Let’s depart with our usual format today, because there are a couple of urgent matters we need to attend to right now.
We’ll be back tomorrow to catch up on anything we missed today.
Pinky swear.
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First off, I’ve signed onto a letter demanding that Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council declare a Traffic Violence State of Emergency, after the abject failure of Vision Zero in Los Angeles.
Now I’m asking you to sign on to that letter as well.
Below you’ll find the full text of that letter. If you support it, please click this link or scan the QR code in the graphic below to sign on, too.
Dear Mayor Bass and Honorable Members of the City Council:
The City of Los Angeles has not been taking traffic violence and the public health crisis that is, seriously. The facts speak for themselves:
In 2015, the city committed to Vision Zero – its plan to end traffic violence by 2025. In 2025, traffic fatalities were reported by LAPD to be 290, 56% higher than in 2015.
For the past three years there have been more traffic fatalities than homicides.
An audit directed by the Los Angeles City Council found that Vision Zero failed – and thousands of people died – because of a lack of political will and poor coordination between city departments.
Traffic violence is the leading cause of death for children ages 4-14 in LA County.
Between 31 January and 5 February 2026, there were two mass traffic fatality events, resulting in 5 people killed and 7 others seriously injured.
The City of Los Angeles was about to return 100 million dollars in road safety funding to the State of California because it didn’t have the manpower to use the money.
We, the undersigned, demand that the issue of traffic violence be treated with the urgency and importance that it deserves. We request that the City of Los Angeles formally declare a State of Emergency due to traffic violence, thus redirecting resources and prioritizing actions to address this city-wide problem. This includes but is not limited to:
Recommitting to Vision Zero in its entirety – all five pillars, not just one or two.
Take serious and meaningful actions to fully address the failures of Vision Zero found in the city’s own audit.
Properly staff the LADOT, RIGHT NOW, with the personnel needed to use the grants and funding it already has.
Immediately empower the community to make their own roads safer through a community-led traffic safety program.
Fast-track road safety programs and improvements that are already in the works.
Vision Zero cannot succeed if it is treated as a slogan rather than a mandate. Preventable deaths are not unfortunate accidents; they are the predictable outcome of design choices and policy decisions.
Our city’s leaders have the tools, data, and authority to act. Now we are asking them to decide that a commitment to protecting human life should not be negotiable.
Jonathan Hale, Founder
People’s Vision Zero
Damian Kevitt, Executive Director
Streets Are For Everyone
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Second, Streets For All is asking for your help to support critical Los Angeles City Charter reforms at today’s meeting of the Charter Commission.
TODAY: TELL THE CHARTER COMMISSION TO PASS A CAPITAL INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN
This is it! Today the Charter Commission will be deciding whether to submit language for 1) a Capital Infrastructure Plan and 2) a Director of Public Works.
These reforms are absolutely critical. They will create transparency, accountability, and reform the City’s existing antiquated system for infrastructure delivery. This touches everything we care about, from crosswalks to trees to bike lanes to park space.
We are expecting significant push back defending the status quo. It is important that advocates make their voice heard.
3 WAYS YOU CAN HELP
Thursday, March 12, 4pm (AGENDA)
1) Show up in person and give public comment
City Hall, 200 Spring Street, Room 350, Board of Public Works Session Room
2) Call in and give public comment Please call early, they are limiting public comment to 30 minutes only
Use this Zoom link, or call 1-669-254-5252 (Meeting ID: 161 156 7882)
3) Submit written Public comment via email Add your name and zip code to the bottom, feel free to customize the suggested language.
Because something tells me voters might have a long memory in this case.
It was just short of two years ago when Lau plowed her car into the bus stop where 40-year old Diego Cardoso de Oliveira and his wife, 38-year old Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto were waiting with their two children, 1-year old Joaquim Ramos Pinto de Oliveira and 3-month-old Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira, after celebrating their wedding anniversary.
Diego and Joaquim were killed instantly, while Matilde and Cauê died days later in the hospital.
Lau was driving on the wrong side of the divided roadway at 70 mph at the time of the crash. Yet Chan bizarrely ruled that there was no point in punishing her, because she’s old and really, really sorry.
Which must be why she tried to hide her assets before the inevitable lawsuit.
