August 21, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Guest Post: Take a brief SAFE survey to influence the future of California traffic safety
I received the following email from Sonia Garfinkel of Streets Are For Everyone, asking to share a brief survey about California traffic laws.
Since I’m still working with one hand, I asked if I could share her letter in the form of a guest post.
So please take just a few moments to compete this important survey, and help influence the future safety on our streets.
My name’s Sonia, and I’m pleased to be writing a guest post for this great community and readership. My organization, Streets Are For Everyone (known as SAFE), works to improve the quality of life for pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers alike by reducing traffic fatalities to zero. SAFE is conducting a research project focused on California drivers’ knowledge of driving laws, and we need your responses! We will use the response data to guide SAFE-sponsored legislation that will require the California DMV to provide updated education on existing and new driving laws. In order for this survey to be equitable and representative, we need to collect data from as many communities as possible.
That’s where you come in! We would love for you totake our 5-minute survey on California driving laws. We would also appreciate it if you could share our survey to your networks via social media, email, or any other method. We have created a social media toolkit to make it easier to share the survey.Thank you for your responses, and your help!
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
We’re still stuck on 1,131 signatures, so don’t stop now! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until she meets with us!
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Advocates from Circulate San Diego, Families for Safe Streets San Diego and the San Diego Bicycle Coalition held a press conference yesterday calling for simple, inexpensive fixes to the city’s “Fatal 15” intersections.
Their suggestions are nothing new. They’ve been calling for the same solutions to the city’s deadliest intersections for the past year, but they were left out of the mayor’s budget for the coming year.
However, the mayor is scheduled to release an updated budget today, and they’re asking for the fixes — which would cost $100,000 per intersection, or just $1.5 million total — to be included in the revised budget.
“This is a high-return, low-cost budget item,” said Will Moore, Policy Counsel for Circulate San Diego. “We understand that it is difficult to run a city. There are a lot of hard decisions – so it is even more important to get the easy ones right.”
Even though the city of San Diego “committed to” Vision Zero almost ten years ago, pedestrian deaths remain high; nearly fifty pedestrians and cyclists lose their lives in traffic crashes in San Diego every year.
Katie Gordon’s husband Jason was killed at one of the “Fatal 15″ intersections. Now a member of Families for Safe Streets San Diego, she spoke of her husband and their twin daughters at today’s gathering, and urged the city to budget for these fixes. “Small improvements make a big impact,” she said. “Please don’t let the ‘Fatal 15’ take another life.”
But if it comes down to a question of money, maybe someone could remind the mayor it would cost the city a hell of a lot more than that just to settle with the survivors of the next one.
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LAisttalks with Carlos Moreno, originator of the 15-minute city, about his simple plan to reduce traffic and improve the livability of cities by increasing density and placing everything you need for daily life within 15 minutes of your home.
…Picture living in a bustling neighborhood where all your friends, basic needs, and even your job are reachable by a quick walk or bike or bus ride. (Something many people experience, possibly for the first and last time, on college campuses.) In such a city, parking areas may have been reclaimed as urban greenways, chance encounters with neighbors might be more common, and small local businesses would proliferate and thrive.
This vision is sometimes referred to as “the 15-minute city,” a concept pioneered by Franco-Colombian scientist and mathematician Carlos Moreno. It means basically what it sounds like: Instead of expecting residents to get in their cars and drive long distances to work, run errands, and take part in social activities, cities should instead be designed to provide those kinds of opportunities in close proximity to where people live, reducing overdependence on cars and increasing local social cohesion.
Even if you’re familiar with the concept, it’s worth reading to get a full grasp of the plan, which conspiracy theorists are somehow twisting into unrecognizably bizarre abstractions.
The DA’s office removed the prosecutors who got a conviction against wealthy socialist Rebecca Grossman for the high-speed crash that killed two little kids just crossing the street with their family from the case, over a perceived conflict of interest that really isn’t, which could affect the case as she appeals her conviction. And understandably outraging the victim’s parents.
Caltrans explains how to be a Complete Streets ambassador to help get the legislature to pass SB 960, aka the Complete Streets Bill, which will require Caltrans to add infrastructure for people who bike, walk and take transit whenever it repaves a state roadway.
Cincinnati is relaunching the city’s docked bikeshare program, despite shutting it down due to funding issues earlier in the year, after several organizations contributed nearly half a million dollars to fund it through the end of this year.
