Now he reports the city has begun pouring new concrete to patch the crumbling stretch of concrete that took him down.
As usual, despite years of complaints, they only got around to it after it was too late. And after being embarrassed with a front page story.
But at least it should help prevent the next one.
Photos by Patrick Pascal.
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More fallout from the crash of a self-driving Uber car that killed an Arizona woman as she walked her bike across an overly wide street.
Arizona’s governor has suspended testing of self-driving cars in the state, after previously welcoming them with open arms when California installed safety restrictions on them.
Speaking of the LA River bike path, it’s about to be shut down once again, this time for construction of a long-planned bike and pedestrian bridge connecting Atwater Village and Griffith Park.
San Diego’s Little Italy Association is scooping up dockless bikeshare bikes, and depositing them outside the business district. Which is strange, because these are the same people who fought planned bike lanes, insisting that all their customers come by cars. Thanks to Frank Lehnerz for the heads-up.
The mayor of Hamilton, Quebec learned about the need for safer streets the hard way, nearly getting hit by a car just seconds into a ride to promote the city’s bike infrastructure.
A Kiwi sociologist says the bikelash over the new bikeways stems from “a sort of initial adjustment stress” from people who are unable to handle the change to the street.
Despite the city’s lip service to Vision Zero, it’s clear, to paraphrase Casablanca, that the deaths of a few innocent people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy town.
Now neighboring Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has joined him, citing a lack of significant, widespread support for the vital safety project.
If that’s going to be the standard, we might as well toss Vision Zero in the scrapheap of Los Angeles history right now. Because we may never get a majority of Angelenos to believe that saving lives trumps saving a few minutes on their commute.
City officials are elected to do the right thing, not the popular thing. And make the difficult choices that they know will prove correct down the road, even if they initially lack “significant, widespread support.”
Like saving lives, for instance.
Instead, O’Farrell became just the latest LA councilmember to back down in the face of organized opposition from angry motoring activists, settling for a number of incremental improvements to the street that may make it a little safer and slightly more pleasant, but likely do nothing to stop speeding drivers from running down more innocent people.
In part, because of attitudes like this from Rachael Luckey, a member of the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council.
A road diet on Temple, Luckey says, would have been too extreme.
“I hate to use the words ‘acceptable loss,’ but we do live in a metropolitan city, and it’s a dangerous world we live in,” she says. “As far as Temple Street is concerned, I don’t know that it is a crisis per-se. If we were seeing 20, 30, 50 people run over, I would be a lot more alarmed.”
A California Highway Patrol collisions database shows that from 2009 to 2017 on the stretch of Temple Street between Beverly and Beaudry, 34 people have been severely injured and five people have died in traffic crashes.
I wonder if she’d still consider it an acceptable loss if one of those victims was a member of her own family.
And once again, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti was too busy running for president to weigh in on one of his own signature programs, exchanging pledged commitment to Vision Zero for zero involvement.
When Vision Zero was first announced in Los Angeles, I questioned whether the city’s leaders had the courage to made the tough choices necessary to save lives, and help make this a healthier, more vibrant and livable city.
The answer, sadly, is no.
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On a related subject, a new journal article from Chapman University assistant law professor Ernesto Hernandez Lopez examines the legal aspects of the LA Mobility Plan.
And the auto-centric bikelash that threatens to derail it.
Here’s how he summarizes the paper, titled Bike Lanes, Not Cars: Mobility and the Legal Fight for Future Los Angeles:
Examines LA’s Mobility Plan 2035
Summarizes lessons from biking scholarship
Uses these lessons to make sense of the litigation on the Mobility Plan 2035
Suggests how law and politics can help city bike lane policies and advocacy and policy making for these
Relates bike lanes to Vision Zero (safety), “first and last mile” (intermodal), and mobility (de-car)
Correlates the litigation and LA experiences with Vehicular Cycling and Automobility theories
The San Gabriel River trail will be closed at Carson Street in Long Beach today for an emergency repair due to water damage. Riders will be detoured to Town Center Drive.
The path should be reopened on Saturday, unless they run into unexpected problems.
If not, take a few minutes to see if you can reconcile what you see with the local police chief’s insistence that the victim, a homeless woman walking her bicycle across the street, darted out of nowhere into the car’s path.
Right.
Then look closely at the interior view, which shows the clearly distracted emergency human driver looking down the whole time, until just before the moment of impact.
The car should have been able to detect the victim; the fact that it didn’t indicates a major flaw in the system. And the woman behind the wheel definitely should have, if she’d been paying the slighted bit of attention.