According to the website,
As if the family of the victims hasn’t suffered enough, last month, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan expressed sympathy for the now 80-year-old Lau and stated it was unlikely she would serve any jail time or even a community service mandate after pleading no contest to four felony counts of gross vehicular manslaughter…
After Lau changed her plea from not guilty to no contest, Chan said his duty “was to balance the deaths with the other factors of the case.” Those factors included Lau’s age, her lack of criminal history, and “her remorse,” as well as the fact that her own husband had died in a car accident early on in their marriage.”
Chan even injected some hearsay into the proceedings, saying that in the hospital after the crash, “Lau tearfully told medical staff she wished she could trade places with the family.”
Chan said jail time would mean Lau would probably die in prison. As opposed to her victims, who just died in the street and the local hospital.
Instead, he said he’d sentence her to a lousy two to three years probation. But at least she won’t be able to drive — legally, anyway — until her probation ends.
So we can expect Lau to get her license back when she’s 83, with the blood of four innocent lives on her record.
Seems reasonable.
But as writer Susan Dyer Reynolds notes, remorseful people don’t usually hide their assets.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in July 2024, the surviving parents of Cardoso de Oliveira and Ramos Pinto filed a wrongful death civil suit against Lau. In May 2025, the relatives filed another civil lawsuit, this time asking a judge to void alleged financial transfers that Lau made after the first civil lawsuit was filed. The victims’ families accused Lau of transferring her ownership interest in several properties to new limited liability companies and selling properties to third parties, including her son-in-law, thereby transferring millions of dollars to avoid potential financial penalties from the civil suit. Hiding assets doesn’t sound like remorse to me…
Me, either.
So if you wonder why people keep dying on our streets, overly lenient judges like Chan are a damn good place to start.
But at least he won’t be around much longer to let any other killer drivers walk.
A proposed San Diego ordinance would ban kids under 12 from riding Class 1 and 2 ebikes, as well as prohibiting a passenger from any ebike without a permanent passenger seat; children under 16 are already prohibited from riding Class 3 ebikes.
This is who we share the road with, part two. A Sacramento website reports that Black pedestrians are disproportionately more likely to be killed on the city’s streets, illustrating the story by describing a 26-year old South Sacramento man who was struck by a driver while crossing the street, then repeatedly run over by multiple drivers — all of whom fled the scene, and none were ever brought to justice.
That’s more like it. A Texas man was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for the hit-and-run that killed a popular 38-year old bike rider four years ago, and reporting his car stolen in an effort to cover up the crime. Does that ever work?
Seriously? Police in Raleigh NC have no intention of filing charges against the driver who killed a 65-year old man riding a bicycle, even though he was in a crosswalk with the green light, apparently because a) the victim was riding against traffic, and/or b) because the driver wasn’t drunk — even though the investigation is still ongoing, for no apparent reason. Never mind that crosswalks are bidirectional, and being under the influence isn’t the only way a driver can be at fault. And be forewarned, there’s no way to opt out of the cookies if you click on the damn link.
Last night, I tried to have a rational discussion with someone on Twitter/X who disagreed with me.
And was quickly reminded why that’s a bad idea.
Admittedly, I eventually lost my cool. Well, only if you consider telling someone to “eat shit” before blocking them losing your cool.
I don’t take kindly to someone trying to tell me who and what I am, and what I believe, without knowing anything about me other than some point the disagree with.
Or maybe they just find my whole existence disagreeable.
But the gist of the conversation, with someone who described himself as an active bicyclist, was A) Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam, B) bike lanes allegedly slow traffic and hurt business, and C) this has always been a car-centric city and always will be.
Which is fine. He’s entitled to his opinion, just as I am to mine.
And he’s right, Los Angeles isn’t Amsterdam. Neither is Paris or Copenhagen. Only Amsterdam is Amsterdam, just like only LA is LA.
But that doesn’t mean a city can’t change.
Amsterdam wasn’t always what it is today. In the 60s, it was a car choked, traffic clogged mess, until people got tired of the endless toll of traffic deaths, and began the “Stop de Kindermoord” movement.
That is, stop murdering children with motor vehicles.
