Talk about not getting it.
Letter writers to the Daily Breeze respond with the usual windshield bias clichés to the paper’s recent story about the Tuesday’s die-in in Palos Verdes Estates.
Especially since all the riders are really asking for is to not get killed when they ride through the peninsula.
Like the first letter, from a San Pedro resident, who says governments on the peninsula shouldn’t give in to “the shrill carping of a narcissistic, entitled and noisy minority.”
Significantly less that 1 percent of the users of PVP roadways are bicyclists, yet they stridently demand that vehicular travelers virtually surrender the roads throughout PVP to them, allegedly for their own “safety.”
The vast majority of bicyclists riding PVP roadways are using them for recreation, while conversely, automobile drivers are commuting, attending to errands or business.
On weekends especially, the critical major PVP arteries are typically clogged by crowds of hundreds of cyclists, often arrogantly hogging lanes and congesting the roadways.
Never mind the obvious contradiction that “less than percent” of road users somehow manage to congest the roadways by the hundreds.
Support SoCal’s leading site for bike news and advocacy. Give to the 2nd Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive today!
Or that the riders are “arrogantly hogging lanes,” since that’s exactly where the DMV says they’re supposed to be.
And never mind the ridiculous assertion that everyone in a car has somewhere important to go, while everyone on bikes are just out to have fun and to make life miserable for all those poor, put-upon people in cars, who never, ever drive without some urgent need.
He ends by claiming there are “hundreds, if not thousands” of dedicated bike trails where people could ride rather than forcing riders to deal with odious congestion.
Maybe someone should tell him that congestion is caused by all those people in cars on the road, who wouldn’t be stuck in traffic if they weren’t busy being traffic. Or that all those thousands of miles of bike trails exist mostly in his overly vivid imagination.
Then there’s the following letter, which confirms that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing by citing CVC 21202, which every bike rider should know by heart.
Section 21202 of the California Vehicle Code says bicyclists must ride as close to the curb as practicable. That means cyclists riding side-by-side are breaking the law.
Which is absolutely true, if you ignore the rest of the statute. Especially subsection (3), which lists the many conditions under which the requirement to ride to the right doesn’t apply.
(3) When reasonably necessary to avoid conditions (including, but not limited to, fixed or moving objects, vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, animals, surface hazards, or substandard width lanes) that make it unsafe to continue along the right-hand curb or edge, subject to the provisions of Section 21656. For purposes of this section, a “substandard width lane” is a lane that is too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane.
In other words, you don’t have to ride to the right when the right lane is too narrow to safely share with a motor vehicle, while allowing for at least a three foot passing distance, and without having to ride in the gutter and debris that collects on the side of the road.
Which is pretty much every street on the Palos Verdes peninsula, let alone the entire County of Los Angeles.
………
A blood drive will be held over the next few weeks for Linda O’Connor, who remains in a coma in critical condition a week after she was struck by an alleged drugged hit-and-run driver while she was riding with a friend in Moorpark.
According to the Ventura County Star, 34-year old Jasmine Duran, the driver who ran her down and tried to hide her car after fleeing from the scene, will be arraigned next month on felony counts of hit-and-run and driving under the influence of drugs.
………
‘Tis the season.
Burbank’s Bike Angels lined up 50 bike on the steps of city hall, just part of the 200 refurbished bikes they plan to give away through the Salvation Army and other charitable organizations.
A bighearted Rohnert Park businessman gave out 200 bicycles and helmets to kids from struggling families. And in at least one case, slipped a mother a wad of cash to finish her Christmas shopping after both of her sons received new bikes.
Members of a Tennessee Baptist church team with the owners of a local funeral home to donate 45 bicycles for students at a nearby elementary school.
A Pittsburgh volunteer spends hours every month searching for special needs children who could use an individually customized tricycle, giving away over 1,200 of the $1,800 bikes since 2012.
A Louisiana sporting goods store gave 30 bikes to students at a Catholic school.
Florida’s Jack the Bike Man plans to give away a whopping 1,200 bicycles to area kids in a single day.
………
Taylor Phinney says cycling needs saving, and he that barely decided to stick with it for next year instead of retiring.
The man credited with inventing motor doping claims a January television investigation will reveal technical fraud at the highest levels of pro cycling.
Australia’s Mitch Docker has recovered from his horrific crash on the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix that left him with a broken eye socket, his tongue cut in half and six broken teeth.
………
Local
Los Angeles officials unveiled the new and improved Van Nuys Blvd in Pacoima, where one northbound lane was removed to make room for two 0.8-mile bike lanes; only the northbound bike lane is parking protected, while the southbound riders get a small buffer to separate them from motor vehicle traffic.
The LACBC reports on Tuesday’s meeting to discuss completing the missing 12.5 miles of the LA River bike path through the San Fernando Valley.
Altadena’s newly relocated Open Road Bicycle Shop goes for the wow factor with a repurposed dry cleaner’s carousel filled with bikewear.
State
San Francisco’s experiment with raised bike lanes used four different approaches to protect riders; one with a vertical curb was the least effective in preventing injuries.
National
Wired offers a semi-legal guide to hacking safer streets, based on an actual guide to hacking safer streets.
This is the price of unsafe passing, as a truck driver in my hometown gets 90 days behind bars for a failed pass, while his impatience cost a bike rider his life.
The Chicago Tribune bizarrely responds to a DePaul University study suggesting an Idaho Stop Law could save lives with an editorial saying too many bike riders have died already, even though none of them were killed going through a stop sign or red light. Chicago Streetsblog smartly dissects the editorial.
International
Trek’s CEO says women who ride love riding just like the guys.
A conservative think tank accuses Calgary of retroactively tweaking bike lane numbers to make the goals easier to meet.
Britain’s transportation minister could face private prosecution for dooring a bicyclist; in the UK, private citizens can pay to have someone prosecuted if government prosecutors won’t do the job.
British cyclist Guy Martin had to give up his attempt to break the record for riding 11,000 miles around the British coast after pulling his Achilles tendon.
Over 400,000 Belgians receive a government allowance for riding to work, an increase of 30% since 2011. A program like that could dramatically cut the number of cars on the street here, at a fraction of the cost of other efforts.
Manga fans can look forward to the upcoming anime version of Minami Kamakura High School Girls Cycling Club.
A Beijing professor says China’s laws need to catch up with the rapidly rising use of ebikes.
Finally…
Why waste money on a skin suit when you can just buy a compression shirt and sick in your gut. Don’t be a jerk at your local bike shop.
And nothing like a very fast-paced tour of Tokyo.
