Well, at least it wasn’t my fault this time.
It turns out Friday’s downtime was the result of a recent WordPress upgrade that left my site vulnerable to an attack by a swarm of 19,000 feed-crawlers.
And no, I never heard of a feed-crawler before Friday. Let alone 19,000 of the little bastards.
Anyway, they’ve all been gathered up and shoved back in their little feed-crawler cages, so we should be good now.
Today’s photo is a new T-shirt design that’s probably my favorite so far. But if you’re more in the mood for corgi designs, check out my other T-shirt site.
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In news that shouldn’t surprise anyone, overall traffic deaths continued to decline last year.
Except, of course, for those of us on two wheels.
According to the latest statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, full-year traffic fatalities dropped last year to their lowest level since 2019, while the annual death rate of 1.10 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled was the second-lowest ever recorded.
That trend continues into the first quarter of 2026.
According to Carscoops.com,
According to new preliminary estimates from the NHTSA, approximately 7,770 people died in traffic crashes during the first quarter of 2026, down 4.3 percent from the same period a year earlier. The fatality rate also dropped to 0.99 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, the lowest first-quarter figure since 2014 and just shy of the all-time quarterly record of 0.98…
Despite the positive overall trend, one category continues to move in the opposite direction. Bicyclist fatalities rose 4 percent in 2025 to 1,148 deaths, remaining near the highest levels seen in more than four decades…
According to the NHTSA, the first quarter of this year represents the 16th consecutive quarterly decline in overall traffic deaths.
If only the news was as good for people riding bicycles.
In fact, traffic deaths decreased in every category last year, compared to 2024, with the single exception of people on bicycles.
- Total estimated driver fatalities decreased 5 percent.
- Total estimated passenger fatalities decreased 12 percent.
- Total estimated PV occupant fatalities decreased 10 percent.
- Total estimated motorcyclist fatalities decreased 8 percent.
- Total estimated pedestrian fatalities decreased 8 percent.
- Total estimated pedalcyclist fatalities increased 4 percent.
- Total estimated fatalities in crashes involving at least one large truck decreased 7 percent.
- Total estimated nonoccupant fatalities decreased 5 percent.
However, unlike 2024, when bicycling deaths increased every month compared to the previous year, bicycling fatalities decreased in five months in 2025, while increasing in seven.
So that’s something, anyway.
What’s not clear, however, is the effect that ebikes have had on these stats, since the NHTSA stopped listing motorized bicycles as motor vehicles in 2022, and now includes them as pedalcyclists, aka bicycles, if the rider is killed in a collision with the driver of a motor vehicle — and not at all if it involves a single vehicle crash.
There’s no explanation, however, of whether than only applies to ped-assist bicycles, or if it also includes electric and gas-powered motorbikes that fall into the gray area between ebikes and motorcycles.
So at least part of the rise could be due to the increase in electric bikes, legal and/or otherwise.
Hopefully someone, somewhere, will eventually break out those numbers so we can actually know what’s going on out there.
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No bias here.
In a paywalled story, The Times of London says the Trump administration has declared war on bike lanes.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the move after decrying the “DEI” focus on bicycling over cars as he shifts $1.7 billion in funding to roads and bridges, jeopardizing safety projects around the country.
And raising the obvious question of what the hell is a DEI bike lane.
Then again, if Trump handles his war on bikes as well as he has the war with Iran, we’ll probably end up with more and better bike lanes than we would have otherwise.
Or maybe he’ll just give us control over the roadways after declaring they’re open.
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LAist reports that small business owners on Pico Blvd recognize the street has a speeding problem and can be dangerous for pedestrians, but worry about the loss of 228 parking spaces after LADOT gives the street a Complete Streets makeover.
According to the website,
LADOT will overhaul 3.5 miles of Pico Boulevard between Crenshaw Boulevard and Figueroa Street to reduce speeding and unsafe turns and lane changes. The agency said the project is intended to improve safety by adding a center turn lane for left turns and emergency vehicles, protected bike lanes and new TOUCAN traffic signals at Manhattan Place and New Hampshire Avenue. LADOT will also repair sidewalks and curb ramps.