That was the beginning of a total reimagining of the city that made it one of the most walkable, bikeable cities in the world today, where driving is usually the last choice when other options aren’t practical.
The same is true with Copenhagen, at roughly the same time and for the same reasons.
Yet despite the assumptions of those who so casually throw out “this isn’t Amsterdam” as if it’s a trump card, those cities are far from unique. In just the last decade, we’ve seen Paris reinvent itself to be far more walkable and bikeable, utilizing the concept of the 15 Minute City.
And in just the last few years, we’ve seen London transform to the point that bikes often outnumber cars in the city center.
Even my Colorado hometown took a similar journey.
When I was a kid, there were no bike lanes. The first bike path, along the river through town, was built while I was away.
But as the city grew from 10,000 people when I was in grade school, to 25,000 in high school, to nearly 170,000 people today, it continued to sprawl and be built around cars, with the inevitable traffic and congestion, until the people there said “enough.”
Today it is a Platinum Level Bicycle Friendly Community, according to the League of American Bicyclists.
In other words, it changed, because the people who live there wanted it to. Boulder, about 45 minutes to the south, took a similar path.
Maybe those cities are outliers. Or maybe the only reason Los Angeles, and other similar cities, aren’t like that is that the people haven’t demanded it.
Yet.
His second argument was based on a basic fallacy.
He made the case that bike lanes that were installed, then removed, in Playa del Rey because they slowed traffic, and there weren’t enough bike riders to justify them.
Which was kind of the point.
They weren’t installed for our benefit. Making the city more bikeable and a little safer was only an added bonus, brief though it may have been.
They were installed as a tool to calm traffic, intended to slow cars and reduce traffic flow because of the unacceptable level of traffic collisions and deaths in the Playa community.
And while it’s possible that they may have initially hurt local businesses, repeated studies have shown that retail sales and tax receipts usually increase within a year or two after the installation of bike lanes — and the people who initially fought the lanes often later fight to keep them.
That didn’t happen in Playa, simply because they were never given the chance.
The final argument is also based on a fallacy.
Anyone who lived here in the ’30s or ’40s wouldn’t recognize the car-centric city we have devolved into. Los Angeles once had the best transit system in the country, with every neighborhood efficiently served by the Red and Yellow Cars.
Those were the trolley systems that once ran down the middle of every major roadway. But they were removed to make way for cars, resulting in the overly wide boulevards we have today.
Before that, the city’s roads were built and paved to accommodate bicycles, prior to the mass production of motor vehicles.
And before that, it was a city of dusty roads and trails for horses and wagons.
So the city has already reinvented how it gets around multiple times. And we can do it again if a majority of Angelenos want it.
Then again, the two-third majority who voted for Measure HLA would seem to suggest they do.
I won’t get into the whole thing now — or probably ever — except to say that it, too, is based on a couple of basic fallacies, which like a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, sends the whole damn thing off in the wrong direction.
The concept of traffic violence was never intended to suggest that there is anything intentional about it. Simply put, traffic violence reflects the fact that crashes are violent events, which can inflict violent trauma to its victims.
And like other forms of violence, the causes can be addressed, and the effects minimized.
As for the idea that traffic violence, or traffic deaths, are an epidemic, that isn’t meant to suggest it has suddenly become so. Violent crashes and traffic deaths have been epidemic ever since the motor vehicle was invented.
Traffic deaths have always been too high. Calling them an epidemic now is merely a recognition of the problem.
It’s kind of like if measles had always been around, and no one ever bothered to do anything about it. Then one day, someone pointed a finger and called the problem an epidemic that could be treated.
One last point.
The writer of this piece suggests that the solution to safer streets isn’t separating bikes and pedestrians from motor vehicles, but for everyone to focus on sharing the road safely and efficiently.
I used to believe that, too.
I have often said that if everyone obeys the law, and share the road in a safe manner, that crashes are unlikely, if not impossible.
But that fails to account for human nature.
People will inevitably make mistakes, and do whatever is most convenient for them in the moment, largely because they’ve always gotten away with it before. And will continue to get away with it, until they don’t.
Which is the whole rationale for Vision Zero, based on the idea that human beings make mistakes, and roads should be designed so those human mistakes don’t become tragedies.
