Like the needless death of a toddler as she rides a bike next to her mother.
And the arrest of a teenaged boy for the hit-and-run that took her life.
The Los Angeles Times reports that three-year old Odalys Navarro died Monday, four days after she was run down from behind by someone on a dirt bike as she rode her bicycle in the rural Riverside County community of Mead Valley.
Her mother, who is five months pregnant, was also seriously injured in the August 31st crash.
It was a Thursday afternoon 8/31 that was supposed to be filled with joy and laughter, tragedy struck. A hit-and-run incident involving a motorcycle left my child and myself lying on the ground, fighting for our lives. It is difficult to put into words the pain and anguish my family has endured since that fateful day.
My little girl, who was only 3 years old going on to 4 in about a month and I were walking home from the park when the motorcycle came out of nowhere. The impact was severe, leaving both of us with life-threatening injuries. The reckless driver, without a shred of humanity, callously fled the scene, leaving my family shattered and broken.
His name was withheld because he’s a juvenile. Which means that, unless he’s charged as an adult, he can only be held until he turns 21, even if he’s convicted.
The crowdfunding campaign to pay Odalys Navarro’s funeral costs, and her and her mother’s medical expenses, has raised a little more than $5,000 of the $25,000 goal.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the CHP’s Riverside investigators at 951/637-8000.
This is at least the 34th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and sixth that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
There’s nothing sadder than a ghost bike for a child.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Odalys Navarro and all her family.
The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was taken to nearby Riverside University Medical Center suffering from severe injuries, and died shortly later.
The driver of a Kia Optima remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know at this time.
A street view shows a painted bike lane on Alessandro, running between the two through lanes and a right turn bay. However, we have no way of knowing at this time if that may have contributed to the crash in any way.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Riverside County Sheriff’s Moreno Valley station at 951/486-6700.
This is at least the 31st bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and their loved ones.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know at this time. There’s no word on how or why the crash happened, or whether the driver was held accountable in any way.
Anyone with information is urged to call Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Petersen at 951/245-3000.
This follows news that a Reseda father is on life support after he was struck by a driver while riding his bike to work Thursday morning.
This is at least the 18th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fourth that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Kennan Ruiz and all his loved ones.
Sad news from Palm Springs, where a San Diego father died from heatstroke earlier this month after mountain biking outside the city.
According to San Diego’s 10 News, Paul Fox, a 53-year old father of three from the city’s Del Cero neighborhood, met a friend at the Palm Canyon Epic Trail south of Palm Springs in late April for what was planned as a three-hour ride.
However, despite GPS, they took a wrong turn somewhere along the trail, and ran out of water as three hours turned into six in temperatures up to 105°F.
Fox reportedly stopped suddenly and stepped off his bike acting dazed and confused, before collapsing and rolling down a hill.
He died in the hospital May 9th from complications due to heatstroke.
Fox, who a friend described as kind, funny and brilliant, worked as a computer network security specialist, including a four-year stint at the White House in the mid-2000s.
The man, identified as 73-year old Marietta resident Josef Pinter, slammed into the back of the stopped SUV. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to the local police, it wasn’t clear if the driver’s brake lights were on or if she had turned on her flashers, and Pinter may not have seen her stopped in front of him.
There’s also no word on whether she even had her lights on in the growing evening darkness, or if Pinter had a light on his bike that could have illuminated the vehicle.
There’s no information at this time about the victim, or how the crash occurred. Police are still unsure if either the driver or victim were under the influence.
January 13, 2023 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 38-year Maria Estrada killed riding a bike in unincorporated Nuevo Thursday night, first SoCal bike death this year
It took less than two weeks for the year’s first person to lose their life riding a bicycle on the mean streets of Southern California.
Although how or why seems to be unclear at this time.
Thirty-eight-year old Perris resident Maria Estrada was riding with another person when she was apparently run down by a motorist around 7 pm last night.
Last year was another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for SoCal bike riders.
But at least it was better than the year before.
Maybe.
According to our latest count, at least 82* people lost their lives while riding a bicycle in the seven county Southern California region last year, just two less than the previous year.
Although that figure is likely an undercount; I’ve heard of a half dozen or more deaths this year that I wasn’t able to officially confirm, but which undoubtedly happened.
