BikinginLA

Just 47 days until LA fails to meet its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. 

Meanwhile, San Diego’s Vision Zero program is working about as well as most, including here in Los Angeles, as a new report says pedestrian and bicycling deaths have continued to climb in the ten years since the program was adopted.

The difference is that San Diego actually took major steps to improve safety, building new bike lanes and pedestrian improvements throughout the city. Although it’s arguably — and demonstrably — not enough.

But whether cities can ever do enough to compensate for bigger, faster vehicles and drivers distracted by smartphones and dashboard video screens is highly debatable.

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A new German study confirmed the complaints of some San Diego bicyclists who’ve argued that rigid bike lane bollards pose a high risk for bicyclists, and can result in serious injuries to riders who hit them.

The authors conducted an experiment to test the risks to riders.

To assess the risk posed to cyclists by rigid bollards, DEKRA conducted two identical collision tests at its Crash Test Center in Neumünster, Germany, with a three-wheeled e-cargo bike driven at a speed of 25 km/h (about 15-16 mph), one against a flexible post and the other against a rigid one.

“In the test against the rigid post, there was a strong deceleration [slowing down] that threw the dummy from the saddle towards the handlebars. The bollard buckled and then acted as a ramp. The rear of the bike was lifted up, throwing the dummy off and causing the bike to tip over.”

“In a real-life situation, the person riding the bike would have suffered serious injuries,” Egelhaaf said.

On the other hand, flexible plastic bollards — like the car-tickler bendie posts preferred by LADOT — allowed riders to simply roll over them, with little or no risk of serious injuries.

But flexible bollards also do nothing to keep inattentive or uncaring drivers out of the bike lanes, and are often flattened within weeks, if not days, of their installation.

So the question becomes whether the risk of falls outweighs the risk posed by motorists and their big, dangerous machines.

I don’t know how to answer that.

The only way to get a actual answer would be to try a real world test on comparable roadways, and measure the rate of injuries on both after six months and a year.

And to the best of my knowledge, no one has done that. Or plans to.

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This is who we share the road with.

A Santa Monica collision resulted in unexpected tragedy after a pickup driver collided with a motorcyclist on the 1400 block of Cloverfield Blvd, near the Specialized bike shop at Cloverfield and Santa Monica.

The motorcyclist only suffered minor injuries. But as he walked back to the truck to talk with the driver, he heard a shot ring out as the driver pulled out a gun and committed suicide, for reasons known only to himself.

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This is who we share the road with, part two

A cop found a Lubbock, Texas man dead from complications of diabetes, which apparently resulted from injuries he suffered in an earlier road rage crash.

Witnesses said a driver seemed to intentionally crash into the victim’s motorcycle, after the motorbike rider waved a gun as the two men argued moments before the crash.

The driver claimed he accidentally hit the motorcycle while attempting to flee from the gunman — then he did flee immediately after the crash, turning a road rage incident into a fatal hit-and-run.

Or maybe even a homicide.

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No bias here.

A panel of sadly misinformed Aussie broadcasters called for banning all bicyclists from the roads, especially the ones who “wear Lycra and have large guts,” while calling a three-wheeled recumbent bike a child’s toy tricycle.

All because video showed a driver correctly slow down behind the recumbent rider to wait for a safe opportunity to pass, before a truck driver slammed on his brakes to avoid running up the driver’s ass, and nearly hit an oncoming car headed in the other direction.

And somehow, they managed to conclude this was all the bike rider’s fault.

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Drivers often act like we’re invisible.

Sometimes, it may actually be true.

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Maybe Santa will bring me the new Tern do-it-all e-cargo bike for Christmas.

It could happen, right?

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It’s now 329 days since the California ebike incentive program’s latest failure to launch, which was promised no later than fall 2023. And a full 41 months since it was approved by the legislature and signed into law — and counting.

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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.   

No bias here, either. A Boston bike commuter says the city’s new bike lanes are a metaphor for the Democratic Party, since they were built to appease a “small, highly vocal minority,” a “depressing number” of whom consider the resulting traffic congestion a benefit, not a trade-off. Tell us you don’t understand traffic calming without saying it. 

If you’re going to hate on bicycles, might as well do it poetically, as a British letter writer pens an ode to the local city council’s “absurd” and “crazy” “cycle crusade.”

Now we’re being attacked by elderly Florida dog walkers and British people on e-scooters.

But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.   

A Long Beach bike rider learned the hard way that when you’re carrying a bag of meth on your bike, don’t ride salmon. And don’t lie to the cops about having a gun, for chrissakes. 

Police in Brighton, England are investigating after a teenaged ebike rider crashed into a 75-year old woman, who had to be hospitalized.

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Local  

Lucky us. Even more bicyclists get to participate in Waymo’s beta test, willingly or not, as the autonomous cab company expands into more Los Angeles neighborhoods, and opens up to all users.

WorldTour cyclist Neilson Powless and US crit champ Coryn Labecki led a 25-mile bike ride through the streets of Pasadena, before returning to a new private school to help the students build bicycles for underprivileged youth.

