, when a man riding a bike was left to die by a heartless coward in LA’s South Park neighborhood over a month ago.
And we only learned about it today.
According to a press release from the LAPD, a 23-year old man was riding west on 43rd Street at Main Street around 10:40 pm on Thursday, April 13th, when he was run down by a driver headed south on Main.
The driver fled south on Main without stopping, leaving the victim, identified as Iomer Samuel Cruz, fatally injured in the street.
There’s no description of the suspect; police are looking for a silver 2008-2013 Mercedes Benz C230 or C330.
Anyone with information is urged to call LAPD Central Traffic Division Officer Balderas or Detective Campos at 213/833-3713; after hours or on weekends call the Central Traffic Division’s Watch Commander at 213/833-3746.
As always, there is a standing $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the driver.
You can find security cam video of the crash here. I’m not posting it because it shows the actual impact, so be sure you really want to see it before you click on the link.
This is at least the 18th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the seventh that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; just three of those have been in the City of Los Angeles.
It’s also the seventh fatal hit-and-run involving a SoCal bike rider this year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Iomer Samuel Cruz and all his loved ones.
The victim died at the scene, despite the efforts of paramedics, and has not been publicly identified.
An anonymous caller alerted the police to the location of the driver’s car, a black late model Nissan SUV, less than a block away in an underground parking garage in the 14100 block of Cerise Avenue.
A street view shows a large apartment complex at that location, suggesting the 21-year old driver, who also has not been publicly identified, may have been arrested at his home, or visiting another person.
April 28, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Deliberate vehicular assault in Point Loma hit-and-run, CA ebike rebates, and comment on Redondo Beach Blvd plan
Tristan Gonzalez, a former San Diego police helicopter pilot and a high school mountain bike league board member — and, I’m told, a really nice guy — was riding on Catalina Blvd near Bernice Drive when he was run down by the driver around 4:50 pm.
He posted about the crash from his hospital bed, describing the suspect as a white male around 35-45 years old, wearing a lighter colored baseball cap, and driving a smaller white pickup truck with an extended cab and non-tinted windows.
He said he first encountered the driver of a white Toyota Tacoma a block earlier near Catalina Boulevard and Narragansett Avenue. He said he sensed the driver was getting dangerously close to him. At one point, he said the driver hit the handlebars of Gonzalez’s bike.
Gonzalez said he approached the truck and looked into the window. He said the driver stared straight ahead and didn’t acknowledge him.
As they both continued down Catalina toward Bernice, he sensed he was about to be hit.
“All of a sudden, I hear honking. I hear a car speed up, and sure enough, the same white truck came up alongside me,” said Gonzalez. “I just had time to look over and to see it was the same truck and to see the driver steer and turn the truck and speed right into me. I went flying and landed in the street with several injuries.”
To make matters worse, I’m told a witness pulled over to help, but accidentally left her car in drive, only stopping when Gonzolez’ helmet was wedged between the front tire, fender and bumper as a wheel chock.
He was hospitalized with a broken hip, clavicle and punctured lung. The good news is, he was scheduled to be released on Wednesday.
Police are reportedly taking the incident seriously, investigating the crash as an assault with a deadly weapon. Although it should be considered attempted murder.
A still photo taken from a doorbell video shows the white extended cab pickup.
An anti-bike member of the British Parliament called for removing a bike lane where 59 people have been injured in the past year as a result of a pale line painted the same color as a curb, creating an optical illusion; he has also used racist terms in the past in criticizing bike lanes. Or they could just paint one or the other a different color, and solve the whole problem.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The LA Times gets it, saying walking to school shouldn’t be deadly, in the wake of the crash that killed a mom and critically injured her daughter as they crossed the street to get to the girl’s school. Then again, biking to school shouldn’t mean risking life and limb, either.
Metro says this year’s Bike Week is scheduled for May 15-19 and Bike Day, formerly known as Bike To Work Day, will be Thursday, May 18. Let’s just hope it doesn’t fizzle out for lack of interest like it did last year.