If you disagree with that, that’s fine. We should be able to disagree without being disagreeable, and find a consensus that works for the majority of people, while protecting the rights of the minority.
That’s how democracy works.
So disagree, vehemently if you must.
But try to keep the insults to a minimum. And I will, too.
Photo by Joni Yung.
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Megan forwards the Meyer’s Brothers podcast, in which Danish actor, producer and screenwriter — and the Game of Thrones Jaime Lannister — Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reveals not only that he’s one of us, but that bicycling is his favorite form of transportation.
Hawaii is joining the long list of states cracking down on ebikes, with one resident telling lawmakers it’s become a Wild West,” with little kids “zipping out around a corner on the sidewalk with some high-speed motorized vehicle.”
In a doubly tragic case of Texas symmetry, two 16-year old bicyclists were struck by drivers while each was riding with a companion; one suffered life-threatening injuries, while the other sadly didn’t make it. In the second case, both rides were struck by the driver, while in the other, the victim was hit so hard his GPS showed him flying off his bike at nearly 78 mph after the impact.
In yet another example of keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late, a 37-year old Louisiana man faces a number of charges after critically injuring a 63-year old bike rider who had stopped to fix his chain — including his 4th DUI. In any rational world, he would have been off the road after his second. If not the first.
February 10, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on LA Councilmember calls for action while another “reassesses,” this is LA’s darkest hour, and safe passing laws don’t work
My apologies for yesterday’s unexcused absence.
After writing about two fallen bike riders in a single night — never mind downing two doses of migraine medication — I was done.
Maybe it goes back to when I started riding, and there weren’t that many of us.
But I feel like everyone I write about is my brother or sister, and every loss feels like a death in the family.
My heart just can’t take writing about so many, so often. Let alone asking you to read it.
At last Friday’s council meeting [video – remarks start minute 1:26], Yaroslavsky adjourned the meeting in remembrance of the Westwood crash victims. Yaroslavsky questioned, “Why does it feel like safety improvements take forever even after we know where the risks are?” She noted the current LADOT process for Westwood, pledging to accelerate, “I am calling on LADOT to return with an accelerated timeline for Westwood Boulevard – including immediate quick-build safety measures while longer term work continues.”
“We shouldn’t be waiting years for basic interventions while Angelenos die.”
The Playa del Rey killing also saw some response from its City Councilmember Traci Park. Via her email newsletter, Park stated she had visited the crash site and was working with city departments “to re-assess the area for additional lighting and speed safety improvements.” Park noted that bike improvements there were installed and removed in 2017, and that “it’s time to re-open that conversation.” She listed two bike/safety projects she is working on nearby.
The entire Playa del Rey area needs a lot more than a mere “reassessment” of Pershing Drive, where the crash occurred, as well as Manchester Blvd, which has been a frequent site of traffic violence, and Vista del Mar — aka Deadly del Mar — the site of eight traffic deaths in just the last ten years.
All of this is in the context of the city being beyond broke. Part of the reason is a record number of liability payouts due to people getting hurt on city infrastructure that the city knows is dangerous but hasn’t fixed or won’t fix. Additionally, the city continues to slow walk Measure HLA implementation — the exact kind of implementation that would make streets safer.
As a safe streets advocate, it’s hard not to take it personally when someone dies while walking or biking in the city, because I often walk or bike around the city, often with my kids. Living in a city where a pedestrian is injured every 5 hours and killed every 2 days is deeply painful. To have two horrific crashes claim lives on streets that the city was supposed to make safer — but hasn’t yet, or even worse, backtracked after installing safety improvements — is beyond the pale.
Meanwhile, LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who is running for re-election this year, puts the deaths in their proper context.
The country requires a minimum of roughly three feet, and roughly four and a half feet on roads with speed limits over 44 mph. Which might actually keep bicyclists safe if drivers didn’t keep violating it.
Instead, researchers recommended infrastructure improvements like protected bike lanes, traffic calming and more road space, which would do a lot more to improve safety for people on two wheels.
Never mind that the kid got right hooked. Or that it’s almost always the person on two wheels who gets injured, rather than the person surrounded with a couple tons of steel and glass, seat belts and air bags.
