This is what keeps me up at night. And what really pisses me off.
Because not only did the police, city and news media fail to inform us about yet another fatal hit-and-run, but the victim was a kid just out for a bike ride.
Here’s what we know so far about the needless death of Michael Smith, courtesy of a press release from Streets Are For Everyone.
The loved ones of Michael Kejuan Ramaun James Smith, Streets Are For Everyone, community members, and members of SAFE Families will host a Ghost Bike Memorial event to honor and remember Michael Smith, who was struck and killed by a speeding driver on July 22nd, 2025.
Michael was riding his bicycle on 83rd Street, headed toward Main Street to pick up a friend for a bike ride. He was struck and instantly killed by a speeding driver who was allegedly traveling at 75 MPH on a residential street. The driver fled the scene but was later arrested and has since been released on bail.
Michael, who would have celebrated his 13th birthday on September 16, was a radiant and compassionate child who loved riding bikes. He was also an entrepreneur, running his own ice cream truck since the age of seven, with dreams of growing his business and future.
This is at least the 36th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 14th that I’m aware of in Los Angeles County; this was also the seventh we’ve learned about in the City of LA.
Six of those seven Los Angeles victims lost their lives riding in South LA.
Michael Smith was the 12th SoCal bike rider killed by a hit-and-run driver since the first of the year — fully one third of everyone killed riding a bicycle in Southern California this year.
But at least this time, they — allegedly — caught the heartless coward who left Michel to die in the street.
If you want to attend the ghost bike installation tomorrow, here is the information from the press release. If you do, ask Councilmember Price why we continue to all this to happen in South LA.
Ellen Atwater, Michael’s Mother, and other family members
Councilmember Curren D Price Jr.
Damian Kevitt, Executive Director of Streets Are For Everyone
Pastor Patricia Strong-Fargas, Co-Chair, Faith for SAFEr Streets
John Jones III, Founder of East Side Riders
Members of SAFE Families
Friends and community members
In addition to the ghost bike, 13 white doves will be released in honor of Michael, who would have turned 13 years old next month.
Update: My News LA reports the crash occurred around 2:55 pm. Michael died after being taken to a hospital.
Day 231 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
………
A quick reminder before we start about this week’s anticipated heat wave, with temperatures in Woodland Hills, LA County valleys and the Inland Empire expected to top well over 100°.
So try to ride early or late if at all possible, stick to shady, tree-lined routes when you can, and drink plenty of non-alcoholic fluids.
And keep your phone handy to get help if you get overheated.
Seriously, stay safe out there. I need every reader I’ve got these days.
Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable leaving my wife alone so soon after her heart attack, so I’m disappointed I won’t be there this time.
And yes, I feel guilty as hell asking you to go in my stead, but supporters need to turn out in force if you can make it.
Because opponents of the plan are certain to be there to fight for their precious free curbside parking spaces and a not-so-secret alternative to busier Sunset and Santa Monica Blvds, valuing convenience over protecting human lives.
Los Angeles officially opened the appeals process for street projects that bypass Measure HLA’s strict requirement to build out the city mobility plan whenever streets get significantly resurfaced or re-striped.
Today I submitted a city-level appeal for protected bike lanes that the city did not install during resurfacing on Ohio Avenue – along the Bundy Triangle Park in Sawtelle. Read my appeal letter.
He is also aware of a number of other appeals that should be filed soon.
I have discussed possible appeals with several people, and I understand that other folks are planning to file city-level appeals today. Below are additional appeals that I am aware of today. (I am adding to this list as I learn of additional appeals.)
Appeal of Corinth Avenue in Sawtelle Japantown – pdf
This is the first step required by the city before a lawsuit can be filed to enforce the requirements of Measure HLA — even though that was not part of the proposition passed overwhelming by LA voters.
David also forward several photos, along with these brief comments.
This was an extraordinary one. Maybe the largest group of cyclists ever for a Ciclavia. It was an impressive turnout of cycles.
Councilwoman Tracy Park set up a Tent in Mar Vista and the Venice end and unlike any other elected politician ever she stayed there from morning till it was done handing out bike flashing to everyone and chatting with anyone about anything that stopped on their bike. I saw her in the morning at Mar Vista and later at almost 4 pm in Venice.