The family of fallen Encinitas bicyclist Jennings Worley have begun settlement talks in a lawsuit against Shea Homes, three years after Worley, a leading scientist working on a cure cystic fibrosis, was killed when moving truck driver right hooked him turning into one of the builder’s developments. Which raises the question of how many CF patients will needlessly suffer because he isn’t there to develop a treatment for the devastating disease.
A Spokane, Washington website says 750 bike riders have been struck by drivers in the city since 2014, along with 1,500 pedestrians, and examines what can be done to stop the carnage.
Road.ccexplains what all-road bikes are, describing them as “drop-bar bikes that are fast and capable on any kind of road surface from smooth asphalt all the way to light gravel tracks.” In other words, what we used to call a “bicycle.”
Let’s start with news of yet another bike rider injured by a heartless hit-and-run driver.
Steve Messer forwards news that a friend of his was the victim of a hit-and-run while riding in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood.
It’s hard to read the small type, but the victim, a former cop and board member with the high school mountain biking league, was riding on Catalina Blvd when he was run down by the driver around 4:50 pm.
The suspect, described as a white male 35-45 years old, wearing a lighter colored baseball cap, was driving a smaller white pickup truck with a regular cab and non-tinted windows.
If you live or ride in San Diego, try to get the word out to get more eyes out on the street looking for the suspect. And if you know anyone who works in the news media, give them a push to cover this story.
A review of the project after a year found an 18% increase in people walking and 32% more people biking through the area. At the intersection of Culver Boulevard and Main Street, the number of bikes counted nearly doubled. Bus travel became faster and ridership increased more on the corridor compared with citywide.People said they were biking, walking and taking transit more often in the area, according to the review. They felt safer, more comfortable and noticed fewer speeding cars.
As for traffic? It moved faster in the morning hours, and in the evening it took drivers about two minutes longer to pass through the area. Two minutes. That’s a minor inconvenience. It certainly seems like a fair trade-off to make the corridor safer and more convenient for alternative modes of transportation — which was the purpose of the project.
Yet remarkably, but perhaps unsurprisingly, MOVE Culver City is in danger of being unceremoniously ripped out by the new conservative majority on the council in response to the windshield bias of some motorists, many of whom may only pass through the city without stopping, on their way to somewhere else.
Yet somehow demand that the city cater to their needs, rather than that of people walking shopping, dining and biking in the downtown area, as well as those riding buses.
According to the paper,
Yet even the modest encroachment of Move Culver City may be too much for opponents of the project, who seem particularly offended by the bus lane. There is a proposal to add back a car lane and make buses and bicyclists share a lane, which would dissuade all but the most confident cyclists and slow the buses, thus making alternative modes of transportation a lot less appealing. And for what? So some drivers can get to their destination two minutes faster…
Like most communities across California, Culver City has plenty of plans detailing its commitment to bike lanes, public transit and sustainable city design as strategies to reduce greenhouse gases from vehicle pollution to help fight climate change. But those plans are meaningless if elected leaders don’t have the political backbone to see them through.
As the paper’s editorial bard makes clear, we will never have safe streets and more livable communities if elected leaders lack the backbone to stand up to opposition from motorists, which is virtually inevitable with any project.
Meanwhile, local elected leaders, both current and former, are adding their voices in support of the project.
Assembly transportation chair @LauraFriedmanCA joins Sen. @BenAllenCA and Asm @ib2_real in publicly supporting Move Culver City’s protected bike lane and bus lane … not removing them for more cars. That’s a lot of state muscle— hope our council doesn’t ignore them! https://t.co/Ku3ZlKFd1H
— Bubba for Culver City Council! (@vote4bubba) April 24, 2023
Asm Bryan saying what some of our local leaders are still afraid to. Lets hope Culver City Mayor @AlbertVeraJr meets this moment tomorrow and makes Move permanent without adding more cars. https://t.co/ILKZeoAzNl
Streets For All is asking you to call for more funding for LADOT at tomorrow’s LA City Council Budget Committee, and support bike and walk-friendly motions at Wednesday’s Transportation Committee.