April 30, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on New automatic braking regs protect peds, Bike Month just a day away, and SaMo and Pasadena honored for best bike lanes
Just 245 days until Los Angeles fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
On top of everything else, I’ll be having a small skin cancer today, no doubt a souvenir of decades of riding a bike when they still thought the sun was good for you, and and any lotion you might use was meant for tanning, not screening out dangerous rays.
So the status of tomorrow’s post is to be determined at this point. Not because of the minor surgery, but whether I’ll survive riding the bus with an effed up shoulder and ribs.
Hopefully I’ll bounce back and see you in the morning; if not, we’ll be back bright and early on Thursday.
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There may be hope yet. Eventually, anyway.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, aka NHTSA, unveiled the final draft of a new regulation to improve traffic safety, requiring every new motor vehicle sold in the US to have forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection braking.
According to the AP,
The standards require vehicles to stop and avoid hitting a vehicle in front of them at speeds up to 62 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour). Also they must apply the brakes automatically at up to 90 mph (145 kph) if a collision with vehicle ahead is imminent.
The systems also have to spot pedestrians during the day and night, and must stop and avoid a pedestrian at 31 mph to 40 mph (50 kph to 64 kph) depending on the pedestrian’s location and movement.
Presumably, any system than can detect pedestrians should be able to protect people on bicycles, although that’s not guaranteed.
Or even required.
Yet another reminder that we remain an afterthought when it comes to safety.
However, the new regulations won’t take effect for another five years. And it will take decades before most older cars with more limited capabilities are off the roads.
It’s predicted the new regs will save just 362 lives each year, less than 1% of the more than 40,000 people killed annually on American roads.
But it’s a start.
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Metro offers a guide to next month’s Bike Month, including Metro Bike discounts for Bike Week, starting May 13th, and free Metro rides for Bike Day on Thursday the 16th. Although what’s missing is any mention of Bike Day activities, or the pre-pandemic Bike to Work pit stops to encourage more people to try bike commuting.
Beverly Hills will mark Bike Month with a series of events, ranging from a month-long commuter challenge and a “May the 4th Be With You” family bike ride to the kind of Bike to Work Day pit stop Metro appears to have forgotten.
Pasadena will also celebrate Bike Month, starting with National Ride a Bike Day this Sunday, the annual Rose Bowl Ride of Silence on Wednesday the 15th, and refreshments at City Hall for Bike to Work Day.
Meanwhile, LAist offers a guide to living carfree in the City of Angels, including how to use your bike for transportation; you can listen to their podcast from last year on the same subject below.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Sheriff’s deputies in San Marcos will conduct an “ebike safety sweep” on Wednesday afternoon to educate riders on ebike safety, while ticketing any violations committed by ebike riders — including a requirement to ride to the right, which only applies if you’re traveling at less than the speed of traffic. If you do get a ticket, fight it, because an operation specifically targeting ebike riders rather than all road users suggests illegally biased enforcement.
No bias here, either. A writer for Strong Townssays Florida Governor Ron DeSantis isn’t wrong when he says “some activists want to make driving so miserable that people have to abandon their cars,” accusing a “significant percentage of safe streets activists” of being motivated by a hatred of cars and the people who drive them. Never mind that a “significant percentage” of safe streets activists are drivers themselves.
Eureka explains to drivers how to operate their big, deadly machines after a pair of new bikeways currently nearing completion are finished. Because evidently, that whole “licensing and registration” thing they keep insisting should be required for bicyclists isn’t enough to guarantee the people who pass them actually know how to drive already.
That’s more like it. An Arizona man will spend at least 12 years of a 14-year sentence behind bars, after pleading guilty to negligent homicide and hit-and-run charges for fleeing the scene after killing a bike rider; he was already wanted on outstanding state and federal warrants at the time of the crash. Which at least explains why he fled.
Autopsy results show a Colorado mom, whose body was found three years after she disappeared on a Mother’s Day bike ride, was murdered “by unspecified means,” and had been injected with an animal tranquilizer used to immobilize wildlife before her death; her husband was initially charged with her murder, but charges were dropped because authorities hadn’t yet found her body.
Israeli Occupation War Cabinet minister, and former opposition candidate Benny Gantz is one of us, too, breaking his foot while riding a bike in Southern Israel. But at least he has the freedom to ride a bike, unlike most people in Gaza these days.
Competitive Cycling
Sofia Gomez Villafañe and teammate Matt Beers won this year’s Belgian Waffle Ride in San Marcos on Sunday, with Courtney Sherwell and Caroline Wreszin rounding out the women’s podium, and Alexey Vermeulen and Petr Vakoč finishing second and third for the men.
