Day 357 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
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It’s the last 2 days of the 11th Annual BikinginLA Holiday Fund Drive!
Thanks to Ed for his generous support to help keep all the best bike news and advocacy coming your way every day!
But time is quickly running out, with just three two short days left to give.
So what the hell are you waiting for?
Just stop what you’re doing, and donate right now with just a few clicks through PayPal or Venmo, or via Zelle to ted@bikinginla.com using the banking app on your smartphone.
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Good grief.
As if punishment passes and brake checks weren’t bad enough, an apparent Italian road rage driver pulled out a gun and fired off two shots at a local bike team on a training ride.
Although his marksmanship left something to be desired, thankfully.
According to Road.cc,
The shocking attack – which miraculous resulted in no injuries – took place as members of the S.C. Padovani Polo Cherry Bank team, which races in cycling’s Continental third tier, were training on the SS12 road just outside Dolcè, near Lake Garda in northern Italy on Saturday morning, as part of their pre-Christmas training camp.
Footage of the incident, shared by the team on social media, shows a BMW driver pull up alongside the seven riders as they navigate the twisting road, located in Italy’s Val d’Adige district.
According to the squad, the motorist then rolled down his window and produced a gun, before firing two shots at the cyclists. In the footage, one of the riders can be seen ducking as a shot appears to be fired. The motorist then drives off into the distance.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to embed the video, so you’ll have to click through to see it.
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Not quite on the same level, but still demonstrating an extreme degree of assholery, is this post Megan forwarded from Mastadon, with some jerk blowing his vape pollution directly into the face of a ‘cross racer.
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The new Golden State Report news site, founded by former LA Times Opinion writers, takes a look at something we’ve complained about all year — the LAPD’s refusal to release any information about traffic deaths.
Or any crime data, at all.
We’ve gone from open city data under former Mayor Eric Garcetti, to a near total statistical blackout under Mayor Bass and LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.
The dearth of data hinders transparency, and means members of the public have no real sense of how well crime suppression is working at the neighborhood level. They have no idea, for example, if their neighborhood is experiencing a month to month or year to year rise in burglaries or car break-ins, information they could use to demand action from their senior lead officer or help from their local council office.
It’s not just crime, either — the LAPD’s traffic collision dataset stopped updating earlier this year. While Crosstown was previously able to break down traffic deaths by neighborhood — downtown, Sun Valley and Manchester Square topped the list of fatalities in 2023 — now that can’t happen.
This is problematic in a city where vehicular deaths exceed homicides, and as Golden State just noted, the Vision Zero effort to eliminate auto-related fatalities has been an abject failure. With functioning data we could detail which neighborhoods record the most pedestrians struck, or where the highest number of DUIs occur.
Not only is it impossible to break down traffic deaths by neighborhood, we now have no idea how many people have been killed on our streets, regardless of whether they were walking, biking or driving.
Vision Zero has long been a punchline in this city. But it’s even more ridiculous, and worthless, when city officials can’t or won’t tell us what’s happening on our own streets.
It’s worth giving the whole story a read.
Even if they’re a lot more forgiving than I am, assuming the problem stems from a switch in data systems, rather than a deliberate attempt to keep us in the dark.
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Bike Portland demonstrates that even good infrastructure is no match for bad drivers.
Because every driver is a bad driver sometimes. And some drivers are bad drivers all the time.
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As we’ve said before, we’re not the only ones trying to raise funds before the year end, although we are the only one shamelessly exploiting a cute spokescorgi to do it.
In addition to Streetsblog LA, the East Side Rider Bike Club is trying to raise funds; no bike group does more with less to benefit their entire community in ways that go far beyond just bicycles.
And BikeLA, nee Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, is raising funds as well.
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‘Tis the season.
Former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Tyrone Goodson hosted his 11th annual bike giveaway, passing out more than one hundred bicycles and toys to kids in Ocala, Florida.