Usually the electeds stay for the 1 hour morning photo-op to start the event and leave their staffers at the table the rest of the day.
Attached is a photo of me with Tracy Park and some Misc photos from the Venice end. I did not take a lot of photos at this one just wanted to enjoy the experience.
Or in Louisiana, where a former state trooper walked without a day behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run death of a man biking with his two sons, after a judge sentenced him to a three-year suspended sentence and three years probation.
Or Singapore, where a garbage truck driver was sentenced to just six months behind bars for killing a 60-year old man riding a bicycle, insisting he only realized he’d hit someone when he felt a bump under his wheels, although an eight-year driving ban will keep him from working again until he’s 72.
On the other hand, a 28-year old Texas man got 15 years for the hit-and-run that killed a Fort Worth father of five as he was riding his bicycle last year; the driver’s mother told police he wasn’t sure if he hit a deer or a homeless man, neither of which would justify just driving away — or covering his car with a tarp to hide it from the cops.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A bike rider in Cheshire, England says people riding on the county’s roads are “fair game for crazy drivers,” after police reject video evidence of dangerous driving due to a lack of witnesses. Although it seems like the cops themselves would be witnesses if they just watched the videos.
Bicyclists in West Yorkshire, England criticized the cops following yet another mass casualty event when a driver cut back into a group of bicyclists while attempting to pass on a blind curve, resulting in serious injuries to two riders, with several others hurt; the “abysmal” police report failed to criticize the driver, or even mention that the car had one.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A member of the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission busts the myth of wrong-way riding being safer for bicyclists. I still hear from people on a regular basis who insist salmon bicycling is safer than riding with traffic, all evidence to the contrary.
Cycling UK opens a new multi-day bikepacking route through “Majestic rolling hillsides, historic regal villages and bluebell-lined woodland trails,” just a stones-throw from London.
Day 230 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
………
Of course he gets it.
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Streets For All founder Michael Schneider says fourth-grader Nadir Gavarrete did not have to die in a Koreatown intersection earlier this month.
Nadir Gavarrete was riding an e-scooter along with his 19-year old brother when they were run down by a drunk driver, who was accused of blowing through a stop sign to make a left turn.
A stop sign, and an intersection, that shouldn’t have still been there.
Koreatown is one of the densest parts of Los Angeles — at 44,000 people per square mile, it’s more crowded than most New York City boroughs. Nearly every major street in Koreatown is on the city’s “high injury network” list — the 6% of streets that cause 70% of the traffic injuries and deaths. In other words, L.A. knows how dangerous Koreatown’s streets can be.
As a result, 14 years ago, in 2011, L.A. applied for a federal grant to improve safety along several city streets, specifically choosing to focus on the intersection of New Hampshire and 4th for one of its projects. The city won the grant money and kicked off community meetings to discuss installing a roundabout at the intersection, as well as adding enhanced crosswalks and other safety improvements to the immediate area.
Needless to say, a decade-and-a-half later, nothing has happened, this being Los Angeles and all.
Except for yet another needless death, added to a long and ever-growing list of failure.
What will it take for Los Angeles to have a sense of urgency in actually making our streets safer? We currently spend more on legal settlements to those hurt and killed on our streets than we do on Vision Zero, the city’s half-baked effort to reduce traffic deaths. Since Los Angeles declared itself a Vision Zero City in 2015, with the ultimate aim of having no one killed in car crashes on city streets by 2025, deaths and injuries have only gotten worse. In the last few years we’ve had at least three children hit and killed while walking to school. And yet the city’s leaders — facing a budget crisis, much of it of their own making — perpetually underfund LADOT and street safety in general.
Good question.
It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the whole thing.
Because the more things change in this city of fallen angels, the more they stay the same.
The lanes currently prohibit parking during morning and/or evening rush hours, too often turning them into high speed traffic lanes.
However, the bad news is, instead of converting the lanes to full-time bus or bike lanes, the city is restoring parking throughout the day. Which doesn’t actually improve safety for anyone, just trading one problem for another.
LADOT dangles the possibility of converting the lanes to some other, better use at some undisclosed future time. Although given the city’s financial problems — due in large part to those legal settlements referenced above — that day could be years, or even decades, off.