The total for last year reflects the 26 bike riders I counted killed in Los Angeles County last year, which again is likely a dramatic undercount.
A total of 35 bike riders lost their lives in LA County in 2021, which was over twice the total of 17 that I had counted; I also counted 15 in 2020, compared to 27 reported by the NHTSA.
Which suggests that the local media is failing to report a number of bicycling deaths in the Los Angeles area, for whatever reason.
I also counted 14 bicycling deaths in the City of Los Angeles last year, which is in line with verified totals of 18 and 15 in 2021 and 2020.
Further afield, San Diego County suffered 12 deaths last year, which was a significant improvement over 17 in the previous year, though much higher than the 7 and 8 people killed riding bikes in the county in 2020 and 2019, respectively.
Meanwhile, Orange County appeared to have their worst year in recent memory, with 17 people killed* riding bikes last year, compared to just 7 in 2021, 15 in 2020, and 13 in 2019.
Although it is important to note that only the totals for 2020 and 2019 have been verified by the NHTSA; 2021 data isn’t currently available through their website.
Riverside and San Bernardino Counties also showed increases last year, with 11 bicycling deaths in Riverside County, and 10 in San Bernardino County. Ventura County suffered 4 deaths — half the previous year’s total — while Imperial County recorded none for the third year in a row.
Here’s a quick recap of bicycling deaths for each of the seven counties.
Los Angeles County
2022 – 26
2021 – 35
2020 – 27
2019 – 38
Orange County
2022 – 17
2021 – 7
2020 – 14
2019 – 13
San Diego County
2022 – 12
2021 – 17
2020 – 7
2019 – 8
Riverside County
2022 – 11
2021 – 9
2020 – 8
2019 – 5
San Bernardino County
2022 – 10
2021 – 7
2020 – 6
2019 – 7
Imperial County
2022 – 0
2021 – 0
2020 – 0
2019 – 6
Ventura County
2022 – 4
2021 – 8
2020 – 4
2019 – 4
Source: 2021-2022 BikinginLA, except 2021 LA County data from Los Angeles Times; 2019-2020 NHTSA FARS data
While compiling records of this sort is necessary to bring about desperately needed changes to our streets, it also reduces human tragedy and loss to a statistic.
Correction: A comment from Dawn made it clear that I had miscategorized a story about her father’s August death in Irvine.
*After correcting the error and adding it back into the totals for OC, that made 17 people killed riding their bikes in the county last year, and 82 in Southern California, instead of 16 and 81, respectively, as I had originally written.
My apologies for the mistake.
………
On a related subject, rural areas are becoming safer, while urban environments are growing ever deadlier.
And the photo at the bottom of this thread goes a long way towards explaining why.
Promising news about the new LA City Council Transportation Committee members we mentioned yesterday, at least two of whom have taken bike tours with the new BikeLA (formerly the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, or LACBC).
We’re hopeful that we share priorities with Park and Hutt to build safe bicycle infrastructure both in their districts and citywide, and we look forward to working with the whole committee to hit the ground running in 2023.
Transportation PAC Streets For All is hosting their next virtual happy hour next Wednesday, featuring my councilmember, CD4’s Nithya Raman.
………
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A former contestant on the UK’s version of The Apprenticecriticizes plans for traffic filters on Oxford streets, saying you won’t be able to drive more than 15 minutes in any direction — and somehow manages to get the whole thing wrong.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A British Columbia man faces charges for stealing a truck and using it to smash through a gate, then hoping on a bicycle to make his escape after the truck was disabled in the crash. Which raises a lot of questions, like whether the fact that he wasn’t charged with stealing the bike means he just happened to have it with him in case he needed to pedal away from the crime scene.
An Arizona man has made a remarkable recovery following the crash in a Show Low, Arizona master’s race that killed one man and seriously injured several riders; 37-year old Shawn Michael Chock was quietly sentenced to 26-1/2 years behind bars for second-degree murder and felony aggravated assault.
Calgary bicycle advocates are calling for safer bike infrastructure, after reports of snow and ice clogging bikeways and creating a hazard for riders. Here in SoCal, our snow and ice comes in liquid form, but still creates hazards on days like this. So be careful out there.