Correction: The initial stories identified the driver as a man, Raphael Vasquez. However, it appears that Vasquez has been living as woman, Raphaela Vasquez, since being released from prison in 2005. Thanks to Andy Stow for the correction.
The head of a European bike industry trade group responds that bike riders will have to wear beacons to identify themselves to autonomous vehicles. Why stop there? Why not implant all newborns with transponders so self-driving cars can see them regardless of how they travel, and choose to kill the one person crossing the street rather than the three people in a car.
A former Los Angeles Times staff writer calls LA streets a contested space where no improvement — such as the Venice Blvd Great Streets project — goes unpunished.
You’ve got to be kidding. Life is cheap in Yolo County, where a garbage truck driver walked in a plea deal in the death of a bike-riding college professor after pleading no contest to vehicular manslaughter. And was rewarded with a deferred judgement and a lousy 80 hours of community service.
Eugene, OR decides to make a six-block test road diet permanent, concluding it was worth the effort despite initial concerns. Sort of what might happen here if more city officials had the guts to actually try it.
Traffic delays caused by highway construction enticed an El Paso, Texas man to sell his truck and buy a motorized bicycle, improving his health and saving at least $800 a month.
Cycling Weekly considers the symptoms, tests and recovery for concussions. Sooner or later, everyone comes off their bike, and chances are, you can’t count on your helmet to protect you from TBIs, because that’s not what most helmets are designed to do.
A new reports says 43% of the Ontario, Canada bike riders killed between 2010 and 2015 were struck from behind. And 25% were under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
February 2, 2017 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Morning Links: Bike the Vote rejects Measure S, self-driving cars can’t see you, and bike-following robots
Like it or not, housing issues affect more than just where you live and how much you pay.
That’s why Bike the Vote LA has come out against Measure S, which would impose a two-year moratorium on most major new housing construction, saying it would only increase sprawl, social inequity and traffic.
The group says it would “have far-reaching negative repercussions for our collective vision of a diverse, livable, affordable, walkable, bikeable city.”
Bad news for all those, like myself, who have been hoping that self-driving cars would mean safer streets for bike riders by taking the wheel away from today’s careless, aggressive, wasted and/or distracted drivers.
A Menlo Park police chase leads to the arrest of a trio of bike thieves; police found numerous bicycles in one woman’s residence, along with other stolen items, but only three of the bikes had been reported stolen. Another reminder to register your bike, and report it the police if it gets stolen; too often they recover bikes that they can’t return to the owners because they have no idea who they belong to. And they can’t press charges if they can’t prove a bike is stolen.
A San Francisco Chronicle reader concludes that if it serves 100 riders a day, a $25 million bike lane on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge works out to $171 per ride over the four-year trial period. Except that bridges last a lot longer than four years, it could end up serving a lot more than 100 riders a day, and most bike commuters ride both ways, doubling the number of trips. But other than that…
Outside Magazine celebrates its 40th anniversary with their list of the 40 most iconic places on the planet, including mountain bike mecca Slickrock in Moab, Utah, the Tour de France’s Alpe d’Huez, and the Festina car which lead to discovery of pro cycling’s doping problems. Although the latter is more a thing than a place.
The National Bike Registry has merged with the Project 529 bicycle registration service, creating a 400,000 combined database; anyone already registered with NBR will automatically be upgraded to a free lifetime membership with Project 529. Thanks to Mike Wilkinson for the link.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A 78-year old New Mexico bicyclist has travelled around 90,000 miles since he took up bicycling in 2004, despite losing a year of riding due to aortic surgery. I mean about the riding at his age, not the aorta problems. Just to be clear.
Bighearted Oklahoma police buy a new bike for an 11-year old boy whose bike was destroyed when he was unexpectedly hit by a car. As opposed to all those people who leave home expecting to crash.
International
The UK’s Cyclist magazine calls on Londoners to avoid the inevitable traffic nightmare caused by next week’s tube strike by joining the city’s 170,000 bike commuters.
A British bicyclist navigates what he calls the nonsensical cycling scene in Cambridge, saying even if everyone behaved perfectly, there’s just not enough space for cars, pedestrians and bicyclists in the medieval city.
Oslo, Norway is fighting pollution and traffic congestion by giving residents a $1,200 credit towards the purchase of an ebike. If California ever gets serious about fighting climate change and doing something about our crowded streets, a program like that could be cost-effective if it actually succeeds in getting people out of their cars.