If ever.
LADOT Begins First Phase of Peak-Hour Lane Removal
LADOT has begun implementing the first phase of a citywide initiative to improve safety and access to street parking by removing peak-hour travel lanes and restoring full-time parking. This initiative, directed by the Los Angeles City Council, aims to enhance safety, improve access, and support the City’s long-term mobility goals.
Phase 1 of this initiative focuses on low-traffic corridors, restoring street parking on corridors where traffic volume is below determined thresholds. Future phases will examine higher-volume streets and may propose alternative uses for peak-hour lanes, such as dedicated bus lanes, protected bike lanes, or expanded pedestrian zones. LADOT will conduct outreach and collaborate with community stakeholders as future phases move forward, ensuring that proposed changes align with neighborhood needs.
In addition to providing greater parking availability to support surrounding businesses, these changes are expected to have minimal impact on congestion while improving street safety, with reduced speeding, fewer collisions, and improved visibility for people walking and biking.
The specific corridors selected for Phase 1 of peak-hour lane removal are:
Alpine St, from N. Spring to Yale
Alvarado St, Northbound, from James M. Wood to 7th
Beverly Blvd, from Rampart to Witmer
Broadway, Northbound, from 2nd to 1st
College St, from New Depot to Alameda
Crenshaw Blvd, from Florence to 59th St
La Tijera Blvd, Northbound, from Thornburn to Knowlton
Melrose Ave, from Vermont to Virgil
Nordhoff St, Westbound, from Corbin to Canoga
Pico Blvd, Westbound, from Overland to Sepulveda
Ventura Blvd, Eastbound, from Farralone to Tampa
Victory Blvd, from Lankershim to Clybourn
Washington Blvd, from Vermont to Flower
Washington Blvd, Eastbound, from Redondo to La Brea and from Wellington to Crenshaw
And the first thing they noticed was the bad shape of the road around Venice and Abbot Kinney, saying it was easy to notice if you’re trying to dodge pavement problems.
The second thing seemed to be members of White People 4 Black Lives, several accident attorneys and the Venice High School Cheerleaders handing out free water along the route, the latter as they tried to raise funds.
And yes, it seems a good time was had by all.
Although I had to miss it because of my wife’s health problems, since she still hasn’t bounced back enough to go herself, or to be left at home alone.
ABC News says the deadly 85th Percentile Rule that allows drivers to set speed limits with a heavy right foot could finally be on the way out.
Great idea. The White Line — the bicycle safety group founded by the parents of fallen Team USA cyclist Magnus White — put a group of Colorado lawmakers on a bus, and drove them around for a series of mobile town halls to show them the impact crashes have on vulnerable road users.
You’ve got to be kidding, part two. A Philadelphia judge blocked the city from building loading zones next to a bike lane, after the state passed a law banning drivers from stopping a car in one, as well as blocking any other changes to the street or the bike lanes, including installing protective barriers, in a decision that apparently wasn’t explained.
A 32-year old British man was sentenced to four years behind bars for the “horrendous” speeding, hit-and-run crash that left a bike-riding woman with life changing injuries; he fictitiously reported the car stolen at knifepoint 15 minutes after fleeing the scene.
Traffic safety experts called for a major overhaul of Malaysian roads, warning they prioritize cars and trucks at the expense of everyone else. In other words, just like the streets of Los Angeles, and pretty much everywhere else in Southern California.
In recent decades, many of America’s roads have indeed become more chaotic: Speed limits are higher; vehicles are (much) bigger; drivers are more aggressive and more likely to be distracted by smartphones. When parents see massive SUVs speeding down neighborhood streets or blowing through stop signs, they might feel less inclined to allow their kids to roam freely on foot or bicycle. And though the number of children injured or killed by cars while walking or riding a bike has fallen steadily since the 1970s, research by the CDC notes that this decline is not because streets are safer, but because fewer kids are out and about in the first place.
This pattern, some parents say, can create a self-perpetuating cycle: If drivers are less accustomed to encountering kids on roads, they might be less likely to drive safely around them, which in turn makes parents more anxious and restrictive of their child’s movements.
It’s worth giving the whole story a read.
