People are dying to stop people from dying on the mean streets of Los Angeles.
Figuratively, anyway.
The Los Angeles Times reports on Saturday’s die-in on the steps of LA City Hall, saying dozens feigned their deaths to protest the 290 traffic deaths last year in the City of Angels, and the adjective failure of Vision Zero.
“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.
………
Good question.
Circling the News asks how LA County expects to build a subway under the Sepulveda Pass if it takes three years to even repair a washed out bridge on the beach bike path.
Or fix the noxious “poop spray” fouling it, for that matter.
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Former NFL star Marshawn Lynch is one of us, riding a Lime ebike across Seattle for Sunday’s game between the Rams and the Seahawks.
Which did not end well for the Rams.
https://twitter.com/Schultz_Report/status/2015554538099605571
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.
An Irish writer says anyone who thinks bikes should be registered is “deeply unserious or misguided.” No, seriously. Tell us what you really think.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A British man is charged with careless bicycling after crashing into a woman when he tried to pass her on a pathway, but he says it was the woman who stepped into his path.
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Local
Bike lanes on Santa Monica Blvd, Fairfax Ave and San Vicente Blvd in West Hollywood are getting a fresh coat of Kermit, with a shade of green specially formulated to enhance safety without overly annoying Hollywood filmmakers.
LAist examines 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.
State
Solana Beach will use a $300,000 state grant to help fund a $1.075 million extension of San Diego County’s Coastal Rail Trail to the Encinitas border.
Megan forwards news that a UC Santa Barbara student bike committee has secured $1.4 million to build a new bike path on campus.
In a surprising example of rationality, researchers at San José State University say the state’s ebike problem may actually be an e-motorbike problem.
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.
A Manteca resident claims the honor of being the only person to ever kick Greg LeMond out of a bike race — when America’s last remaining Tour de France winner was 14.
National
Your next ebike could get a whopping 600 mile range on a single charge.
A homeless man in Florida was been convicted of 2nd degree murder in the death of a 14-year old boy who disappeared while on a bike ride in 2021 — even though the judge had ordered an emergency mental health evaluation days earlier after a bizarre, rambling statement on the stand by the man, who had been ruled competent to stand trial despite a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.
International
Cycling Weekly talks with a woman who used riding her bike through the Scottish Highlands as an escape from a difficult marriage, then rode through her bereavement, and used riding to recover from an illness that cost her 60% of her lung function.
A new study shows that Britain’s “transformational” Place to Ride program has saved the country’s National Health Service the equivalent of nearly $18 million, while resulting in $136 million in ‘social value’ across the UK.
The Republic of Ireland is considering a proposal to mandate compulsory bike helmet use and hi-viz clothing for all bicyclists and e-scooter users. Even though other helmet mandates have been show to reduce head injuries mainly by reducing riding rates, while preventing children from even learning how to ride. And if hi-viz was the answer, no one would ever crash into a fire hydrant, road sign or emergency vehicle.
Parts of the Netherlands are banning the heavy, fat-tired electric bikes they call fat bikes, and we would call electric motorbikes.
A team of British club riders are following the route taken by the Prophet Muhammad from Makkah to Madinah in Saudi Arabia over 1,400 years ago to raise funds to fight pediatric heart defects.
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.
Competitive Cycling
In what has to be one of the most bizarre endings ever to a WorldTour race, Aussie Jay Vine won the Tour Down Under stage rage on Sunday — but only after getting knocked down when a pair of kangaroos hopped through the peloton, crashing into several cyclists, and forcing three riders out of the race; Vine rejoined the stage after switching bikes, but one of the kangaroos had to be put down.
https://twitter.com/SBSSportau/status/2015295885203165577
Finally…
That feeling when a self-driving car parks in a bike lane, and the company tries to blame the driver. Or when an F1 star takes part in a gravel ride wearing only a banana hammock.
And of course a certain Pasadena kid grew up to be one of us.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
Don’t let Metro miss our last chance to finish the LA River bike path by 2028.
Twentynine-year old Koreatown resident Ana Larasalguero turned herself into police hours after the 8:30 am crash on Sunday, October 5th, as Tran and her dog were crossing were crossing Eight Street at Cloverdale Ave.