Bike Portland goes riding in London. Which I deeply regret I didn’t get a chance to do when my wife and I visited earlier this century.
December 7, 2022 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on 31-year old Margarito Castro killed riding bike in high speed San Jacinto hit-and-run; driver arrested for voluntary manslaughter
Evidently, Sunday was a bad night for bike riders in the Inland Empire.
Barnes was traveling south on State “at a high rate of speed” when he crossed into the center lane, striking Castro before speeding away.
Castro died at the scene.
Barnes was taken into custody at an apartment building four miles away on the 1900 block of Acacia Ave in Hemet, after a witness to the crash gave police the license plate number of his car.
He’s being held on $100,000 bail, after being arrested on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter and hit-and-run resulting in death.
Anyone with information is urged call the San Jacinto Sheriff’s Station at 951/654-2702, or dispatch at 951/776-1099.
This is at least the 77th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the tenth that I’m aware of in Riverside County.
Castro is also the 26th SoCal bike rider killed by a hit-and-run driver since the first of the year.
Update: I just got this response from Castro’s older sister.
“Permitting right turns on red has always been a dangerous idea, which is why, when the first traffic lights and traffic laws rolled out, it was not allowed,” Jessie Singer told me in an email Thursday. Singer literally wrote the book on how “accidents” happen in America. “It is no coincidence,” she continued, “that in New York City, the most pedestrian-dense city in the U.S., right on red has long and largely been disallowed.”
The practice is inherently dangerous to pedestrians because, as Singer puts it, it “leaves the sanctity of the crosswalk and the life of a pedestrian in the hands of a fallible driver.”
Drivers can wait a few extra seconds to make their turn. Even if they’d likely think its the end of the world.
It would also eliminate the current free transfers by charging the full fare for every ride, with a daily cap of $6.
So if your typical roundtrip involves a single transfer in each direction, you’d pay $2 for each outbound leg, for a total of $4, and $2 for both return legs after hitting the daily cap.
That compares to the current $1.75 each way with free transfers, for a total of $3.50 a day — an increase of $2.50, which would represent a steep jump for many users.
It would also have a weekly cap of $20, which would only benefit daily riders with at least one transfer.
To make matters worse, it would also automatically adjust for inflation every four years, further increasing the already too-high fares.
In other words, the “simplified” fare structure is little more than a dramatic fare increase — exactly the wrong decision at a time when we need to encourage more transit use to get people out of their cars.
Let alone the opposite of the free fare system they promised to study.
The organization reports the current proposal doesn’t include plans to connect to Crescenta Valley Park north of the basin, because of a “small but loud group of opponents who don’t want to see ‘others’ coming into their neighborhood.”
Nope, nothing offensive about that.
The knee-jerk NIMBY reaction is reminiscent of the Trousdale Gap in the Expo Line bike path, which skipped the section along the railway behind the Cheviot Hills neighborhood after residents expressed fears ne’er-do-wells would ride their bikes up to peer in their windows and make off with their flatscreen TVs.
Because people in cars never, ever just drive up and burgle homes, apparently.
A “real-life Mowgli” who fled his Sudanese village to live in the jungle after being bullied over his microcephaly can now ride a bicycle for the first time, after a documentary about him went viral.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here, as a New York councilmember says the best way to encourage bike commuting is to discourage it by taxing, licensing and regulating riders.
Yes. If cycling is going to go from a hobby to a major part of our transit portfolio as a loud group of influential activists insist it should, then it only stands to reason it be regulated, licensed, and taxed as any other mode of transport. It’s the equitable thing to do. https://t.co/2T6ZlotVZb
No bias here, either. British bicyclists are urged to stop riding two-abreast and let drivers overtake them because nearly two-thirds of drivers don’t understand recent bike safety changes to the country’s Highway Code. Once again putting all the responsibility for safety solely on the people on two wheels, because of the ignorance of motorists.
Yanko Design says the app-controlled Keyless O-Lock from Copenhagen-based LAAS is the smartest and easiest way to keep your bike safe. Even though it only disables the rear wheel, but does nothing to keep someone from carrying your bike off.
