Macmillian was reportedly riding north on the sidewalk on the southbound side of Main Street when rode out into traffic, and was hit by the driver of a 2005 Corvette.
However, it’s very unclear what that means.
A street view shows a T-intersection controlled by a red light, with three lanes in each direction on Main.
It could be that he came off the curb mid-block and rode into traffic on the wrong side of the street, or he could have attempted to cross Main.
There’s also a a utility box and light pole blocking the sidewalk just past Columbine, which could have caused him to enter the street to go around it.
The Register says it’s still unknown whether Macmillian was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The question is whether his actions on the bike suggest he was drunk or stoned, or if police suspect that merely because he was living on the streets.
This is the 53rd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the ninth in Orange County. It’s also at least the 11th bicycling death in Santa Ana since 2011.
That compares to 66 in SoCal this time last year, and ninth in Orange County.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for David Lee Macmillian and all his loved ones.
Some news reports have suggested the victim may have been riding without lights, and might have done something that contributed to the crash.
However, no matter what he may or may not have done, street racing is a serious crime with entirely foreseeable consequences, akin to firing a gun down a crowded street. It should not be up to the rest of the world to stay the hell out of the way of dangerous drivers exceeding the speed limit and putting everyone else at risk.
Mike Wilkinson forwards video of a far too close pass in Stanton, which just happened to occur right next to the only parked car on the street.
He notes that, despite the perspective, he was riding outside the door zone. However, in the future, he plans to take the lane where the road narrows there.
If you find yourself jonesing for another ciclovía now that CicLAvia is done for the year, Long Beach hosts the next edition of their Beach Streets open streets event on November 12th.
And the LACBC will host a discussion of traffic laws with representatives of the LAPD, LA County Sheriff’s Department and the CHP, along with BikinginLA Sponsor Jim Pocrass, on November 14th.
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British Cycling confirms allegations that the head of their bike racing program used inappropriate and discriminatory language in telling a female racer to go and have a baby after her contract wasn’t renewed.
After allowing a previous DIY protected bike lane to stay in place, San Francisco’s transportation department wastes little time in removing the latest guerilla installation.
A pair of bike riders are Bay Area heroes, as one retrieves a lost purse left on a bus, and the other leaps off his bike to save the life of a truck driver who’d just been stabbed.
A Vallejo cop hit a bicyclist while looking for a burglary suspect; the rider allegedly went through a red light while wearing all black with no lights on his bike.
A Folsom restaurant owner is collecting funds from the meals he sells to support the family of an Afghan refugee killed by a distracted driver while riding with his son last year.
National
A new report reminds us that homeowners who fight bikeways are just shooting themselves in the foot. Or rather, in the pocketbook.
A new British Columbia study says slow down while riding in urban areas to avoid inhaling toxic air pollution; 9.3 mph is recommended as the ideal speed to avoid sucking in too much smog.
Caught on video: A British driver makes an unsafe pass, then cuts back into his lane just in time to avoid a truck — and barely misses an eight-year old girl.
Innovative approaches to bicycling and walking are leading Africa to a greener future, where four countries are among the world’s most dangerous for bicyclists and pedestrians.
The California legislature could be taking your life in its hands.
Brenda Miller, founder of the PEDal advocacy group, writes that a new bill currently flying under the radar would legalize the California stop at red lights. According to her, SB 986 jeopardizes the safety of cyclists and pedestrians by eliminating the requirement that drivers remain stopped until they check for traffic before making a right turn on the red.
The result, she says, is that most drivers will simply roll through the intersection without stopping. Or looking.
Let’s hope the altercation didn’t start just because he was riding on the sidewalk in violation of local law. Thanks to Mike Wilkinson for the heads-up.
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The Orange County Wheelmen is hosting a free class this Thursday to discuss your rights and responsibilities to help keep you safe on the road.
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Two common themes in today’s news, starting with still more kindhearted people.
The owner of a New Jersey bike shop is giving back to the community by purchasing 41 bicycles that will be given to underprivileged kids in the city’s toughest neighborhoods.
Sheriff’s deputies give a bike to a 16-year old boy so he wouldn’t have to walk four miles to the library in the Florida heat to study.
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And the opposite, as road raging drivers form a far too common theme.
Caught on video: An Atlantic City woman is under arrest for smashing her car into several parked cars in a deliberate attempt to run down a bike rider, who is shown throwing his bike at her car multiple times; police are looking for another suspect, presumably the man on the bike. The driver should be charged with attempted murder; the bike rider with bicycle abuse, if nothing else.