Former Tour de France champ Geraint Thomas blames UCI boss David Lappartient and race organizers for half of the crashes in pro cycling, saying that level of carnage wouldn’t be accepted in any new sport. Although someone should tell him about all those people flooding ERs with pickleball injuries.
Then share it — and keep sharing it — with everyone you know, on every platform you can.
We’re now up to 1,066 signatures, so keep it going! Urge everyone you know to sign the petition, until the mayor agrees to meet with us!
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Color me livid.
Including last night’s fatal crash in Wilmington, we’ve learned about three bicycling deaths in Los Angeles County this year, two in the City of Los Angeles.
And all three have involved at least one hit-and-run driver.
In one case, in South LA, the victim was struck by two drivers, one of whom fled the scene. In the other two, including one in Lennox, the victims were struck by a single driver who fled the scene afterwards.
Which means if you get killed right now riding your bike in the City of LA, there’s a 66.6% probability the driver will flee.
And 75% in the county as a whole.
Then again, the odds may not be as bad as it seems, since the chances that we’ve learned about every fatal bike crash in the county this year is practically nil.
Because no one is bothering to tell us anymore.
The LAPD has stopped informing the public about most fatal crashes, and detectives now sit on news of fatal hit-and-runs for weeks, if not months — making the city’s hit-and-run alert system and standing $50,000 reward for any fatal hit-and-run virtually worthless.
Meanwhile, LADOT long ago stopped updating its Vision Zero map, which they once promised would allow anyone to track traffic deaths in near real time, apparently concluding that we have no right to know how deadly our streets really are. Because then we might demand they actually do something about it.
And the Sheriff’s Department has always been a lost cause when it comes to releasing information of any kind, traffic or otherwise.
So if a crash doesn’t make the news, we’re unlikely to ever learn about it. And they usually don’t.
Which would be a damn good topic to take up with the mayor if she ever reads that petition and actually meets with us.
The first, SB 1297, would add Malibu to the six perviously announced cities allowed to install speed cams under a pilot program, permitting five speed cams along PCH.
The second, SB 1509, would make a conviction for driving 26 mph or more over the speed limit a two-point violation, slightly increasing the chances that the driver’s license could be suspended.
I mean, they wouldn’t want to do something rash, or anything.
Traffic violations are usually pled down making, magically turning a two-point violation into one point, or shaving a few miles off the driver’s speed to get them under that threshold.
Especially if they can afford a good lawyer.
It also requires a conviction, which means the cop who wrote the ticket actually has to show up at the hearing, which they often don’t if you’re not a complete ass when they pull you over.
And as we’ve learned from hard-earned experience, too many drivers will just keep on driving, even after their license is suspended.
Maybe if we treated excessive speeds like the deadly crime they are, comparable to shooting a gun on a public street, they might manage to come up with something that might actually work to reduce speeding.
Like slapping a set of cuffs on anyone doing more that 20 mph over the speed limit, and/or revoking their license on the spot. And impound their fucking cars until they get their license back.
Harsh?
Maybe.
But so is informing someone their loved ones will never come home again.
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This is how to make an effective public comment.
Seriously, watch this short video. To see how to effectively make the case for protected bike-lanes, and particularly how they’re good for business. Or just as a great example of how to speak to any city council.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Newport, Rhode Island letter writer argues that narrowing a main road to make room for bike lanes is just “politically correct silliness that exalts the interests of the 0.1 percent of the population who would actually ride bicycles on a main thoroughfare over the 99.9 percent of us who use motor vehicles to go about our business.”
No bias here, either. Seventy-seven-year old British actress Patricia Hodge accused bicyclists of thinking they’re the center of the universe, because one “unforgivably rude but also dangerous” bicyclist almost hit her as she crossed a street, adding, “The only reason they’re angry is because they know I’m right.” Which is wrong in so many ways. Starting with the very large brush she seems to have stuck up her…oh, never mind.
Riverside County approved the 2024 Traffic Relief Plan calling for improving pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths, but also widening traffic corridors in an apparent effort to make them more dangerous.
Four more establishments have joined the lawsuit accusing San Francisco’s Valencia Street centerline protected bike lane of destroying their businesses by diverting traffic and eliminating parking.
A city council candidate in Malta set out to demonstrate how easy it is to bike to work instead of driving. And ended up with two broken arms after drivers squeezed him off the road.
An Aussie car site says “technically” a driver isn’t allowed to enter a crosswalk until a pedestrian completely crosses the street, although “the law is open to interpretation.”If something is technically prohibited, it’s prohibited, period. But sure, tell us how bike riders are “technically” required to stop for stop signs.