Budget Committee (6:00pm, Tuesday 4/25)
The committee will take up the Mayor’s proposed budget for next fiscal year. We are asking you to:
– Advocate for 18 more positions for LADOT’s activate transportation team which is sorely under resourced and stymying our efforts
– Advocate for 4 litigation support positions for LADOT so they can focus on getting bus and bike lanes in the ground and not on lawsuits – Public comment can be made virtually in real time or in advance
Transportation Committee (2pm, Wednesday 4/26)
– Advocate that the committee approve LADOT’s plan to revisit peak hour lanes
– Support new protected bike lanes on Lincoln over Ballona Creek
– Support a new dedicated speed hump program around schools – Public comment can be made in advance or in person (no virtual option)We’ve put together a toolkit to help you make public comment in the easiest way possible:
This is how you design a hospital for people, not cars.
Ottawa's new hospital will have an impressive 630 bicycle parking spaces, including 186 in a secure room outside the staff entrance. Visitors will be able to ride on a dedicated cycle track *right up to the front entrance* where they will be greeted with U-racks. pic.twitter.com/qJF653Fl0w
British police used deadly force to bust a fleeing ebike rider, intentionally hitting the suspect head-on to end a “high-speed” chase before swarming him as he lay writhing in pain; he was charged with possessing a fake weapon and a “bladed article,” as well as weed. Although it’s questionable how high speed the chase could have been on an ebike.
A California appeals court concluded that drivers don’t have a first amendment right to honk their horns, ruling that the law “prohibits all driver-initiated horn use except when such use is ‘reasonably necessary to [e]nsure safe operation’ of the vehicle.” Now if we can just find someone to enforce that.
Accused killer Kaitlin Armstrong appeared in an Austin, Texas courtroom, charged with the murder of gravel cycling star Moriah “Mo” Wilson, as the press focused on her new face after undergoing plastic surgery in a failed effort to hide her identity before her arrest.
Surprisingly, a sizable majority of New Yorkers want the city to make streets safer for kids to bike and walk, even if it means removing parking or making it harder to drive; a new poll shows two-thirds of New Yorkers think the city should prioritize pedestrian safety over driver convenience, while nearly six in 10 support doing it even if it means removing parking, adding to traffic congestion or closing down streets.
In it, Linton takes the Los Angeles Planning Department to task — deservedly — for producing what he calls “an astonishingly vacuous report” that’s ostensibly a status report on implementation of the city’s mobility plan.
Yet one that he says ignores all the multimodal facilities included in Planning Department’s own plan.
Almost as if they are, in reality, the LA Lack of Planning Dept.
According to Linton,
In 2015, the city approved the Mobility Plan, with hundreds of miles of new bus and bike lanes, pedestrian improvements, and a Vision Zero policy to end L.A. City traffic deaths by 2035. Safe streets advocates loved it. Reactionaries hated the plan so much they sued to block it.
Yet the Planning Department somehow gives itself an undeserved pat on the back, claiming to have accomplished 76% of the mobility plan’s Action Programs.
While that may sound like they’re making real progress, those Action Programs have nothing to do with putting paint on the street. Let alone the long-promised barriers and networks that might actually provide some protection and connections for people on bicycles.
Instead, Linton describes them this way.
“…a sort of obscure plan appendix that lists 173 tasks assigned to various city departments. The Action Plan includes things like: roadway safety outreach, wayfinding, analysis of unpermitted mountain biking in city parks, and periodic updates of LADOT’s Manual of Policies and Procedures.”
He ties their massive success in rearranging the massive pile of papers on their collective desks back to last year’s fiasco with the city council’s non-approval of the Healthy Streets LA initiative — which does nothing more than require the city to live up to its commitments, and build out the mobility plan they already passed when streets in the plan get resurfaced.
That’s it.
But evidently, that’s just a bridge and resurfaced roadway too far for the city.
He describes how the city council, led by now-disgraced racist Council President Nury Martinez, voted to adopt their own ordinance mirroring Healthy Streets LA.
One that wouldn’t contain the requirement to build out the mobility plan, but would, in actuality, leave it up to the council to decide whether or not to actually fulfill their obligations.