A Florida cyclist’s cross-county dream came to an abrupt end in Alabama when a road raging driver first threatened him with a knife, then ran over ran over his bicycle; the driver faces charges of reckless endangerment and second-degree criminal mischief.
Caught on video too: An Aussie truck driver is now under investigation after he posted video of himself deliberately drenching a group of riders with water, while cackling that he wishes he could run them over instead. It’s bad enough to pull crap like this, but what kind of idiot posts video online of himself doing it?
A transgendered Canadian cyclist wins a key human rights complaint over what she considers a humiliating sex-verification process, as well as being denied needed hormones because they’re banned under anti-doping rules.
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Local
KPCC notes that Los Angeles is currently holding focus groups to fine-tune its Vision Zero plan, with public meetings to come later.
DTLA’s Metro Bike bikeshare system, which remains in desperate need of a good nickname, is now open to walk-up users at a reduced rate of $1.75 per half hour through September. Meanwhile, Next City asks if bikeshare should cost the same as a bus.
A UCLA doctor on the final leg of a seven-day charity ride saves the life of another rider who was suffering a heart attack in Malibu. Thanks to Evan G for the link.
The parents of the first, and so far only, cyclist killed while riding a bikeshare bike have filed a wrongful death suit against the truck driver who hit her and his employer.
Brooklyn bike riders get a new parking-protected bike lane, replacing the existing unprotected lane. Which is a natural progression that can and should be followed on many, if not most, LA bike lanes.
A man rides off with a $5,500 bicycle from a Florida bike shop after giving them the keys to a non-existent car as collateral for a test ride.
International
Ottawa, Canada cyclists and residents opposed to ghost bikes have been battling it out at the scene of a cyclist’s death; after the city removed her ghost bike, bike advocates and the victim’s family would draw one on the wall, then someone else would come and wash it off at night. Now, someone has upped the ante by illegally painting it on the wall where she died.
A Toronto columnist says why not build Pokemon Go lanes, since he’s convinced there are more Pokemon Go players than there are bike riders.
A London father uses security camera footage and Facebook to track down the teenage thieves who stole his daughter’s bicycle.
Yet another person riding a bike has been left to die in the street by a heartless coward who fled the scene.
According to the Orange County Register, a bike rider identified only as an adult male was hit by an SUV shortly before 1 am on the 1400 block of West Warner Ave, just East of the South Pacific Ave in Santa Ana.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
There’s no word at this time what may have caused the collision, or how it occurred. Witnesses reported the driver fled east on Warner, but no description of the driver or the SUV is currently available.
A street view shows a wide open three lane roadway east of Pacific, with no parking allowed and nothing to slow drivers down.
Anyone with information is urged to call Santa Ana police Cpl. Matt Wharton at 714/245-8209.
This is the 26th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the fifth in Orange County; it’s also the second in Santa Ana since the first of the year. That compares with ten in the seven county SoCal region this time last year, and none in the county.
Update: The victim has been identified as 44-year old Ricardo Aguilar; no city of residence was given. The time of the collision has been changed to around 5 am. Note: The story in the Register misidentified the victim as Ricardo Martinez; his niece sent a correction in the comments below.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Ricardo Aguilar and his loved ones.
January 26, 2016 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Update: Bicyclist killed in Santa Ana collision Monday evening
More bad news, as a bike rider was killed crossing a street in Santa Ana.
According to the Orange County Register, the victim, who has not been publicly identified, was struck around 6:07 pm at the intersection of 17th and La Bonita Streets. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The New Santa Ana website reports he was north on La Bonita when he was hit by a pick-up; no word on which direction the truck was going.
The driver remained at the scene, and cited darkness as the reason he did not see the victim until it was too late. He was not suspected of being under the influence.
However, according to Google Maps, that address doesn’t exist, although it appears to be the intersection of La Bonita and Westminster Ave, which becomes 17th east of the Santa Ana River.
Assuming that is the correct location, a satellite view shows an uncontrolled six lane street on Westminster, with a 45 mph speed limit and the sort of wide lanes that too often encourage speeding. There is a stop sign on La Bonita at Westminster.
There’s no word on whether the victim had lights or reflectors on his bike. But there are street lights at the intersection, so the rider should have been visible if they were working. So the question becomes why the driver didn’t see the victim before it was too late.