And our corgi would like to apologize on behalf of all members of her breed for the actions of the small sheepdog and corgi that darted in front of an Irish bike club, causing two members to fall.
Because if we’re going to keep blaming all bike riders for the actions of a few, we should probably extend that same collective blame to every other group, as well.
……...
Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
January 19, 2024 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on LA Times endorses Healthy Streets LA initiative in March vote, and SCAG to study turning highways into boulevards
Frustrated by the lack of political will and bureaucracy, street safety advocates collected enough signatures to put Healthy Streets LA, or Measure HLA, on the March ballot. The initiative would force the city to carry out the improvements in the Mobility Plan. Any time city departments repave at least one-eighth of a mile of street, they would have to add the improvements outlined in the plan, whether bike lanes, bus lanes, pedestrian enhancements or fixes to ease vehicle traffic.
This makes sense. When city crews have to repaint the lines when repaving a street, why not restripe the roads according to the Mobility Plan at the same time? Yet in a city as large as Los Angeles, making this a smooth process is not always easy. The multiple departments responsible for street paving, engineering and transportation safety struggle to coordinate and have missed opportunities to install Mobility Plan projects. The mandate of Measure HLA would, ideally, prompt City Hall to better organize street work programs and make Mobility Plan improvements a part of routine road maintenance.
The paper concludes their editorial this way.
Measure HLA has broad support among neighborhood councils, environmental, labor and business groups. Their members understand that Los Angeles needs to evolve into a city that is safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users and, yes, even motorists. The plan recognizes that Angelenos will still drive — it includes 80 miles of streets that are prioritized for vehicle travel and projects that help drivers maintain safe, consistent speeds and reliable travel times.
The rising number of traffic deaths is a preventable tragedy. Voters have the power to make Los Angeles’ streets safer. Vote yes on Measure HLA.
No bias here. Underground hip-hop artist Gorilla Nems, aka Travis Doyle, took out his anger on New York’s Complete Street transformation over the past decade or so, telling a podcast host “Fuck bike lanes…this ain’t Copenhagen,” while instructing his followers to ignore walk signals and just cross the street anytime they want, after looking both ways.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
The Metro board delayed a vote to award Metro Bike management to Lyft, after ride hail drivers and delivery riders teamed with bikeshare workers to protest the proposed contract. But you’ll have to subscribe the Daily News or find a way around the paper’s draconian paywall if you want to read about it.
Police in Huntington Beach are using bait bikes to bust bike thieves. Something the LAPD still won’t do over fears they’ll be accused of entrapment.
They get it, sort of. A Simi Valley paper says safety is a two-way street, but drivers shoulder most of the responsibility to look out for vulnerable bike riders. Although they should go to cliche jail for trotting out the tired two-way street metaphor.
The future of the Tour of Britain, the Women’s Tour and other British races could be in doubt because the organizer of the races entered liquidation proceedings, after losing their license to conduct the races over an unpaid fee totaling the equivalent of over $884,000.
Writing about Monday’s performative press conference to announce a lousy $4.2 million in safety work for the 21 miles of PCH that snakes along the Pacific Coast — which works out to just $200,000 a mile — they almost immediately called the announcement into question.
While there is a process each project will have to undergo, “this is not a ‘business as usual’ approach,” Omishakin said as cars whizzed past.
After several deadly pedestrian crashes that roiled Malibu and sparked calls for change, business as usual won’t be enough, transportation activists said. Damian Kevitt, founder of Streets Are for Everyone, told The Times the “design of PCH through Malibu is simply and clearly deadly.”
“It needs to be a transformed from a highway where people can do 60 to 80 to even 100 mph through residential [areas] and businesses, with families and cyclists, unprotected, just a couple feet away,” Kevitt said.
Hopefully, Caltrans can demonstrate a little more urgency than the $34.6 million project currently underway to sync red lights along the highway, presumably to make speeding drivers stop for red while the typically non-existent non-speeding drivers on the highway will see greens.
The project was approved seven years ago, but because the highway is under California Department of Transportation jurisdiction, it had to be reviewed by the state.
“The Caltrans review process, while undoubtedly necessary for ensuring regulatory compliance and safety standards, proved to be more cumbersome than anticipated,” said Matt Myerhoff, Malibu’s public information officer.
Gee, you think?
Although red lights are typically synced to smooth traffic flow, rather than control speeds.
Meanwhile, Caltrans pledged to study PCH to determine if it can be designated as a safety corridor, in which fines for speeding can be doubled.