Because one of the most common refrains from parents is that they would never allow their kids to ride on city streets, in Los Angeles or elsewhere, whether or not they ride themselves.
………
He gets it, too.
In a piece that starts out very tongue-in-cheek before evolving — devolving? — into legalese, a Canadian columnist takes conservatives to task for complaining about a recent court ruling ordering the government not to remove Toronto’s protected bike lanes.
It was judicial activism run amok, they agreed. Canada’s ever-inventive courts had discovered a “right to bicycle lanes.” What next: a right to volleyball courts? Time to invoke the notwithstanding clause, said some.
Well, that was then. When, one week ago, the Conservative government of Nova Scotia, with the province’s forests tinder-dry and fearing a repeat of the devastating wildfires of two years ago, issued a ban on hiking and camping in forested areas, conservatives were again apoplectic.
But the real issue, he says, is whether the government has the right to kill you.
The issue at stake in the bicycle lanes case is disarmingly simple: does the government have the right to kill you? It is not hyperbole but demonstrable, probabilistic fact that banning bike lanes will sentence a certain number of randomly selected Torontonians to death, and cause serious injuries to still more…
That’s also reflected in our Constitution. Section 7 of the Charter does not assert an absolute right to “life, liberty or security of the person” but the right not to be deprived thereof “except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”
Because removing bike lanes could predictably deprive some people of their “life, liberty or security of the person.”
And likely would.
Which does not mean the government has to build bike lanes. But it does mean the court had a reasonable basis to prohibit the government from removing them.
Nothing in the decision obliges the government to build new bicycle lanes. As such it involves no “positive rights,” which conservatives are right to oppose. It simply requires that before a government takes the extraordinary step of ordering the removal of lanes that have already been built – an action guaranteed to cost some lives and put many more in peril – it ought at least to have some basis in evidence or logic for doing so.
Maybe we should try that same argument on this side of the border the next time someone wants to rip out an existing bike lane here.
Hard to believe it’s been 15 years since the first one on 10-10-2010. And even harder to believe now that we thought it would never happen when CicLAvia’s founders came to the LACBC, now BikeLA, board to ask for our support.
The Spring Street bike lanes in DTLA are getting new safety barriers, with enough separation to hopefully prevent the kind of injuries San Diego bicyclists have complained about.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Middlesborough, England is going to spend the equivalent of nearly $3 million to rip out a bike lane derided as “an absolute nightmare” and “exploited by drug dealers,” despite spending just $100,000 to settle injury claims after it went in — and spending $2.3 million to install it just three years ago.
Arlington, Virginia is joining the ebike rebate movement, offering vouchers for up to $1650 on the purchase of an ebike. Although those ebikes are about to get a lot more expensive, thanks to Trump’s 30% tariff on goods imported from Asian manufacturers.
A TV station in Lake Charles, Louisiana unmasks a mysterious man on a Mardi Gras-festooned ebike, who says he rides through the community because “he loves to see people smile.” Although something tells me Adorian Hollywood Flavor probably isn’t his real name.
The Cyclists’ Alliance, the union for women’s cycling, is calling for mandatory, annual screening in the wake of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s victory at the Tour de France Femmes, amid comments about her drastic weight loss.
Day 219 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
………
They’re finally going to fix it.
LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced a $4.2 million project to repair the beachfront Marvin Braude Bike Trail, which was washed out at the Santa Monica Canyon Channel outlet along Will Rogers Beach during heavy rains in February of last year.
The project qualifies for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding due to the federal disaster declaration. LA County Public Works will oversee the restoration work aimed at making the trail “stronger, safer, and more resilient,” according to Horvath’s office.
The paper reports the separate bike and pedestrian paths will remain open during the six-month construction project, though some beach access points may close temporarily.
………
Meanwhile, a few miles further south, a new wall is blocking a popular short cut to the Marvin Braude Trail in Marina del Rey.
According the Westside Current, the wall replaced a door-sized gap in a fence between Yvonne Burke Park and a Ralph’s supermarket parking lot late last month, angering local residents, bike riders and pedestrians accustomed to using it to get to the bike path.
Instead, bike riders now have to use dangerous Lincoln Blvd, where drivers routinely ignore the 35 mph speed limit, to reach the trail at Admiralty and Bali Way.