Anyone with information is urged to call Investigator Bao of the Santa Ana Police Department at 714/245-8214.
This is the eight bicycling collision in Southern California already this year, and second in Orange County. It’s also the fifth in Santa Ana in just the last two years.
Update: The Register has identified the victim as 77-year old Huntington Beach resident Thuc Van Nguyen.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Thuc Van Nguyen and his loved ones.
November 23, 2015 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Serious sentence for a serious crime, memorial for 9-year old victim, and blame drivers, not bikes
They continue to take traffic crime seriously in Orange County.
An unlicensed drunk driver got 18 years — yes, years, not months — for fleeing the scene after killing an elderly woman and injuring her blind grandson as they stood in a Santa Ana bike lane to observe fireworks on the 4th of July in 2013.
When she was arrested two hours later, Kelly Michele Wolfe had a blood alcohol level of .31, nearly four times the legal limit.
Now she’s going to have a very long time to sober up.
Maybe someone should tell the LA DA this is what can happen when you don’t bargain away all the serious charges.
He was a recent Chinese immigrant whose parents had come here looking for a better life.
Instead, they lost a son to this country’s deadly streets.
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Great piece from Boyonabike, who says we should “tell car companies to take cynical marketing gimmicks like ‘Volvo Life Paint’ and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”
Because, he says, the real problem is dangerous and distracted drivers, a lack of safe infrastructure, and a “car culture that sells cars on TV by overt appeals to fantasies of speed and danger”
The editor of USC’s Daily Trojan says bikeshare has the potential to revolutionize transit in Los Angeles if anyone actually uses it, while a writer for the Los Angeles News Group questions if people will pay $3.50 a trip to ride a bike.
Writing for Orange 20 Bikes, Rick Risemberg offers advice on how to winterize your riding to prepare for El Niño and what passes for winter in the City of Angels.
Santa Clarita wants your opinion on the city’s off-street biking trails.
Great news from Arizona, as former US Representative Gabby Giffords takes her recumbent on a 40 mile ride less than five years after her near-fatal shooting.
Evidently, a Colorado letter writer really hates bike lanes; he condemns any government official who puts more than 20 cents into bike lane construction to suffer an eternity of spilling hot coffee in their laps while driving.
A discussion of installing crosstown bike lanes in New York’s Upper East Side draws little opposition, even if one community board member says bicyclists’ lawlessness has resulted in a “complete and total Armageddon.” Not to exaggerate or anything.
A Philadelphia magazine explores the challenges of being African American in white suburbia, including a troubling story of black teenagers just out for a bike ride.
London’s Cycling Commissioner says banning large trucks during rush hour won’t save as many lives as making trucks safer and building protected bike lanes. He also called a reporter a liar over claims bike riders weren’t using one of the city’s new cycle superhighways.
London plans to close a busy and dangerous junction in the heart of the city to motor vehicles for at least five years to improve safety and “all round congeniality,” while making more room for bikes and pedestrians.
Two Brit bike thieves have been jailed for a long running con; they’d leave a laptop bag as security for taking a bike for a test ride, which turned out to hold nothing but books when they didn’t return. They’d gotten away with 23 bikes worth $93,000 before they were caught.
A British woman is left with a broken hip after a collision with a sidewalk-riding bicyclist. But if he just rode off without stopping, how do they know he had a foreign accent?
Japanese police are looking for a man who smacked a woman in the head with a blunt object after her clothes somehow got caught in his bike when he rode up behind her.
Finally…
Evidently, it’s okay to steal a bike from a celebrity restaurant as long as you’re a hunk with washboard abs. If you’re going to use a bike as your getaway vehicle after robbing a bank, wearing a cycling cap sets the right stylistic tone.
Thanks to Wes High and Matthew Robertson for their donations to support this site. Thanks to their generosity, the first ever Biking in LA Holiday Fund Drive is now up to, uh, three contributions!
Reversing their usual north to south route, next year’s Amgen Tour of California will start in San Diego and end in Sacramento; the race will also include four women’s stages as part of the UCI WorldTour this year. Other SoCal legs include South Pasadena to Santa Clarita, and Thousand Oaks to Santa Barbara.
Word has it bike riding former UCLA and NBA star Bill Walton is particularly stoked about the San Diego start.
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Our anonymous Orange County correspondent reports the Stephany DUI murder trial went to the jury today, but no word on whether they reached a verdict; if not, deliberations will resume next week.