But f the mounting death toll on the highway isn’t prima facie proof of the problem, I don’t know what yet another study will accomplish. Then again, you could quadruple the fines, and it won’t matter if the drivers don’t get caught.
Which points to the sheer stupidity of California’s speed cam pilot program only being allowed in Los Angeles, Glendale and Long Beach, along with three NorCal cities, while completely ignoring the state’s deadliest corridors.
But still.
Members of Seetoo’s Fix PCH Action Team, including Kevitt, say the seven years it took Caltrans to allow Malibu to begin the signal synchronization project “doesn’t indicate that Caltrans is prioritizing safety at all.”
Collecting and studying the data could mean “years and years more delay before they even decide if they can slow down this highway that is known to be deadly,” Kevitt said.
Chris Wizner, another action team member, told The Times he wondered how many more deaths it would take for Caltrans to slow down PCH.
That’s easy.
The formula has always been N+1.
It will take one more death than we’ve already suffered, no matter how many there have already been.
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A Santa Barbara cop takes a turn at demonstrating he knows nothing about riding in a peloton, without saying it, as a group of Santa Barbara bicyclists got delayed tickets in the mail for following one another too closely, after one rider went down and took several other riders down with him.
Insult to injury rant: Group ride Santa Barbara to Ventura & back Nov. 21, a cyclist in the peloton front crashed & took down several of us. EMTs came & took me for a brain scan. I'm fine. Cop pretended to help me as he asked my name etc.
Insult to injury rant: Group ride Santa Barbara to Ventura & back Nov. 21, a cyclist in the peloton front crashed & took down several of us. EMTs came & took me for a brain scan. I’m fine. Cop pretended to help me as he asked my name etc.
I just got a ticket for “following too close”. In a peloton. Seriously. $235 or contest it in court.
I’m tempted on principle. Would love to confront this cop & ask why he didn’t give me the ticket then & there (others also got tickets in the mail). He probably knows we would have pitched a fit.
Disgraceful. I’m lying there on the ground in paid, bloody & nauseous & this MF cop is writing me up for a traffic violation. No wonder people don’t trust the police. “Protect & Serve”. Bullshit.
Okay, maybe I know why this one slipped under the radar.
Regardless, the UPU asked children to write on the following topic:
“Imagine you are a super hero and your mission is to make all roads around the world safer for children. Write a letter to someone explaining which super powers you would need to achieve your mission.”
The winner, a 13-year old girl from Kenya, requests a simple super power — the ability to write posters that will make drivers slow down, because children are the most helpless road users.
Amen.
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Thanks to Megan Lynch for forwarding the following video, which includes these key points:
Soul-crushing car traffic makes the Yosemite experience very frustrating
That frustration gets unloaded on retail workers there
You should definitely ride a bike in Yosemite
But don’t leave anything on your bike because even in Yosemite thieves will strip it to the frame
No bias here. A New York councilmember calls for mandatory licensing and registration of ebikes, rhetorically asking “How many actual ebikes do you see stopping at a red light or observing traffic laws?” Just wait until someone tells him about cars and their drivers, which are already registered and licensed, and regularly break traffic laws anyway.
A local San Francisco website says sales data doesn’t back up claims from merchants along Valencia Street that the new centerline bike lane has killed their business, showing just a 6% drop in retail sales during construction of the bike lanes. Although to be fair, a 6% drop can mean the difference between profit and loss for some businesses, but it’s a far cry from what they claimed.
More on the bizarre ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court that says cities aren’t liable for injuries to bike riders due to bad pavement because streets without bike lanes aren’t intended for bicycles.
Inmates in a New Hampshire county jail are learning to repair bicycles, working towards their master bike technician certification while serving their time. Which should provide a nice incentive to commit another crime if they get released before earning their certification.
A Long Island woman faces a host of charges, including 2nd degree assault and disabling an Interlock device, for speeding through a parking lot where a triathlon was being held and slamming into a competitor riding his bike, leaving the victim with a traumatic brain injury and cervical spine fracture.
International
Toronto’s paramedic’s union said a controversial protected bike lane cost an ambulance crew 30 seconds getting through an intersection because drivers couldn’t get out of their way. Maybe someone should tell them those little car-tickler plastic posts are designed to bend, so you can drive right over them.
Caltrans and the state of California held a major media event on Malibu Monday, but a city clamoring for changes to Pacific Coast Highway was left empty handed.
The state Transportation Secretary travelled from Sacramento, but did not have any new traffic calming plans to disclose.