A petition calling for restoring the access currently stands at over 760 signatures. Correction: That petition is actually for local condo residents angry over losing their exclusive private access to the park, and has nothing to do with the wall blocking access to the bike path.Here’s a link to the actual petition calling to reopen the gate.
According to the lawsuit, the Hyundai was sold without anti-theft protection, allowing the two teenage suspects to steal the car using the “TikTok method” shared on social media.
The two suspects are not scheduled to face trial for Probst’s murder until next year. No word yet on when the civil suit will be heard.
Note to Hays, Kansas Post — If a shooting victim collapses and dies after riding his bike away from the scene of the crime, “escaped” may not be the appropriate word.
Seriously? A prolific bike thief in the UK walked without a day behind bars, despite hitting a man with a wheel after he tracked his stolen bike to the thief’s bicycle chop shop, and “inflicting grievous bodily harm without intent.” Although whacking someone with a bike wheel would seem to suggest intent, but what the hell do I know?
That’s more like it. A British appeals court increased the sentence for a South London bus driver who killed an eight-year old girl riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, while driving with three-times the legal limit for weed in his system; the man was resentenced to six years and eight months behind bars after the prosecutor argued the original four-year sentence was too lenient. And yes, they can do that there.
But he not only takes issue with including fat Black women in the bicycling community, but with the very idea of a bicycling community, period.
By Mike McDaniel’s perspective, unless you’re actively engaged in some form of competition, we’re all just a bunch of individuals riding bikes for our own personal reasons.
Just when you think this kind of manufactured nonsense is on its deathbed, Cycling Weekly resurrects it. We’ve been told “silence is violence,” and so is pretty much everything else. Now we learn unless the cycling “community” “centers” fat black women, that community is “participating in exclusion.” Do we need to buy bikes and other cycling gear for fat black women too? How about old white guys riding old recumbents? And fine, I’ll tell a story: I read about a fat black woman who started riding bikes. Good for her. The end.
That’s a leftist view of reality, where it’s all about one’s identity, which must not only be noticed, but praised. In real reality, one doesn’t join a bicycling “community” by riding a bike. There are people with shared biking interests, largely defined by their machines, abilities and participation in types of competition. Beyond that, no one much cares about anyone not in those particular, narrowly defined interest groups.
Then again, he also has something to say about breasts, which he claims to know something about — and Sydney Sweeney’s in particular.
Oh, and he’s not a Nazi.
Good to know.
Iresha Picot’s point isn’t wasn’t identity politics, though, or some sort of DEI for the bicycling community.
It wasn’t even about fat Black women. Or whether or not there really is some sort of bike community.
It’s that our streets — and our preferred form of recreation and transportation — has to be safe and welcoming for everyone, including those on the margins, who you don’t normally see descending at 30 mph on the club rides.
And if you’re not intentionally including everyone, you are by default excluding some, whether they’re fat and Black, poor and Latino, handicapped, old or just puttering along on an old cruiser bike.
It’s a fair point.
I’ve learned over the years that the biking community includes people of every shape, color and description.
Some who charge up and down hills on carbon racing bikes, and some who ride, well, trikes.
It’s not about politics, identity or otherwise.
And it sure as hell isn’t about Sydney Sweeney. Or her breasts.
Photo: Bikes belonging to the non-existent bike community line the street.
Suburban, provincial, old fashioned views often block progress on streets where people are dying from cars. soundcloud.com/biketalk/253… #bikesky @transalt.org@cycletoronto.bsky.social@mlongfield.bsky.social@lintonjoe.bsky.social@bikinginla.bsky.social@streetopia.bsky.social@openplans.org
No bias here. A motorist in Killarney, Ireland was “irked” to actually have to slow down for a few moments because a bicyclist was riding in the traffic lane, right next to a new raised bike lane that had been built “at enormous expense.” Even though a photo clearly shows several bike riders were already using it, and the only way to get around them was to take to the street — never mind that he was hugging the curb, and would have been easy to pass.
Life is cheap in Ireland, where an 82-year old woman got off with fine and lost her license for killing a 78-year old man riding a bicycle, once again raising the question of how old is too old to safely drive a car. And no, I don’t want to see an octogenarian go to the gaol, either. But still.