Or on second thought, maybe it’s really not that funny at all.
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Okay, so why is Caltrans refusing to make a lousy three blocks in Santa Monica safer for bike riders?
Hats off to the crew of Albuquerque Fire Engine 11, who not only took a bike rider who fell off his bike to the hospital, but also gave his bike a safe ride home.
My bike-friendly Colorado hometown will join cities across the country in celebrating Winter Bike to Work Day this Friday. Although a certain bike-unfriendly SoCal megalopolis we could name won’t be participating, despite having some of the country’s best winter weather.
A Massachusetts woman has figured out a way to get drivers attention that works a hell of a lot better than hi-viz, riding her bike topless, albeit with pasties, to make the case that women should be allowed to shed their tops just like guys do. All titillation aside — pun intended — there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Period.
A Florida man faces charges for hit-and-run after injuring someone on a bicycle, then abandoning his truck in a creek; he was already on probation vehicle theft, drug possession and failing to appear, and had an active warrant for skipping out on his sentencing for a DUI case. Sounds like a prince.
London’s Cycling Mikey may be the city’s most hated and controversial bicyclist for using his helmet cam to keep drivers honest, and turning them into the cops when they’re not. Although video evidence generally isn’t accepted for traffic violations and misdemeanors in this country.
The 37-year old Minneapolis VA nurse, who was fatally shot — okay, murdered — by ICE agents on Saturday was a lover of the outdoors, and an active mountain bike rider.
The Radavist is calling for the entire bicycling community to come together for healing and to honor Pretti, who he says could have been any of us. Although I’m not sure how many of us would have stepped up to help a stranger at the risk of our own lives.
Meanwhile, Minnesota-based Salsa Cycles is urging bike riders to contact their legislator and join in a Unity Ride to protest the recent fatal shootings by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
“Our neighbors are being unlawfully detained, harassed and murdered at the hands of the federal immigration enforcement agents,” Salsa Cycles wrote in its statement. “Now is the time to speak up and stand up…”
“Community is important in times like this,” Salsa Cycles states. “Alex Pretti was a member of our local cycling community…We encourage you to come ride with us, host a ride in your community, or simply go ride in solidarity on Saturday.”
The former carries a maximum of six years, while the latter has a max of just four years, thanks to California’s lax hit-and-run laws.
And that’s only if she is convicted on both charges, and gets the maximum penalties, to run concurrently.
Anyone want to give odds on that?
Sanchez is accused of knocking Hudson off his bike as she turned right into an alley, stopping briefly, then fleeing the scene and driving over the boy as he lay helpless on the ground.
“The defendant did not stop, she did not render aid, she did not assess the situation or try to help out, she didn’t, she did not call 911,” said Cassidy McWilliams, deputy district attorney.
Never mind that she hasn’t had a valid driver’s license for nine years, and shouldn’t have been on the road in the first place.
She was ordered into custody on $150,000 bond, and will be required to wear an ankle monitor and forbidden from driving if she manages to post it.
This analysis includes people walking, biking, using wheelchairs or riding personal conveyances such as rollerblades or skateboards. In total, nearly 6,500 people were killed while walking or biking across California during this five-year period, a toll that includes about 800 cyclists.
Fatalities climbed steadily for nearly a decade across the state, reaching a peak of 1,429 deaths in 2022, before receding to 1,208 in 2024. In comparison, the Bay Area has remained relatively stable. The number of fatalities has ranged between 150-180 deaths per year.
The map pinpoints the location of both pedestrian and bicycling deaths, while blocking out high-fatality hotspots.
The latter of which makes Los Angeles look like the hot mess it is.
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Active SGV is hosting a free Learn to Bike class in El Monte on Sunday.
The group is also hosting an easy ride to Whittier Narrows next weekend.
Twitter post
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A New Jersey legislator is “backpedaling” on his own proposal to require a $50 annual bicycle registration fee to make bike riders contribute to the cost of their own infrastructure, with public comments running 61% against. Because apparently, people who ride bikes don’t pay taxes like normal folks, and the proven societal and health effects of bicycling are worth nothing. And no, drivers don’t pay their own way; the overwhelming cost of building and maintaining roadways comes from general tax funds.