To make room, the city will remove parking on the north side of the street and reduce travel lanes from two to one in each direction. Construction is set to begin by the end of the year.
In other words, just like business owners everywhere else where protected bike lanes have gone in.
And just like business owners everywhere else, chances are they’ll see increased foot and bike traffic that will more than make up for the loss of parking spaces — and likely more sales, as studies have repeatedly shown that sales and tax receipts usually go up after a project like this goes in.
Something you’d think LAist could have mentioned somewhere in their story.
Never mind that over a ten-year period ending in 2023, there were 75 crashes resulting in severe injury or death on that stretch of Pico, with nearly three-quarters involving people walking or riding bicycles, and all 11 of the people killed on the corridor were pedestrians.
Which is especially important to consider in the largely Jewish neighborhood, where large numbers of people walk to temple every Saturday.
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According to the WeHo Times, a small group of West Hollywood community members met at Blake Ackerman’s ghost bike on Thursday evening to remember the 27-year old man killed by a hit-and-run driver a year ago while riding his bike home from work.
West Hollywood Councilmember and State Senate candidate John Erickson, who lives nearby on Fountain Avenue, called on WeHo Mayor John Heilman and Council Member Lauren Meister to support plans to remake the corridor to improve safety.
“It’s been a year since the community lost Blake,” Erickson said. “If we just updated a street for street safety for pedestrians, bikers and cars, it would make the most sense. And that is what we are doing.”
Erickson said his own parked vehicle was nearly struck about a week and a half ago, calling it another example of dangerous driving along the corridor.
“I can’t replace my life, and clearly we can’t replace other people’s lives,” he said.
I stopped by the ghost bike the next day, and was please to see several people had left flowers on the bike, in a sign that he has not been forgotten. And hopefully, Ackerman’s will be the last ghost bike we’ll need on the deadly corridor.
Meanwhile, the case against accused 73-year old driver Douglas Morton Adams remains pending, with no trial date currently set.
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Thanks to Megan for forwarding a story about a hero teenager who rescued an Arizona woman with dementia who was wandering the streets in triple-digit heat, even if he was likely riding an illegal e-moto instead of a bicycle.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Grand Junction, Colorado goes the wrong way with a proposal to reduce the amount and type of bicycle parking required in the city, allowing developers to make their own decisions on whether to invest in them — even though bike parking is just a fraction of the cost of a single motor vehicle parking space.
No bias here. Bicyclists in a Liverpool, England neighborhood are complaining about a plan to “temporally” decommission a less than two-year old road diet and protected bike lanes, to make more room for cars when they start work on repairing a nearby bridge.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Thanks again to Megan for forwarding news about to two Vermont men fined $35,000 for cutting down over 300 trees to build an illegal mountain bike trail.
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Local
BikeLA, the organization formerly known as the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, led a bike ride to MacArthur Park for a World Cup watching party on Saturday. Although as far as I could tell, both matches won by VAR.
Santa Monica will host its State of the City 2026 as a free, open street celebration on Main Street from 4 to 7 pm on Thursday, July 23, between Hollister Ave and Ocean Park Blvd; Santa Monica Spoke will host a bike valet on Norman Place.
Internet tabloids had a meltdown over the weekend after the paparazzi caught sight of bike-riding, 83-year old Harrison Ford’s physique when he stripped down to his bib shorts after an LA ride.
State
Authorities are looking for 32-year old David Creech, who was last seen riding his bike away from his home in the Spring Valley Lake area of San Bernardino County just before 9 am on Wednesday, July 1st.
More on Santa Barbara’s call for residents to provide feedback on an AI-generated map to create a low-stress bike network.
National
PeopleForBikes says bicycling to school matters more than you think, “creating opportunities for independence, physical activity, and lifelong riding habits. In many ways, it is investing in the future of bicycling itself.”