Toks Milshakin repeated the list of quick fixes already disclosed by Caltrans: a $4.2 million set of new lane striping, speed limit signage, and other small safety projects.
The news conference produced the news that the state will not be able to immediately lower the speed limit on any stretch of PCH.
No new speed study has been conducted, or will be conducted soon.
No change in the speed limit.
No changes in design.
Caltrans safety manager Lee Haber said right now, that the state cannot lower the speed limits on PCH.
And that’s just the beginning of a scathing report from the local media, which has been covering the mounting toll on the deadly highway for more than two decades.
Along with local safety advocates, who have been fighting for changes just as long.
Then there was this response, after Malibu Mayor Steve Uhring lauded Caltrans for taking time out to listen to city officials, saying he feels very confident they made some big strides yesterday.
If those strides resulted in any permanent or temporary changes, none were announced Monday.
Instead, officials stuck to the existing design and operation of the highway.
State law requires that the speed limit be computed based on the 85th percentile speed … the speed travelled by 85 percent of the cars.
PCH was designed 70 years ago with lane widths and curves to accommodate 55 mile per hour traffic … and study after study proves traffic moves at a design speed … not a speed limit.
Never mind that the urgently promised safety study necessary to reduce those excessive speeds, or do much of anything else, won’t be complete until 2025.
Seriously, take a few minutes to read the whole thing.
Because the authors clearly and concisely shred all the happy talk and lauding news reports resulting from the announcement of the state’s meager investment in improving safety on the highway, concluding,
…it is .. after all … a state highway.
One that is not going to see any major changes … anytime soon … other than 4 point 2 million dollars worth of paint and new signs.
The paper views it through the lens of artist Yasmine Nasser Diaz, the widow of Hollywood producer Robert George, who was killed in October when a motorist opened their car door at Fountain and Edgemont in East Hollywood, knocking him into the path of another car.
“Dooring” and “doored,” colloquialisms among bicyclists, refer to a collision caused by a driver or passenger opening a car door into an oncoming cyclist. For some cyclists, such as Diaz, it is among their greatest fears. But collisions such as these, they say, can be prevented with greater awareness and better infrastructure.
Developing bike infrastructure in Los Angeles is complicated by logistics and competing interests. Bicyclists say L.A.’s car-centric culture hinders progress and argue that the city favors the comfort of drivers.
Yeah, you could say that.
The story goes on to cite Joshua Cohen, of BikinginLA sponsor Cohen Law Partners.
In California, motorists are mandated to not open a door “unless it is reasonably safe to do so and can be done without interfering with the movement of such traffic,” according to the state vehicle code…
But when car doors do collide with cyclists, the fallout can range from a few bumps and bruises to serious damage. Joshua Cohen, a personal injury attorney, said he’s dealt with cases in which cyclists had severed fingers, as well as back, neck and head injuries.
“The edge of the car door where it strikes the human body — generally, if you think about the physics of that happening — it’s almost like someone striking it with a sword because the leading edge of the car door is basically a thin piece of metal,” Cohen said.
Despite that, the law is rarely prosecuted.
A spokesperson with the LAPD says arrests are unlikely to be made unless police can prove malicious intent.
Otherwise, it’s just another oopsie — even though motorists are always at fault in a dooring, because they have the responsibility to prevent it.
The decade-plus I’ve spent tracking SoCal bike deaths tells us that dooring is rarely fatal. Which is good, because it’s one of the most common forms of bike crashes — despite the LAPD stats, which show only two reported doorings this year.
Presumably, one of those is the one that killed George.
………
Don’t let the door hit it on the way out.
End of an era – the new edition of MUTCD no longer has "share the road." Too many people misunderstood it as telling bikes to squeeze off into the gutter so drivers could pass without changing lanes.
Vallejo is evicting residents of a homeless encampment just before the holidays, so the city can begin a $10 million project to rebuild the bike path they’ve been living next to.
The trial for the two Las Vegas teens accused of intentionally running down and killing former Bell CA police chief Andy Probst was pushed back to next fall, while their attorney attacked the entire grand jury system, and blamed mental, physical and emotional problems for their inappropriate courtroom behavior.
A London website says don’t ride your bike through the Tooting neighborhood, where workers see bicycle collisions on a near daily basis. Maybe it would help if drivers would do a little less tooting and more driving.
A new British study confirms what most of us already know, that drivers who also ride bikes, or at least understand where bike riders are supposed to position themselves on the streets, are less likely to blame the person on the bike for a close pass.
We made the national news, for all the wrong reasons.