They get it. A Pasadena study session will consider how to revitalize North Lake Ave and turn it into a Complete Street to make it more inviting to bike riders and pedestrians, as it currently “suffers from excessive space allocated to cars.”

Manhattan Beach students will now be required to display a sticker saying they’ve taken an approved ebike safety course if they want to park them on campus.

Streetsblog hosts an open thread on Saturday’s relatively sparsely attended Beach Streets open streets event in North Long Beach, including Joe Linton’s always great photos.

 

State

Costa Mesa will host Micromobility America, a trade show for ebike and e-scooter makers, and others in the micromobility industry, this Thursday and Friday.

The Guardian examines the backlash to the closing of San Francisco’s Great Highway, as if it hadn’t just been approved by a majority of the city’s voters.

Sad news from Sacramento, where a 32-year old woman was killed when she was stuck by a driver while trying to ride across the street; naturally, the CHP blamed the victim for riding directly into the car’s path, without mentioning whether the driver may have been speeding or gone through a traffic signal.

 

National

Momentum writes in praise of community bike co-ops.

Bicycling considers how to say goodbye to the rider you used to be. A lesson I’ve struggled to learn myself. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else, so you’re on your own if the magazine blocks you.

National Geographic — yes, it’s still a thing — picks the best ebikes to “make cycling adventures a breeze,” while the National Council on Aging selects the best ebikes for old farts older Americans.

Bike Portland says last week’s election bodes well for bicycling in the city.

Colorado county commissioners nixed a hotly debated proposal for a mountain bike park, although the decision left developers demoralized.

NBA star Klay Thompson is one of us, riding his bike to relax between games after signing with the Dallas Mavericks.

A YouTuber rides the rough streets of Dallas to confirm whether it’s really the country’s most unbikeable city.

That’s more like it. An Illinois driver faces up to 61 years in prison for the drugged-driving crash that killed a man riding a bicycle, after he was convicted on four counts of aggravated DUI causing death and one count of reckless homicide.

A Vermont police officer was placed on administrative leave after killing a 38-year old man who was pulling a bike trailer behind his bicycle; officials unofficially exonerated the driver of the police cruiser by insisting it was rainy and dark, and the street was wet. Which is usually what happens when it rains.

Kindhearted McDonalds coworkers bought a new bicycle for a Cambridge, Massachusetts man after his bike was stolen.

New York completed the final phase of a Vision Zero makeover of the city’s former “Boulevard of Death,” which has already resulted in a dramatic reduction in deaths and serious injuries for all road users, while increasing bike use up to 450%.

Prosecutors in New Jersey are headed to the grand jury to seek a formal indictment of 43-year old Sean Higgins, accused in the drunken, high-speed crash that killed the hockey playing Gaudreau brothers as they rode their bikes on the shoulder of a New Jersey highway the night before their sister’s wedding.

Once again, someone riding a bicycle fell off a Florida drawbridge, when a 72-year old man fell after holding on for dear life after the bridge opened as he was riding across; fortunately, the victim’s injuries weren’t life threatening.

 

International

Canadian Cycling Magazine looks at city bicycling rules that need to be changed.

The BBC takes a look at bike riders who are taking things into their own hands, and tracking down their own stolen bicycles when the cops won’t. Speaking of which, Amazon has Air Tags on sale for just $19, or $70 for four. 

Life is cheap in Wales, where an 84-year old driver walked without a single day behind bars for killing a bike rider after claiming he just couldn’t see the victim, he was apparently spared jail time by virtue of being old. And once again raising the question of how old is too old to drive, if you can’t even see a grown man on a bicycle. 

An English police department is employing “scarecrow” bikes to frighten off bike thieves.

A British doctor suggests wearing a hot and slightly cumbersome face mask that may take some getting used to when you ride a bike on city streets.

Add riding a bike through the streets of Istanbul to your bicycle bucket list. Singing “Istanbul (not Constantinople)” while you ride is optional.

An American experiences “dirt, sweat and philosophical enlightenment” while gravel biking across Morocco.

Streetsblog considers what the US can learn from Africa’s bike mayor, asking what we can “learn from developing countries where car dependency hasn’t yet taken root.”

The New York Times looks at the thinking behind the massive five-hour bike ride that brought tens of thousands of Chinese people out on a search for dumplings, which became so popular the government shut it down. Cycling Weekly says with enough belief, we could all have our own viral Chinese dumpling ride.

Cycling Up To Date examines the ten biggest scandals in cycling history, culminating with our old doper buddy Lance.

 

Competitive Cycling

Cyclist looks back to Connie Carpenter’s — now Connie Carpenter-Phinney — win in the first women’s Olympic road cycling race at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, 40 years before the next American woman would take gold at this year’s Paris Olympics.

 

Finally…

Now you can crash your bike without ever leaving your living room. Even ungulates are breaking into bike shops these days.

And you really can carry a sofa on a bicycle. Or what looks like a love seat, anyway.

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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.

Oh, and fuck Putin