And you can probably guess how that would go, if you’ve been paying attention so far.
Last August, the council made it sound like the ordinance would happen right away. Then-president Martinez stated that city staff would “report back on my motion within the next few weeks.” Councilmember Nithya Raman spoke of the council “match[ing] the urgency that I hear from all of you [safe streets advocates] today.”
That’s exactly what the city’s bicycling community heard from an LADOT official within weeks of the 2010 bike plan’s passage, which was later subsumed into the city’s mobility plan.
We were told, while still celebrating our hard-fought victory, that the whole damn thing was merely “aspirational.”
Something the city has more than lived up to by living down to their extremely limited aspirations.
As Linton mentions above, we’re still waiting for that draft ordinance mirroring Healthy Streets LA to come back for a reading, let alone a vote, a full eight months — not weeks — after it was promised.
There was hope after the last election that the city’s new progressive councilmembers would light a fire under our sleepy governing body, and we might actually see some action on our streets.
But it seems just the opposite has happened. And the council has managed to douse whatever fire they might have had.
As I said, it’s a must read. So what are you waiting for?
No description was available for the suspect or their vehicle. Or for the victim, apparently.
As always, there is a standing $25,000 reward for any hit-and-run resulting in serious injuries in the City of Los Angeles. Although there’s not a lot to go on this time.
But there may be hope, according to The Thousand Oaks Acorn.
The survey found that 75% of drivers empathize with cyclists’ frustrations, such as being overtaken too closely, while 81% of cyclists said they understood the challenges that drivers must deal with while navigating busy local streets.
So there’s that, anyway.
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Gravel Bike California stops to sniff, if not the roses, the superbloom of flowers brought on by the recent rains on the Carrizo Plain.
When you hear superbloom, California thinks #CarrizoPlain:
— Gravel Bike California (@GravelBikeCal) April 13, 2023
Thanks to Zachary Rynew for the heads-up.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
San Francisco Streetsblog says a proposal for bike lanes on a commuter route and tourist attraction between Sausalito and San Francisco is already seeing a bikelash.
After a British bicyclist is understandably outraged and profane when a van driver cuts him off in the country’s left-handed equivalent of a high-speed right hook, the driver threatens a defamation case when he gets review bombed. As if you can somehow be defamed over something you actually did.
But sometimes it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
An Edinburgh columnist applauds anyone who has the courage to ride a bike on the city streets, but begs bike-riding men to cover their butt cracks. Or “bahookie” in the local parlance, apparently.
No bias here. A WeHo paper says the city wants to take away your “right” to make a right turn on a red light, while saying the maneuver is a factor in just 1% of crashes. Which means it’s responsible for around 400 deaths every year, which probably matters to the victim’s families, even if it doesn’t matter to them. And I don’t recall right on red being included in the Bill of Rights, but maybe I missed that day.
A San Diego TV station reports city council members responded to a recent hit-and-run by continuing to discuss the city’s Vision Zero Plan “to eliminate but also prevent traffic collisions, bicycle and pedestrian injuries and deaths,” which seems to be the same thing. Although I would be overjoyed just to hear Vision Zero discussed in the Los Angeles council chambers.
The San Jose Mercury News’ Mr. Roadshow explains why bicyclists don’t pay for the roads the same way drivers do. But then the paper hides it behind a paywall as “premium” content, reflecting a basic misunderstanding of how the internet works. Although you can read it for free if you’re willing to accept their daily emails.
Once again, my apologies for yesterday’s unexcused absence.
Let’s just say it’s yet another reminder than diabetes sucks. And that you don’t want this crap if there’s anything you can do to avoid it.
Because right now, the only thing that compares to my excessively high blood sugar is just how low I feel each and every day, both physically and emotionally.
Thirteeen-year old Joshua Mora was crossing Whittier Boulevard in the crosswalk on March 30th when 29-year-old Banning resident Erwin Majano allegedly slammed into him.
Mora lost his right leg as a result of the impact.