Around 6,000 people took part in the annual two-day, Seattle to Portland STP Bicycle Classic over the weekend.
A Kansas columnist says even as he closes in on 70, it’s never too late to start bicycling again.
A Minneapolis-St. Paul website had a good idea, asking a road cycling grandfather to test a high-end e-cargo bike by transporting his own grandkids, which he described as feeling like “you’re balancing a tray of kettlebells as you walk through a cosplay convention.”
More than 125 Penny Farthing riders converged on Dayton, Ohio to celebrate the Wright Brothers roots as bicycle mechanics before the brothers went on to invent some sort of flying contraption.
This is the cost of traffic violence. A 36-year old Boston woman was killed when her bicycle was struck by a truck driver; Louisa Gag was a city transportation planner and prominent bicycle safety advocate who worked to make Boston’s streets safer for everyone.
DC bicyclists won the fight to preserve a three-quarter-mile bikeway known as America’s Bike Lane from a last-minute effort by the Trump administration to have it ripped out to make room for an an exclusive, high-end golf course.
A new Virginia Historical Marker recognizes Botetourt County’s place on the legendary TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, on the 50th anniversary of the Bikecentennial ’76 cross-country bike ride.
This is who we share the road with. A road-raging Florida driver rammed a 15-year old boy riding an “ebike” off the road, then slapped the kid, when a group of teens had tried to get the driver to stop after swerving at them; naturally, the police responded by impounding several of the teens’ bikes for not being street legal, rather than busting the driver.
International
Momentum calls out 30 bike lanes around the world that should have never been built, from blocked bike lanes to lanes that start and stop in the middle of high-traffic areas. I particularly like the ones that go over traffic islands, because cutting through them would have been just too much work, apparently.
Momentum also offers a guide to Quebec’s 3,100 mile bicycle network.
Residents of a Montreal neighborhood have a reasonable complaint after the city removed parking spaces on one side of the street, including disability spaces, for a protected bike lane, arguing that the city wouldn’t even install a crosswalk so one older woman could reach the spaces across the street.
A British Member of Parliament had her new e-cargo bike stolen the first time she tried riding it to town in Oxford.
Residents of a north London neighborhood take a different approach to installing a ghost bike, first towing it on a bike trailer through an intersection where too many people biking and walking have been killed, then putting it on display the local museum’s “50 Years of Cycle Islington” exhibition.
London’s department of transportation failed to install a single mile of bike lane in the city last year, relying on local council’s to do all the building. There’s probably no truth to the rumor that the head of Transport for London has been hired to run LADOT on that basis.
Irish towns as small as 5,000 to 10,000 people see up to a 50% increase in a ridership when bike lanes go in, according to the country’s transportation minister, despite the fears of local councilors.
Congratulations to Świdnica, Poland, which won a competition to be named the country’s bicycling capital by riding the most miles.
Competitive Cycling
Two Tour de France riders, including Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay, were warned by jurors after apparently turning the race into a contact sport during the final sprint on Saturday.
Mathieu van der Poel won the third Tour de France stage of his career on Sunday in a stage reminiscent of the one-day classics he thrives on; race leader Tadej Pogačar finished safely six seconds back.
Former race leader Torstein Træen’s surprising turn in the yellow jersey didn’t last long, crashing out of the race by clipping a teammate’s wheel two days after he gained a remarkable seven-minute advantage on the race favorites.
The rise of the Hincapie brothers’ Modern Adventure Pro Cycling Team saved the cycling career of 30-year old Whitefish, Montana resident Sam Boardman, who signed with the team “just before he hung up his helmet and dove into a ‘real job.’”
The Manhattan Beach Grand Prix returned to the beach city on Sunday for its 63rd running; no results have been posted yet.
Finally…
With all the hi-tech innovations in bicycling, no one has yet invented a mosquito-proof face mask. And that feeling when your new bicycle is part folding bike, part Erector Set.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