Tilford was participating in a regular group ride when his bike struck a dog that had run into the street and he went over his handlebars, striking his head on the pavement; he was not wearing a helmet.
While the prognosis is positive, he is expected to take a year of intensive therapy to make a full recovery.
Another rider who crashed into him suffered a collapsed lung and four broken ribs.
The head of UCI praises Qatar for developing a cycling culture, while saying with a straight face that there hasn’t been any cases of heat exhaustion in the extreme desert temperatures, despite the many riders who collapsed along the course.
The cycling community wants to ban the narcotic painkiller Tramadol, which is popular in the pro peloton to help riders bounce back from the pain of racing. Meanwhile, former world champ David Millar explains how the therapeutic use exemption allows riders to get away with doping; thanks to Ralph Durham and George Wolfberg for the link.
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Local
A homeless Santa Monica man was found with bike parts and a nine-inch bolt cutter, admitted to being a meth addict, and told investigators how to bust a U-lock by twisting the bike frame. And was let go with a citation, along with his companion, for medical reasons. Homeless people need help, not jail. But writing a damn ticket to a confessed bike thief isn’t going to stop anyone.
Santa Monica will host a Kiddical Mass Halloween costume ride on the 29th.
A 15-mile stretch of bike path along the Santa Ana River due to be completed by 2019 would bring long-standing plans for a continuous 100-mile bike and equestrian trail reaching from the San Bernardino Mountains to Huntington Beach one step closer to completion.
A San Diego bicyclist was injured Sunday when her bike hit a steel plate in the road covering repair work. Which is a reminder that raised plates can knock you off your bike, while the plates themselves can provide little or no traction, especially if there’s moisture present.
A Santa Cruz letter writer says it’s your own damn fault if you get hit by a car if you don’t come to a complete, foot-on-the-ground stop at stop signs. Actually, there’s no requirement that bike riders have to put a foot down when coming to a stop. And it can actually increase the risk, while being guaranteed to piss off the drivers around you if you insist on putting a foot down at every stop.
A writer looks at why cyclists and drivers don’t get along, explaining that insurance is a better option than trying to get even with someone. Although it’s a false premise; the overwhelming majority bicyclists and drivers do get along; it’s the exceptions that are the problem.
A former Hawaii police officer has been indicted for negligent homicide, tampering with evidence and filing a false report in the hit-and-run death of a vacationing bike rider; he was fired from the force as a result of his actions.
Life is cheap in Illinois, where the death of a mother of five who was riding in a crosswalk marked with flashers merits a lousy $150 fine. Although it will result in a change in the state’s driver’s manual requiring motorists to stop for a crosswalk warning signal until pedestrians and bicyclists have safely crossed the road. Because evidently common sense is not a requirement for a license, there or anywhere else.
A Chattanooga writer says bike riders shouldn’t be licensed and aren’t the real problem, but bike lanes don’t belong on busy streets. But what the hell is a “California-type politician”?
A 15-year old Pennsylvania boy was sentenced to spend the next 35 years behind bars for shooting another teenager while attempting to steal his bicycle.
Most drunk drivers get off with a slap on the wrist. A Delaware bicyclist busted for biking under the influence following a crash got 32 days in county jail, plus 90 days house arrest, a $1,500 fine and lost her driver’s license for 18 months. In California, that would merit just a $250 fine, with no points on your license.
NPR takes a look at sidewalk cycling in DC, making the point that, legal or not, you’re usually safer on the street — which is exactly where pedestrians want you. Thanks to Joni Yung for the tip.
International
Bike Radar offers 11 ways to be a greener cyclist. Like don’t drop your damn trash on the side of the road — and that includes gel packs and CO2 cartridges.
Canadian cyclists are outraged at Orange Theory Fitness for co-opting ghost bikes for their marketing campaign. Apparently, the chain gets enough benefit from the publicity that they don’t care about offending bike riders, since they keep doing it, despite the complaints.
A front page editorial in the Times of London blames segregated bike lanes for helping to increase traffic congestion, but hides most of the story behind a pay wall. Bike Biz points out just .02% of London roads even have them, never mind that the real cause of increased congestion is the millions of additional cars on the road.
A group of 30 cyclists plowed into a 95-year old Aussie man, then just left him lying on the side of the road. Although, despite what the article initially says, one rider identifying himself as a doctor did stop briefly to check the victim out before rejoining the other riders. Regardless, there’s simply no excuse to leave an injured person like that, young or old.