CNN reported on LA County’s killer highway, the four Pepperdine students killed by a speeding driver earlier this year, and the 58 people killed along PCH in Malibu in just the last 13 years.
“I should have been there and I usually would be there,” (Pepperdine senior Bridget) Thompson said. “I can just picture them in the car on the way there. I know they were listening to music and I know they were singing along.”
The girls parked and were walking along the Pacific Coast Highway when prosecutors say a BMW going 104 miles per hour slammed into several parked cars before hitting and killing Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams – all Pepperdine seniors…
Thompson is now among those demanding safety changes along the iconic Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. She helped dedicate a memorial on the scenic highway, which stretches the California coastline, featuring 58 white tires — one for each of the lives lost on the road in Malibu since 2010.
It’s a heartbreaking story, but a necessary one.
Maybe a little national humiliation is what we need to finally get some long-needed changes made.
The court ruled that cities aren’t responsible for injuries to bike riders from poorly maintained roads that don’t have bicycle infrastructure, reasoning that bicycles are allowed to use such roadways, but aren’t the intended users.
Apparently, drivers are.
Not only does the ruling absolve cities of responsibility to maintain safe streets, it also provides a disincentive to build the infrastructure that would make them liable.
And makes it clear that we’re nothing more than guests anywhere else.
The driver of one Ford Mustang was passing another on a sweeping mountain curve, and slammed headfirst into three bicyclists traveling in the opposite direction.
The driver fled the scene, then he and his passenger abandoned the car a short distance later with the airbags deployed. The driver of the other car attempted to give chase after checking on the victims, but crashed into a guardrail.
It seems almost miraculous that only one of the victims was seriously injured. A second rider suffered major road rash after flying over the car, while the third rode into a ditch to avoid the crash.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Sad news from San Jose, where the Bay Area’s Mr. Roadshow died Sunday after a long battle with a degenerative muscle and nerve disease; prior to the paper’s draconian paywall, I often linked to his stories when he got it right, or to criticize when he missed the mark. Gary Richards was 72.
For some time, I’ve been concerned that we’re not learning about people killed riding their bikes in the City of Los Angeles.
Now know they’ve been keeping the truth from us.
That worry stemmed from this year’s surprisingly low number of bicycling deaths that have been reported in the media, as well as the LAPD’s belated announcements of fatal hit-and-runs that come weeks, if not months, after the fact.
Never mind that they’re asking for our help long after the trail has gone cold, and any potential witnesses have likely forgotten key details.
Yesterday, Crosstown confirmed that they just aren’t telling us what we need to know to stay safe, and identify the problems on our streets — let alone fix them.
Following the death of Los Angeles resident Samuel Tessier in an apparent fall at the entrance to Universal Studios last week, I had counted nine people who had been publicly confirmed to have been killed while riding their bikes on the mean streets of the City of Angels.
But according to LAPD figures reported by Crosstown, the actual number is more than twice that high. In fact, of the more than 260 traffic deaths in the city through October 28th, 19 were people on two wheels.
It’s actually worse than that, however, because three more people have been killed riding bikes in Los Angeles since then, including Mr. Tessier, for a current total of 22.
Yes, 22.
Although that figure pales compared to the 138 pedestrians slaughtered on our streets, as the city is on track for more than 300 traffic deaths for the second year in a row.
And once again likely to top the highest number of traffic fatalities in more than a decade, topping last year’s total of 314 — or nearly one person killed on our streets every day of the year.
So much for Vision Zero.
We were promised that the city would pull out all the stops and do whatever was necessary to eliminate traffic deaths by — wait for it — 2025.
Which means they have a hell of lot of work to do to if they’re going to meet that goal in the next 13 and a half months.
Especially since they can’t even be bothered to tell us about the over half the bike-riding victims of traffic violence in the city.
Let alone the other 243 people killed in traffic collisions this year.
And if that doesn’t piss you off, I don’t know what will.
According to a new survey conducted by Calbike, a whopping 83% of respondents would feel uncomfortable walking or biking on California highways controlled by Caltrans.
And 99% would be uncomfortable walking or biking those highways with a child.
Bike-riding state senator and congressional candidate Anthony Portantino landed a key endorsement in his campaign to replace outgoing Congressmember Adam Schiff, in what appears to be shaping up as a battle with equally bike-friendly Assembly Transportation Committee head Laura Friedman.
A London man got knocked off his bike by a hit-and-run mo-ped rider while biking with his cat, and all the cops care about is his lack of a helmet. And presumably the cat’s, too.
Impatient, close passing moped driver knocked us off our bike today. Fortunately the police (?) were right behind us, so they could scold me for not wearing a helmet and then leave. First time off my bike since 2007.