She adds,
In closing, Stephany’s lawyer was adamant and clearly believed his own words, but his argument just wasn’t very compelling. Plus I think Juror #11 wanted to smack him.
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She also offers a few uncensored thought on the state of bicycling in Santa Ana.
Civic Center Drive has fresh new stripes for, I suppose, a buffered bike lane. The “buffer” is skinny and there are no bike graphics yet, and the placement of the dashed lines is so random I don’t even know if it can possibly conform to the MUTCD.
Also, a fucktard swooping into the semicircular driveway in front of the courthouse and CUT ME OFF and when I yelped, he was all, “What? I didn’t hit you!” Well, true, and the ONLY reason he didn’t hit me while he was failing to yield, failing to signal, and failing to make a proper right turn from the correct lane position is because I have three separate braking mechanisms, all of which I immediately engaged so that his criminal maneuver wouldn’t put me on a goddamn gurney. Maybe all the new visual clutter induced vertigo in his head?
During the 2-hour lunch recess, I rode around and despaired at the wobbly sharrowed path on 3rd Street. And the complete absence of sharrows on, say, narrow-laned Broadway, or anyplace they’d actually be useful on. And the insufficient bike racks. (Ya wanna rack in front of, or at least anywhere near, City Hall? Well, TOO BAD FOR YOU, PAL).
It’s like Santa Ana is just slapping bike & ped infrastructure down wherever it happens to fit, whether it will be functional or not. Kinda like the way God slapped together the platypus from leftover spare parts He had lying around, except that critter works just fine, whereas the hodgepodge of bike stuff in Santa Ana is nothing but frustration.
Downtown Santa Ana makes downtown LA look like a dream world.
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More big hearts out there.
A Texas boy gets a new bicycle from a local bike shop after his was destroyed in a collision; $1,000 that was raised to replace his bike will now be given to the crossing guard who was injured saving his life.
Or more precisely, had one, since it’s no longer listed on their website.
Looks like the Corgi will have to keep waiting for her first bike ride, dammit. Then again, I’m not sure how well I could ride with 30 pounds of doggie ADD on my back, anyway.
LADOT Bike Blog looks at the Mobility Hubs planned for the LA Area, with 13 primary hubs at major transit stations in Hollywood, DTLA and Long Beach, and 85 satellite in the same areas. Now what we need are safe routes to ride to and from those hubs.
A San Diego county supervisor discusses his vision for a barrio to barrio bike path due to open next year that will connect to another new bikeway circling San Diego’s South Bay.
A Carlsbad writer questions whether the city went too far in installing 100 bike racks in the downtown area. Chances are, he didn’t raise the same question when car parking went in.
Both people suffered major injuries when someone on a motorized bike hit a pedestrian in Desert Hot Springs Thursday evening.
Twenty children will get recycled bicycles as part of a giveaway program to encourage cycling in bike-friendly Davis.
National
Turns out using hands-free devices is even more distracting than we thought; it takes as long as 27 seconds for a driver to turn his concentration back to the road after sending a text using voice commands.
A man sets off on a cross-country bike ride after being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, just two months after he participated in the ALS Challenge. Thanks to Megan Lynch for the heads-up.
Phoenix calls on drivers to look twice for bikes. Forget twice; it would make a huge difference in safety if every driver just looked at least once.
Construction begins on the final link in an off-road bike path along I-70 from Denver to Glenwood Springs, 160 spectacular miles away through the Colorado Rockies.
A Michigan bike rider was found partially submerged in a ditch after a witness had earlier seen him walking his bike bleeding from a head wound, though the rider assured him he was okay.
It’s a sad commentary on today’s world when a Minneapolis Krav Maga studio feels the need to offer a three-hour course in bicycle self-defense to ward off attackers. Even sadder that I want to take it.
International
An Ontario writer argues against allowing cyclists to ride abreast, citing studies showing cyclists are more aggressive in groups. Note to the clueless: human beings are more aggressive in groups, whether they’re riding bikes, driving cars, or watching a football game. And it’s still possible to ride in a group without riding abreast.
An Irish writer says Dublin cyclists are lawless to the point of sheer arrogance. Except for her, of course.
A New Zealand professor says lower speed limits won’t solve everything, but they will improve safety, while also increasing livability and encouraging people to walk and bike. Lets hope our local officials are listening.