An Arkansas Stop the Violence group is working to deliver 500 bikes to kids across the state during their annual holiday bicycle drive.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
As we keep saying, the problem isn’t people on ped-assist bicycles, it’s people on bikes like the one seized by cops Key Biscayne, Florida, that was illegally modified to go 100 mph. Something tells me the rider wasn’t pedaling to go that fast, either.
No bias here. Residents of a London borough are calling for a total ban on bikes in local parks, after a man had his ticket for exceeding the 12 mph speed limit in the park rescinded by pointing out that a) the limit is too low, b) the limit isn’t posted, and c) most bicycles don’t come with speedometers; again, riders point out that the problem isn’t people on bicycles, but the ones riding illegal electric motorbikes.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
“Britain’s angriest cyclist” was sentenced to six weeks behind bars for a road rage incident that violated his probation for yet another road rage incident; in the most recent case, he went off at a woman walking her baby on a beachfront path after he nearly hit a dog that was running off leash, while he was already on probation for pounding on the windshield of a driver who honked at him.
A tiny Spanish village — population around 1,000 — stopped so many people for riding the wrong way in city alleys after a Christmas market blocked the main street that they had to call in reinforcements to write tickets for lines reaching 30 or more scofflaw salmon cyclists.
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Local
Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition takes a deep dive into refuting the “big lie about bikes,” aka BLAB, t,o wit “Most people don’t want to ride bikes! If we built a safe bike network, no one will use it.” Something that is demonstrably false.
State
CalMatters outstanding series on the rising death toll from traffic violence on California roadways — fueled in part by the DMV routinely allowing drivers with horrifying records to continue driving — is already resulting in action in the the state legislature.
This is who we share the road with. A post office in San Diego’s Mira Mesa neighborhood was the victim of an 81-year old driver when the woman slammed her car into it for some unknown reason; several people suffered minor injuries, while one person was hospitalized. Which should once again raise the question of how old is too old to drive, but probably won’t.
A senior marketing manager for Strava was kicked to the curb after a video went viral showing her abusing and attacking restaurant workers, after she was told they wouldn’t serve her any more alcohol; she was soon arrested on a charge of public intoxication.
This, too, is who we share the road with. Waymo suspended service in San Francisco after all of their self-driving cabs stalled in the middle of traffic lanes during the city’s widespread power outage over the weekend.
National
Speaking of kicked to the curb, a writer for Velo is no longer working for the magazine after Instagram and Substack bike writer James Huang accused them of plagiarizing his reviews.
Police in Portland busted a serial bike thief following a months-long burglary spree, charging him with stealing 43 bicycles and other items. You have to assume those were just the ones he got caught for, too.
The Frisco, Texas Triathlon Club is hosting a Christmas Eve run to remember the two members who were run down from behind by a pickup driver while on a group ride; they’ve also created a fundraising drive to benefit the League of American Bicyclists, which has already doubled the modest initial $2,600 goal.
New York bike lanes should be a prime beneficiary of New York’s new mayor, as outgoing Mayor Adams delays yet another bike lane, even after it was pared down.
A father in North Carolina is suing the nation’s largest hospital chain, alleging that HCA Healthcare allowed an employee to drive a large box truck without proper training, after he fled the scene following a crash that killed the man’s son as he was riding a bike.
International
Momentum highlights the problem of drivers blocking bike lanes, and says the solution is groups like Bike Lane Uprising.
A British man completed a nearly 7,000-mile ride from Cheshire, England to the Chinese border with Kazakhstan to raise funds for a mental health charity. No word on whether he disappeared entirely except for his smile afterwards.
No bias here, either. A shopkeeper in the UK complained about bikes blocking the doorway to his shop, when there were bike racks right in front, except he had blocked access to the bike racks with his van.
Finally…
Who needs a tent and sleeping bag when you can tow a full-size fiberglass camper behind your bike? The bad news is, even the fastest bike helmet won’t go any faster than you do.
And before fleeing from the cops on your bike for the eighth time, maybe try putting a damn light on it first.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