Day 212 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
………
He gets it.
In a WeHo Times op-ed, 23-year old community organizer Nick Renteria argues that the city is one of the most dangerous in the state when it comes to traffic violence.
As evidenced by the recent hit-and-run deaths of Erica Edwards and Blake Ackerman on Sunset Blvd and Fountain Ave, respectively.
But not, he says, because there is something inherently worse about the city’s drivers, but because the streets are “designed facilitate high traffic flow at the cost of our safety.”
And what’s standing in the way of progress isn’t a lack of evidence, it’s inaction.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
As Renteria says,
Imagine a Sunset Boulevard where people stroll safely beneath the billboards. A Santa Monica Boulevard where outdoor dining isn’t drowned out by speeding cars. A Fountain Avenue where no one has to fear crossing the street or riding a bike.
Imagine a city where Erica and Blake’s deaths are the last. Where we finally say: enough.
We’ve imagined it for years. Now let’s do something about it.
After all, why would anyone look nervous when confronted by armed, masked men who may not have worn anything identifying themselves as officers.
The Mexican national now finds himself facing deportation, and charged with a misdemeanor count of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers, because he tried to run away and tried to break free from them.
I probably would have done exactly the same thing if I was confronted by a bunch of armed men in masks.
According to the site, Los Angeles is actively investing in innovations to reduce traffic congestion, ranging from subway expansions to new bikeways, including a new transcontinental high-speed rail expected to ope as soon as next year.
Which really would be a secret.
And speaking of secrets, here’s what they have to say about the state of bicycling in the City of Angeles.
Biking in L.A. is on the rise, with new bike trails and bike-friendly upgrades popping up across the city. From coastal paths to urban corridors like the new Rail-to-Rail route, it’s getting easier, safer, and more fun to explore L.A. on two wheels.
Which is kinda true, depending on just where you look.
Although the impression it gives doesn’t exactly align with the reality most of us experience on the streets.
Twenty-eight-year old Colden Kimber was waiting with his girlfriend when he saw a man harassing the group and stepped between them, only to be fatally stabbed in the neck in what was described as a “completely and utterly unprovoked” attack.
Kimber was a member of the city’s Dolce Vita Cycling team and was a skilled mechanic at American Cyclery, while studying kinesiology at San Francisco State University.
The suspect, 29-year old Sean Collins, has been charged with murder; he was already facing charges for vandalism and burglary, as well as resisting an officer.
Bedford, England has lifted its draconian ban on bike riding through the town center, but only after thousands of people were “aggressively” fined for the simple crime of riding a bicycle; new rules target “dangerous” bicycling rather than responsible riding.
………
Local
Pasadena police will conduct yet another of the region’s bicycle and pedestrian safety operations today; while the purpose is to improve safety for people walking or biking, police are required to enforce any violation that could put either group at risk, regardless of who commits it. So ride to the letter of the law until cross the city limits to make sure you’re not the one who gets written up.
Of course not. An English man denies he was responsible for killing a 54-year old woman competing in a cycling time trial while he was driving a commercial van, despite allegedly looking a photos of a family barbecue on his cellphone seconds before the crash, then telling police he never saw her because he was too busy looking for his drink bottle.
Momentum looks at Trondheim, Norway’s pavement-embedded bicycle lift that pushes bike riders uphill at a steady walking pace, and recommends a handful of hills in North America where it would help encourage more people to ride.
Jose Luis Salgado was sentenced after pleading guilty to felony voluntary manslaughter and misdemeanor street terrorism, along with sentencing enhancements for being a gang member.
He was convicted for being primarily responsible for the killing 31-year-old Pedro Morale Chocoj, as part of a gang attempting to take the victim’s bike.
Co-defendant Jesus Gonzalo Ibarra was sentenced to just a year behind bars after pleading guilty to multiple felonies for the same attack.
I don’t know how many times we have to say it — no bicycle is ever worth a human life.
LADOT has finally closed the long-missing link on Imperial Highway in what passes for a protected bike lane here in Los Angeles, even though it would be called a separated bike lane in any more rational locale.
Because those flimsy little plastic bollards ain’t gonna protect anyone.