Finally…
For all you doubters out there, here’s proof Lance didn’t have to dope to win races; he admitted under oath that he won a $1 million bonus after the Coors Light team was paid off to let him win in 1993. This is not what Twitter is for, as a Florida driver tweets that he just killed a man after hitting a 16-year old pedestrian — complete with a photo of the body.
I’m told that his name won’t be officially released until his parents can arrive here from Mexico to identify the body.
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Last week, our Orange County correspondent mentioned in passing that she’d spotted what looked like the initial markings for a bike lane near the Santa Ana courthouse.
Now Mike Wilkinson sends confirmation that the lanes are going in. Along with signs telling salmon cyclists to turn around.
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A reader writes to share her post-CicLAvia experience with an aggressive driver.
CicLAvia was its usually flurry of fantasticness that was over too soon. By 3pm, I was already commiserating with a friend about jonesing until the next one! You know the feeling, kind of like late Christmas morning.
But. But then. CicLAvia was over. And the road closures had created hordes of people operating vehicles under the influence of rage which doesn’t subside immediately when those barricades come down.
I was mashing westbound on 3rd Street, approaching Olive and minding the countdown timer. Despite what I, as a slowpokey old woman, consider a scary amount of speed, there’d be no time for me to clear the green. I braked at the yellow. The sedan behind me did not. Instead, the driver passed me on the left and shot into the Third Street Tunnel. How he didn’t sideswipe the vehicle in the designated left turn lane, I will never know.
Technically, the driver didn’t hit me; he hit the cardboard Militant Angeleno crossbucks protruding from under the flap of my Chrome bag. There was a single, loud THWIP as the cardboard bent and smacked my left flank. I knew immediately that my art project had been damaged, but didn’t feel the welt forming until I’d cleared the tunnel, and couldn’t pull off my dress to verify until I got home. The wound can barely even be called that; it’s just superficial, no broken skin and it won’t scar.
If I hadn’t already had a bad feeling about this driver, I would have been in the middle of the lane, exactly where I was supposed to be. I’d be writing this from the hospital, or not at all.
And no, I didn’t report it. I was hot and sweaty and tired, and had no information to give the police. I’m not even certain of the driver’s gender. “Mid-sized silver-grey sedan, last seen heading west.” Yeah, that’s helpful. Besides, the LAPD has made it crystal clear that hit and runs are too difficult to investigate, and an incident so minor that it doesn’t warrant reporting will serve only to divert resources away from solvable crimes. Also, I didn’t feel like explaining to an officer who should already know that it’s 100% legal for a cyclist to be in the left lane at that location. I was on a one way street and fixing to turn left onto Flower, and even in a car it’s fucking suicide to try to get over into the left lane. In the tunnel it’s impossible, and upon emerging, the two lanes immediately split into five.
Earlier in the day, I’d gotten rear-ended at the Mandatory Dismount Zone, and that collision was merely hilarious. It would’ve been awesome to have a rear-facing camera to have recorded the expression on the apologetic perpetrator’s face! But alas.
The Times also seems shocked that white people would support the Black Lives Matter movement at CicLAvia. Wait. Who says CicLAvia is a liberal event? Or do they suppose that conservatives would never set foot on a bike, let alone set foot on foot?
CiclaValley offers a good summation of Sunday’s CicLAvia. Seriously, does anyone realize just how hard it is keeping all those damned internal caps straight?
In non-CicLAvia-related news, KPCC looks at LA’s ban on locking bikes to parking meters, which is largely ignored by riders and cops alike, and how the ban could be lifted in Westwood to address the area’s acute shortage of safe bike racks.
State
A San Diego salmon cyclist is lucky to survive a head-on collision with just a broken arm after reportedly veering out into traffic; police suspect she may have been drinking.
Unbelievable. A driver flees the scene after killing a Utah handcyclist, and will have charges dismissed in just 36 months if he pays a measly $2500 in court fees and writes an apology to the victim’s family. Evidently, life is really cheap in the Beehive State.
A pair of mountain bikers ride into a dispute over overuse of wild trails in their attempt to ride all the rideable Colorado mountains over 14,000 feet elevation.
A Kansas letter writer insists that highways are meant for cars, and there’s nowhere to pass groups on cyclists who take the lane on the one he drives, even though it has both a right lane and a left lane.
A Houston bike rider gets screwed twice; once by a deputy constable who hit him while responding to a call, and again by a law that limits his compensation to just $100,000, forcing him to pay his medical expenses out of pocket.