At last report, Majano was being held on $50,000 bond; he was arrested following a tip from the public. Which means someone will likely receive the standing $25,000 reward upon conviction.
Imelda Padilla, field deputy for Martinez, will face Marisa Alcaraz, environmental policy director and deputy chief of staff to City Councilmember Curren Price.
Martinez resigned last October when a recording surfaced capturing her making racist and otherwise offensive comments in a conversation with CD14 Councilmember Kevin De León and former CD1 Councilmember Gil Cedillo, along with a powerful union head.
Yet one will be the district’s next councilmember — in part because a shameful 11.4% of eligible voters turned out to determine who will represent the other 88.6%.
Day One is offering you the chance to try out a GoSGV ebike this weekend.
Discover the joys of riding an e-bike! Come see us on Saturday April 15, 11AM-2PM at the Monterey Park Cherry Blossom Festival Earth Day Tent for a FREE Test Ride of a #GoSGV e-bike (must be 18 or older). https://t.co/hdqmCJjX2Rpic.twitter.com/2I1I7P49os
This is who we share the road with. Police in Santa Ana are looking for the heartless coward in an older black Cadillac DeVille who flipped an 11-year old boy through the air and kept going without stopping; fortunately, the victim wasn’t seriously injured, and his companion wasn’t struck. Thanks to How The West Was Saved for the heads-up.
He gets it. A Utah columnist argues that cities need to prioritize people, not cars. Which is exactly what Los Angeles will do on Sunday, and four cities in the San Gabriel Valley will do next week. Now we just need to do it every day.
Bighearted residents of Seabrook, Texas rallied around a hit-and-run victim who was injured when a driver smashed into her adult tricycle; less than two hours after a volunteer firefighter posted about the crash, she had up to five replacement bikes to choose from.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana will extend and add lighting to the city’s Mississippi River Levee Path, which forms a link in the 3,000-mile-long Mississippi River Bicycle Trail. I used to ride that pathway over four decades ago, when I first got the little blue Trek I rode for 25 years.
In yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a Florida man has been arrested for the high-speed crash that killed a bike rider. A security cam captured him doing 90 mph in a 40 mph zone moments before he slammed into the victim, knocking him more than the length of a football field from the point of impact; he has several previous citations for excessive speed, including doing 115 mph in a 45 mp zone just a year earlier. Yet he was somehow allowed to keep driving until he killed someone.
International
Momentum Magazine offers “six fantastic and affordable commuter bikes” for spring riding. And for once, when a magazine says affordable, they actually mean it, with price starting at just $499.
Cycling Weekly considers how far is too far to commute to work. I once met a RAAM competitor who trained by commuting from his home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado to his job in Denver and back everyday, a distance of 156 miles — even in the winter.
There’s a special place in hell for whoever stole a Mexican Paralympian’s custom adaptive handcycle from his Playa del Carmen home. Seriously, anyone could tell it’s made for someone with special needs just by looking at it.
April 10, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Protest calls for safer streets, more on death of masters track cycling champ, and not guilty plea in San Pedro hit-and-run
Mora’s injury is far from the first to happen on the one-mile stretch of Whittier Boulevard between South Boyle Avenue and South Lorena Street. According to the Transportation Injury Mapping System, between 2013 and 2022 there were 225 crashes resulting in injury or death.
“Enough is enough,” said Damian Kevitt, the founder of the non-profit organization Streets are for Everyone. “People need to slow down.”
Kevitt went on to add that local residents have been pleading for safety improvements at the crosswalk for years, including safety cameras and other security devices.
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s KRON-4 reports there were calls to pass AB-645, which would legalize speed cams around schools and dangerous streets.
Like in Boyle Heights, where the traffic fatality rate is 53 percent higher than the overall city, with more traffic deaths than any other L.A. neighborhood over the past five years.
The 51-year old Montoya had just picked up a meal from a food when he was allegedly run down by Lockhart’s speeding car. Police arrested Montoya five days after the crash, based on tips from the public.
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In case you ever wondered why those plastic car-tickler bendy posts aren’t protection.