Once again, a bike thief has been busted in Orange County, after stealing a bait bike worth over $2,000 in Huntington Beach, which makes it a felony. Meanwhile, the LAPD still won’t employ bait bikes because a former city attorney feared it could be construed as entrapment, even though similar charges have held up in other cities that do.
Bike-friendly Davis has released a new citywide bike map. Granted, it’s easier to build a connected bike network in a small city, but at least Davis has one. Los Angeles doesn’t.
Winter bicycling rates are skyrocketing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, increasing over 400% in the past ten years, thanks in part to the city plowing snow from bike lanes.
January 26, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Mayor Bass, City Council no-shows up for traffic deaths die-in; and how can LA build a subway if it can’t fix poop spray?
People are dying to stop people from dying on the mean streets of Los Angeles.
“We’re out here today because the city of Los Angeles signed Vision Zero as a directive in August 2015 to prioritize saving lives on our roads — to achieve zero traffic fatalities by 2025,” said SAFE founder and executive director Damian Kevitt, who lost his right leg in a violent traffic incident in 2013. “Not manage or reduce [them] but eliminate traffic fatalities. We are a decade later and we are at 290 traffic fatalities. … It’s a 26% increase in traffic fatalities since the start of Vision Zero…”
“The city has tools, it’s just not using them,” Kevitt told The Times. “In 2024, voters approved measure HLA by a two-thirds margin. It requires the city must follow its own mobility plan … to make roads safer for cyclists, for pedestrians, for better transit.” He also cited state measure AB 645, which in 2023 authorized a pilot program for speed cameras in a handful of California cities including Los Angeles, as “a tool the city could be implementing — it’s speed safety systems.”
In a perfect illustration of just how unserious the city is about ending traffic deaths, CD 13 Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez was the only member of the city government who bothered to show up.
But hey, Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement.
No, wait. Her office did.
Apparently Mayor Bass had better things to do.
Mayor Karen Bass’ office said in a statement that Bass, who took office in December 2022, “has made street safety a priority by accelerating the implementation of hundreds of new speed humps, signage and intersection treatments which help ensure drivers are traveling slowly and with control near schools. Vision Zero started in 2015 and requires intensive coordination across departments.”
The office pointed to Bass’ October 2024 executive directive to facilitate street repairs, clean parks and infrastructure and city services enhancements ahead of the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Summer Olympic Games in L.A.
So, evidently, we need a World Cup or Olympic Games to justify saving human lives.
Oh, and clean parks.
Got it.
Kevitt had one parting comment for The Times: “Don’t use the word traffic ‘accident’ when writing about this,” he said.
“In the road safety arena, it’s ‘crash’ or ‘collision,’” he said. “ ‘Accident’ implies non-responsibility. It’s just an ‘oops.’ But when you’re driving drunk or distracted, that’s a choice. If you hit and kill or severely injure someone, it’s not an ‘oops.’ We’re trying to say: This is preventable.”
There’s a lot more to the article, and it’s worth a few minutes to read the other comments from people who have lost loved ones. Or fear exactly that.
Particularly since the Times appears to be the only media source that even bothered to cover it.
Evidently, our deadly streets are no more important to the people who report on them than they are to the people we elect to fix them.
Looks like the joke’s on us.
Because nothing will ever change until city leaders care enough to do something about it.
And the media, and the people, care enough to hold them to it.
Then again, my beloved Broncos finished a broken ankle and a snow storm short of the Super Bowl, too.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A Scottish city lived up — or maybe down — to its reputation as “hostile to anyone outside of a car” by scrapping plans for a bike lane through the town center because it would put the “economic vitality” of the town “at serious risk” due to the loss of six whole parking spaces. Yes, six. Never mind that studies have repeatedly shown sales go up when protected bike lanes go down.
LAistexamines Long Beach’s Vision Zero failure, as traffic deaths in the beachside city climb to their highest level in a decade. Although the public radio website may require your email address to read it.
What a long, strange trip it wasn’t. A local leader of San Francisco’s World Naked Bike Ride was arrested when he and several other people showed up naked for a tribute to the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, in the mistaken assumption their bare bodies would be seen as a tribute to the band.