Seriously? A Blythe man walked out of court already on parole after pleading guilty to shooting a man riding a bicycle after the two men had quarreled over a dice game; 27-year old Deveon Keyshawn Smith was sentenced to four years time served for the crime, after being held behind bars since the 2018 shooting.
The bereaved romantic partner of rising Irish cyclist Gabriele Glodenyte warns that the county’s roads are like a war zone, after the 24-year old rider was killed by a driver while the pair were on a training ride in May.
My apologies for another unexcused absence on Friday.
One of the many insidious effects of diabetes is a dramatic decline in stamina; busing to a couple of medical appointments was enough to knock me out all night, and most of the next morning.
On the plus side, at least I’m starting the week well rested.
Which is something we’ve probably all asked at one time or another.
Although to be fair, it’s not just here. From what I’ve seen, most drivers walk with just a slap on the wrist, no matter where it happens.
If they get charged at all.
Here’s how he explains it.
First off, killing someone with a vehicle is simply viewed differently under the law. That difference is codified in California’s criminal law, where manslaughter — “the unlawful killing of a human being without malice” — is divided into three kinds: Voluntary, involuntary and vehicular.
The key difference between murder and manslaughter is intention. There’s also the idea of implied malice, or what’s sometimes called a depraved heart — when someone should have reasonably known that an act was potentially deadly, but they did it anyway.
But perhaps the chief limiting factor, according to former prosecutors, is what a jury made up of 12 people who drive is willing to convict on, combined with prosecutors well-founded fear of losing.
Which is why you see so many killer drivers plead out for a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Or a lousy traffic ticket, for that matter.
And that means drivers get away with things they wouldn’t if they killed someone using any other means.
Damian Kevitt, executive director of the advocacy nonprofit Streets Are For Everyone, often meets with families who have lost a loved one to traffic violence. He told me the focus on a driver’s intent in a fatal crash creates a level of protection that doesn’t exist outside their cars.
“Instead of assuming that you have a responsibility and you have an obligation to drive safely, it’s more… ‘we’re going to assume that you have the best of intentions,’” he said. “That’s not right — not when you’re [operating] a two-ton vehicle that has just as much ability to kill someone as a gun.”
It’s worth reading the whole thing.
Because public pressure, or the lack thereof, can be the deciding factor on how serious the charges are that a driver could face.
And how much time they might end up serving.
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Santa Monica will consider a motion to speed up traffic safety improvements at Tuesday’s city council meeting.
This item will direct the city manager to expedite requests for stop signs, update the city’s guidelines to upgrade unsignalized intersections, update the process through which residents can report dangerous intersections, improve communication between SMPD and the Department of Transportation, update the Take The Friendly Road campaign, develop a proposal to allocate funding towards infrastructure in daylighting zones to address dangerous illegal parking, and more.
Maybe someday, things like this won’t be necessary anymore.
Over 50 people gathered at Fountain & Edgemont in #EastHollywood for the #ghostbike installation in memory of cyclist Robert George, who was doored & then fatally struck by an oncoming vehicle while riding NB on Edgemont on 10/17, a day after his 51st bday. #bikeLA#RobertsReachpic.twitter.com/obite6N3b3
GCN considers the true cost of bicycling, including buying all the gear.
Never mind that you can get a used bike for a couple hundred bucks, and just start riding.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. Writing for the Orange County Register, the western director of a conservative think tank says sorry, but bicycling isn’t going to change the world, and only bicyclists demand “the world be rebuilt to cater to (their) somewhat-dangerous hobby.” He also compares bike lanes to social engineering, and insists, without evidence, that closing streets to cars destroys cities. Just wait until someone tells him about the social engineering that forces everyone into cars.
A couple of men were busted after a man tracked his stolen bike to their car, then they drove into him when he tried to get it back; police tracked the suspects to their home, and arrested them on a raft of theft and drug charges.
Electrek explains why drivers should love seeing more people on ebikes — or any other bicycles, for that matter — from more bikes means less traffic and more parking, to better roads and more money in your pocket. Maybe someone should tell that guy from the Orange County Register.
Police in Ontario — no, the one in Canada — are searching a cornfield for a missing 34-year old man after his ebike was found in the middle of the field with a flat tire, and the wires leading to the battery dangling down.
One of the four climate activists on trial for disrupting the road Worlds by gluing their hands to the roadway claims the cycling community is complicit in the climate crisis through ignorance of the “oil and gas companies sponsoring their races.” Trust me, they know.