Mobility lanes that are separated from automobile lanes with delineators (a.k.a. flex posts) offer no significant collision protection for a vulnerable road user.
A new video refutes the myth that no one uses New York’s bike lanes, with 321 people on bikes passing through a single intersection in a single half hour during rush hour, compared to a little more than 500 motor vehicles.
And it notes that no one rode salmon, despite the city’s reputation for wrong-way bicyclists.
Thanks to Victor Bale for the heads-up.
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North Carolina Public Television offers a feature on Charlotte CyclingSavvy Instructor Pamela Murray, calling her a local bike hero.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.
No bias here. A London website reports that bicycling trip segments have tripled in the city over the past 20 years — but then goes on to question whether concerns about road safety, “though perfectly right and proper,” have taken undue precedence, and been overly influenced by campaigners and “misplaced public opinion.”
No bias here, either. London’s Daily Mail tries to stir up controversy by sharing photos of 19 bike riders rolling through a floating bus stop as passengers are getting on or off. Buried in the story is the fact it took place over five hours at multiple locations, along with the fact that the bus stops are new and it will take everyone time to adjust to them.
A new coalition of Westwood Village and UCLA groups unveiled the new Westwood Connected campaign, which calls for a rail stop on the UCLA campus, pedestrian improvements, and protected bike lanes on Galey and Wilshire, as well as the long fought for bike lanes on Westwood Blvd. And it actually has a chance now that anti-bike lane former Councilmember Paul Koretz is gone.
Prolific character actor Michael Lerner passed away over the weekend at 81; the Oscar-nominated performer appeared in films ranging from Barton Fink, Elf and The Candidate, to Harlem Nights and Eight Men Out. Although the highlight of his career was undoubtedly playing a bicycle salesman in The Brady Bunch.
The CHP reports a man riding a bicycle in Oakhurst made a suicide swerve Saturday afternoon, striking the side of a large pickup as he allegedly began to make a U-turn. Which is probably bullshit; most alleged suicide swerves are likely the result of overly close passes, rather than careless bicyclists.
Fortunetalks with Forward health systems CEO Adrian Aoun, who rides his bike for mental clarity, calling it his meditation. I’ve long considered bicycling to be a moving meditation, allowing you to get out of your head and become one with the world around you.
That comes in behind only New York’s 17. And tops Houston, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida with ten each, followed by Chicago and Detroit with eight.
But on a per capita basis, we’re not even close.
Tucson, Arizona led the nation with 1.26 deaths per 100,000 residents, followed closely by Detroit with 1.2 per 100,000 people.
Los Angeles was all the way down at number 16, with a relatively paltry 0.30 per 100,000 residents. Or we could be 20th, since we were tied with Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, Chicago and San Jose.
Despite leading the US in sheer number of bike riders killed, New York didn’t even make the top 20 on a per capita basis.
But however you look at it, it’s still too damn many.
Then again, even one traffic death is one too many.
Joshua Mora was crossing Whittier Blvd at Osme Ave when he was struck by the speeding motorbike rider, who left him sprawled and bleeding in the street as he angrily got back on his bike and sped away.
Next week: Virtual Happy Hour w/ Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky @CD5LosAngeles on Wednesday April 12 @ 5p!
Big bike, bus, + rail projects are coming to CD5! Bring your transpo questions for the councilmember and newest @metrolosangeles Board member. RSVP: https://t.co/xASYcp7MEa
Which sounds like a position better suited to The Batchelor, but it pays up to 150 grand.
ICYMI: We're hiring!
NACTO is looking for a movement builder to be our next Director of Engagement. This role will lead our efforts to connect and champion the transportation professionals working towards equitable policy and street design!
A writer for the Los Angeles Timeswalks all 25 miles of Sunset Blvd in a single day. That’s long been one of my favorite LA bike rides, taking you through a microcosm of virtually every type of LA neighborhood from DTLA to the coast. Although it’s a lot more fun if you do it when it’s not choked with cars and drivers.