I want to be like him when I grow up. A 94-year New Zealand man who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Holland will attempt to set a new age-group hour record, after already exceeding the record time on his own.
January 22, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Long Beach traffic deaths doubled since 2015; LADOT installed pathetic 30 lane miles of bikeways, ignores Vision Zero
Welcome to our world.
Traffic fatalities in Long Beach have more than doubled in the ten years since the city vowed to eliminate traffic deaths within a decade, rising to the highest level in the last ten years.
That corresponds with the City of Los Angeles, which adopted a Vision Zero program that promised to end traffic deaths by last year.
And you know how that worked out.
Now LA’s Vision Zero is a forgotten program, trotted out only when the city wants to assure us that they are really, truly doing something to reduce traffic violence, without actually holding themselves accountable for it.
Like Los Angeles, most of Long Beach’s traffic deaths have been inflicted on people who weren’t encased in a couple tons of steel and glass.
According to the Long Beach Post story in the above link,
Their greatest toll has been on people outside of cars. Last year, 32 people were killed while walking, biking or riding an e-scooter. That eclipses the number of people murdered here last year: 29.
At least in LA, it’s only the total number of traffic deaths that exceeds the city’s murders.
Including a rather underwhelming, if not pathetic, total of 31 lane miles of new bikeways installed during the last fiscal year. Which includes 1.3 lane miles of sharrows, which studies have shown are literally worse than nothing.
According to the judge, the law in Idaho defines a bicycle as a “human-powered” vehicle, and it wasn’t clear to his or her honor if an ebike is actually human powered.
And that’s the problem. Some ebikes are human powered with an electrical assist, while others are strictly throttle controlled, or a combination thereof.
So defining an ebike as human powered could be the solution to the current dilemma of cities cracking down on ped-assist ebike riders for the problems caused by people on electric motorbikes and dirt bikes.
Now Marvin forwards word that Trumed will be the source you’ll have to use.
He adds,
The reason I really like this is because it supports the middle class. if I was poor, I could get help purchasing an e-bike. If I was rich, I could get help purchasing an EV. Finally, with FSA/HSA benefits, I can finally qualify for something that helps me.
The only downside I see is that no one can establish a new or add to an existing FSA/HSA until Nov 2026.
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Streets Are For Everyone will hold a die-in on the steps of City Hall this Saturday to protest the unacceptable level of traffic violence in this city.
In 2025 alone, 286 people were killed on our streets — deaths that were preventable.
This Saturday, SAFE and partner nonprofits will gather to honor lives lost and demand action after a decade-old City pledge to eliminate traffic deaths was missed.
Next City says Victoria, British Columbia is one of the best bike cities not traditionally known for it, after tripling its rate of bicycling in just 11 years. Although they can’t seem to spell Victoria correctly. Or British, for that matter.
A Scotsman resigned from the rat race, quitting his high-stress job as a communications director for a renewable energy company for a much calmer career fixing bicycles. As I know all too well after a career in advertising, the problem with the rat race is the rats usually win.
January 6, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on NY congestion pricing works while LA keeps studying…and studying, and making a moral commitment to human life
The program, which charges $9 a car for each trip into the city’s Central Business District, has raised $700 million in tolls in its first year. The money has gone to support transit, including upgrades to subway lines and station, as well as Metro bus lines.
At the same time, vehicle entries into the district have dropped, although the void was quickly filled by ride-hailing vehicles. Foot traffic is up. Pollution levels have dropped across all five boroughs, bus speeds have increased slightly, and both collisions and traffic injuries dropped.
Before the first-in-the-nation plan went into effect on Jan. 5, 2025, proponents promised that the policy would bring entrenched Manhattan gridlock to heel, while foes predicted far-reaching economic and environmental harm. Gov. Kathy Hochul, fearing electoral consequences, delayed its implementation. The then-incoming Trump administration promised to kill the program in the crib…
Those same benefits could accrue right here in Los Angeles, including the possibility of free transit, if Metro hadn’t backed down on this city’s congestion pricing proposal.
Instead, we did what LA does best, conducting yet another study instead of actually doing anything.
Maybe someone can explain why it takes seven full years to conduct one damn study.
But even then, if and when they actually complete the study, does anyone really believe the spineless Metro board will somehow find the courage to stand up to LA’s infamous angry drivers.