LADOT has closed the bike lane gap on Imperial Highway! Thanks to a grant, we were able to redesign the road to make space for protected bike lanes to close the 1000-ft gap east of Pershing Dr., providing a stress-free connection all the way to Dockweiler Beach. pic.twitter.com/QebpX3D7us
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
There may be justice after all. An Ontario judge blocked the removal of a trio of Toronto bike lanes, ruling it was unconstitutional because “removal of the target bike lanes will put people at increased risk of harm and death, which engages the right to life and security of the person.”
A Hollywood cinematographer is planning to make a full-length documentary about Jose Yanez, inventor of the bicycle backflip, who spread the move across the country with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, before ending up homeless in Phoenix.
WeHo residents voiced their anger and concern over deadly Fountain Ave at the West Hollywood Public Safety Commission meeting, demanding action as the Sheriff’s Department offered an update on traffic safety on Fountain. Or rather, the lack thereof.
Bloomberg’s CityLab says we should all be biking along the beach, questioning why beachfront bike paths are so rare in the US when they help relieve beach traffic and mitigate the ill effects of over-tourism.
Life is cheap in Seattle, where a cop with an extensive history of preventable traffic collisions walked with a lousy written reprimand and additional training after lying about crashing into someone riding a bicycle, initially saying he came to a full stop before admitting he ran the stop while looking at his onboard computer.
This is the cost of traffic violence. Hundreds of people turned out for a memorial to remember a 37-year old mother of two who was killed by a Denver dump truck driver while riding in an unprotected bike lane six years ago; a protected was built there afterwards, too late to save her life.
A Great Lakes website takes a deep dive into why Americans don’t bike like the Dutch yet. Short answer, if more people felt safe riding a bike, we would. Longer answer, speeding, drunk and/or distracted drivers need to stop killing us, and traffic engineers need to stop loading the damn metaphorical gun for them, already.
That’s more like it. A Florida woman will spend the next 15 years behind bars for fleeing the scene after injuring a teenager riding a bicycle, and running from police — all with her kids in the car. Although it’s disconcerting that the state can only take her license away for a maximum of five years.
A new study in Nature compares the relative severity of ebike and e-scooter injuries, concluding that e-scooter crashes result in more and worse head injuries, particularly because so many riders are intoxicated.
Day 210 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
………
He gets it.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post, a Colorado auto and traffic safety writer says it’s long past time to address the real problem behind the 845,000 deaths on American roadways.
The poorly trained drivers behind the wheel.
Approximately 94 percent of car crashes involve some form of driver behavior like speeding, distraction, failing to yield or DUI identified as a contributing factor, although this doesn’t mean the driver is always solely responsible — bad roads, confusing or obscured signage, wildlife darting into the road, mechanical failures and other factors play their part, too.
But mostly, the problems lie with us. We aren’t very good drivers. And there is a potential solution: better driver training. If we can fix bad driving, at least partially, we can save thousands of lives.
Although he adds that better eduction of drivers can only do so much to lower the appalling death rate on our roads.
It would be wonderful to lower the death rate from 30,000 deaths a year to 25,000 or 20,000. I don’t think anyone thinks we’re going to get to zero. Some people will just be rotten drivers all their lives, and others will always ignore the rules.
But if we change the narrative and empower people to drive safely and skillfully, that’s a start.
On Saturday, with Rapha Los Angeles, we honored Marvin Cortez, who was killed by a speeding driver in the Santa Monica mountains in June. Together with his wife, family, and friends, we placed a ghost bike at the site. More here:https://t.co/k2jcYe4XNYhttps://t.co/Huvk28RtFR
Electrek calls ebike rebate programs a rare win-win offering cleaner air, less traffic and more mobility for people who need it most, as more cities and states provide them.
A new study from an Arizona law firm shows that North Dakota paid the highest dollar cost for bicycling deaths at $14,177 per 1,000 residents between 2020 and 2023, followed by Alaska, Montana and South Dakota. Although the story doesn’t explain how they calculated that cost, and doesn’t provide a link to the study.
The New York Times “Wellness Around the World” series joins pre-dawn bicycle “trains” in Bogota, Columbia, as groups of up to 100 riders join together for protection against thieves and get their days off to a great start.