State
A father in Aliso Viejo credits an Apple AirTag with recovering his daughter’s stolen ebike, reclaiming it from the thief himself when sheriff’s deputies were unable to find it. Although you should be cautious about that doing yourself, since you never know if the thief might be armed.
We recently mentioned a three-year old boy in Maine whose Spider-Man bike was stolen when he went into a store with his mom; now a bighearted woman who can’t even afford shelter for herself used what little money she had to buy him a new one.
Six months after they were installed, new bike and pedestrian lanes on a Maryland roadway have eliminated crashes for people walking and biking, while increasing travel times just 30 seconds for morning motor vehicle commuters.
The victim, identified only as a man who appeared to be in his 50s, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The driver fled the scene, apparently without stopping.
There’s no word on whether the victim had lights on his bike in the early morning darkness. Then again, there’s no word on whether the driver was using his.
The fact that the victim was riding his bike in this weather suggests he had no other option, possibly just trying to get to work in the rain.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Pomona Police Department at 909/802-7741 or 909/620-2048.
This is at least the 14th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County.
Six of those SoCal deaths have been hit-and-runs.
Sadly, the overwhelming majority of hit-and-run drivers get away with it. But in the unlikely event they do catch the driver, California’s lenient hit-and-run laws mean they will likely face just four years behind bars, at most.
Even then, prosecutors usually bargain down from that low level in order to get a guilty plea.
Which means most drivers just get a slap on the wrist for making the conscious decision to flee the scene, and leave an innocent victim to die alone in the street.
You may notice that each of those people have a “D” after their names.
That doesn’t bode well in the newly Republican controlled House, where any environmental or bicycle bill is likely to be met with extreme skepticism, to put it mildly.
Let alone a financial incentive to buy one.
So unless they can get a few Republicans to co-sponsor the bill, it’s likely to be dead in the water.
Yesenia Bibriesca pled guilty to felony hit-and-run causing death, as well as misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, and destroying evidence in the death of 43-year old Christopher Jones as he rode his bike in July, 2020.
Police were able to track down her damaged Lexus sedan, and take her into custody within days.
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Back around the turn of the century, I was brought on board to help save one of the most innovative company’s in the music industry, a company that literally invented home studio recording.
I worked 80 hour weeks for over four months to develop a marketing campaign to would reposition the company, and introduce a number of groundbreaking new products, in an effort to save them from bankruptcy after years of mismanagement.
It was a huge success. We brought in over $6 million in new sales in just three days after the new products dropped and the ad campaign broke.
But it wasn’t enough. The banks cut off funding, the brand and patents were sold off to another company, and they shut down in a matter of days, putting over a hundred people out of work.
The company I was with was a victim of the dot.com crash, when banks retrenched and stopped lending money.
Kitsbow appears to be one of the first victims of today’s financial retrenchment, as higher interest rates and financial instability lead investors to become more conservative with who they fund, and how much they’re willing to risk.
It's a very sad story that Kitsbow is going out of business. Hard to think of a brand that treated employees better. Just noting that EVERYTHING is on sale on kits https://t.co/1cGVbMInon and you wind up helping them and getting some very sweet kit.https://t.co/vqFvgRNBa5
A man with a history of DUIs faces 15 years to life behind bars, after he was convicted of killing a 76-year old man while driving on a Sacramento bike path with a BAC over three times the legal limit; Armondo Moreno-Rodriguez drove four miles on the American River pathway before slamming into the victim, who would have had no reason to watch out for someone drunk enough, and foolish enough, to drive on a bikeway.
A British Columbia woman learned the hard way not to try to reclaim your stolen bike yourself, when she had a gun pointed at her after she spotted her bike on the street and tried to walk off with it; the man who threatened her was released the next day on just $500 bond, despite being a career criminal
Bicycling reports that there will be a women’s edition of Milan-San Remo starting next year, although it will be much shorter than the men’s race; UCI limits women’s races to a maximum of 170 kilometers, or just 105 miles, compared to the men’s 186 mile course. Just one more example of pro cycling assuming women are the weaker sex, and couldn’t possibly manage the same courses the men ride. Read it on AOL if the magazine blocks you.