A Texas bike rider called both 911 and his wife before passing out after suffering five fractured ribs, a broken left fibula, a partially collapsed lung and some nasty road rash when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver.
Congratulations to Anderson IN, which just conducted a road diet to give the city its first bike lanes. Although that’s got to be the widest damn center turn lane I’ve ever seen.
A Massachusetts driver is charged with fleeing the scene after killing a motorized bike rider he described as a dear friend; he reportedly got out and looked at his friend before driving off, promising a witness he’d be right back.
International
Six large international cycling events team together to form the World Association of Cycling Events. Yet somehow, they leave out CicLAvia, which should serve as proof to the Times that it isn’t a just bike event.
A 12-year old Australian boy is the latest bike rider to suffer a slashed neck because some asshole — and I use the term advisedly — strung a rope across a trail. Note to The Age: Attempting to decapitate someone by stringing a rope between two trees may be a lot of things, but a prank, it ain’t.
An Aussie developer rejects claims that an improved bikeway will encourage investment along the corridor. After all, that’s only been shown to work around the world, so why would anyone expect it to work there?
An Australian writer insists the Dutch don’t go far enough to make cities bike friendly, and that urban centers should be redesigned to make bikes the default mode of transportation.
An 18-year old British bike rider passes through Thailand four months after leaving London on an around the world journey.
Every traffic death is tragic, but some hit a little harder than others.
Especially when it involves a child riding her bike.
According to multiple sources, a 13-year old girl was killed in a collision with a truck belonging to the Santa Ana Unified School District this morning.
The collision occurred between 7:45 and 7:50 am at the intersection of West Edinger Avenue and South Center Street in Santa Ana, as the victim, who has not been publicly identified, was riding her bike in the crosswalk.
She suffered major head and chest injuries, and died at the scene, despite the efforts of emergency personnel. The driver was reportedly extremely distraught and remained at the scene to cooperate with investigators.
A report from KTLA-5 says the victim was an eighth grader at Spurgeon Intermediate School, despite the presence of two other schools at that corner. No word on whether she may have been attending summer classes or participating in some other activity at either school.
The station also reports that the truck was making right turn from Center Street onto Edinger when he hit the girl on her bike.
Judging by photos from the scene, as well as a satellite view, it appears the truck was headed south on Center, attempting to turn west onto Edinger. Most likely, the driver was looking left towards oncoming traffic and did not see the girl ride off the sidewalk to his right and into the crosswalk; however there could be other possibilities, as well.
Her bike was still lodged under the truck after the driver stopped some distance from the intersection. Up to 100 people were gathered at the intersection following the crash, according to the Orange County Register, many crying as they sat on the curbs.
This is the 37th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 7th in Orange County; that compares with 11 in the county this time last year. It’s also the 2nd bicycling death in Santa Ana in the last two months; the other victim was also killed while riding in a crosswalk.
Update: KNBC-4 has identified the victim as Priscilla Vallejo. According to the station, she was not on her way to summer school, and would have entered 8th grade in the fall.
Friends described her as a jokester who was fun to be around.
Sadly, her mother arrived just after she was pronounced dead. No parent should ever have to see their child like that.
Update 2: The Orange County Register has corrected Vallejo’s age as 13, not 14, as originally reported; she would have turned 14 this Friday.
Update 3: Not surprisingly, the driver won’t be cited or charged in this collision; Santa Ana police say it’s just a tragedy. After all, no driver could be expected to actually look where he’s going before turning right, right?
My deepest prayers and sympathy for Priscilla Vallejo and all her loved ones.
He was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where he was pronounced dead at 6:06 pm.
Presumably, Horton was riding on the sidewalk when he rode into the crosswalk; no word on which side of the street he was on or which direction he was riding.
Riding on the sidewalk is banned in the downtown area in Santa Ana; whether that would apply along the freeway is unclear. Depending on how the local police apply the confusing laws on riding in a crosswalk, he could be blamed for the collision if he was riding against traffic.
However, looking at Google Earth, it’s unclear how the driver could have made a legal left turn onto either onramp, since they appear to be designed for right turns only, with left turns blocked by the median.
And while the Orange County Register identifies the make and model of the car, there’s no word on the driver. Or even if the car had one.
This is the 17th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the second in Orange County. That compares with 38 and eight, respectively, this time last year.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Robert Horton and his family.