And if you thought the whole Playa del Rey road diet fiasco pissed local drivers off, just wait until they have to pay a toll to enter certain parts of the city or use specific roadways.
Some may dismiss Vision Zero as being uniquely achievable in Europe given different cultures. But here in the U.S., Hoboken, New Jersey — a city of almost 60,000 with a Vision Zero approach — has recently had a seven-year streak with literally zero traffic fatalities.
And Hoboken is no outlier; many U.S. jurisdictions have adopted Vision Zero policies. Napa County happens to be one of them. But as noted in a recent Washington Post investigation, Vision Zero policies are meaningless without moral commitment to making human life paramount and without commensurate political and economic investment in proven life-saving infrastructure and systems.
Which is exactly why it failed so miserably here in Los Angeles, where traffic deaths are higher now than they ten eleven years ago when it became official city policy.
The boy was found dumped at the bottom of a steep Missouri ravine, a day after he had disappeared while riding his bike to a neighbor’s home half an hour away in Kansas.
An autopsy showed he had died of dog bites.
The suspect faces a charge of abandoning a corpse in Missouri, and interfering with law enforcement, criminal desecration, and allowing a vicious dog to run at large in Kansas.
Sadly, it’s not hard to read between the lines.
Especially if you’ve ever been chased by an angry dog.
Let alone caught by one.
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Rush hour looks a little different in the Netherlands.
And not just because of the snow.
Bluesky post
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This is why you don’t park in bike lanes.
I just wish they’d do that here.
Twitter post
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Yesterday, we mentioned that London bike riders caught running red lights will have the option of paying the equivalent of a $67 fine or watching a video of a bike rider getting hit by a bus after jumping one; today we learned that the video is of a woman who voluntarily agreed to share it as a warning to others.
Still more sad news comes from Vallejo, where a man was killed when he somehow lost control and crashed his bicycle; police said there didn’t appear to be any other vehicles involved. Although there’s all kinds of things that can make someone lose control of a bike, from potholes and loose gravel to a too-close pass from a distracted driver.
A writer for Bike Radar lists ten things he wished he know when he started riding, so you can avoid making the same mistakes. Although in retrospect, I wish I’d skipped the carbon bike and stuck with steel if I couldn’t afford Ti.
A 27-year old Aussie man is suing the former premier of Victoria province for defamation, as well as ongoing injuries, a dozen years after he was struck by the ex-premier’s wife while riding a bike; she claimed he crashed into her car after she came to a complete stop, which seems kinda unbelievable given the extent of his injuries and the damage to her windshield.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
December 12, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on How California keeps people dying on our streets, Industry goes bike-friendly, and Torrance keeps over-regulating ebikes
The DMV has wide latitude to take dangerous drivers off the road. But it routinely allows drivers with extreme histories of dangerous driving to continue to operate on our roadways, where many go on to kill.
Speeding is one of the biggest causes of fatal crashes. For two years in a row, bills that would have required the use of speed-limiting technology on vehicles have failed. Newsom vetoed one of them.
California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the nation. Here, DUI-related deaths have been rising more than twice as fast as the rest of the country. But this fall, a state bill to strengthen DUI penalties was gutted at the last minute.
Because despite Vision Zero laws throughout the state, things have only gotten worse. And they will continue to, until we finally see some long overdue major action.
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Tiny City of Industry, which true to its name is home to far more business and warehouses than its 264 residents, is building an ambitious ten-mile long bike path spanning the entire city.
The project will begin with a 1.5-mile bike path located between bike and pedestrian unfriendly Valley Blvd and the adjacent railroad tracks, a kind of project termed “rail-with-trail.”
Burbank Bike Angels held their annual display at Burbank City Hall to show off dozens of newly refurbished bicycles that will be donated to local nonprofits to distribute to children in need in time for the holidays; the project has donated more than 3,200 bicycles since it’s 2008 founding.
The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. The UK’s Ministry of Defense is defending itself against accusations of pettiness for fencing off a lousy 50-foot section of pathway in Fife, Scotland, blocking completion of new path for kids walking and biking to school. After all, you never know when one of those seven-year olds could be spying for the reds.
