Tag Archive for Watson advisement

51-year old Costa Mesa woman killed by accused DUI hit-and-run driver; driver held on 2nd degree murder charge

Call it murder this time.

Multiple sources are reporting that a 51-year old woman was killed when her bicycle was rear-ended by an accused drunk driver in a Huntington Beach hit-and-run early Monday morning.

The victim, identified as 51-year old Costa Mesa resident Kristin Bellovich, was riding in the far-right lane of southbound Beach Beach Blvd at Glencoe Drive, when she was run down by the driver of a Ford SUV just after midnight.

She died after being taken to a local hospital.

The driver fled the scene, but police arrested 68-year old Elias Madriz Gutierrez shortly later. He was booked on suspicion of hit-and-run and driving under the influence causing great bodily injury, along with second-degree murder.

According to My News LA, Gutierrez was convicted of DUI twice before, in January 2009 and April 2018. Which means he would have been required to sign a Watson advisement, stating he could be charged with murder if he killed someone while driving under the influence any time in the future.

As a result, he could be looking at 15-to-life for the murder charge alone, as opposed to up to six years for vehicular manslaughter.

This is at least the 42nd bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 10th that I’m aware of in Orange County.

Fifteen of those SoCal deaths have now been hit-and-runs.

My deepest sympathy and prayers for Kristin Bellovich and her loved one. 

Nelson Rodriguez gets 15 to life for killing pregnant bike rider and 2nd man; 21 years for Long Beach man for bike dispute killing

That’s more like it.

The driver who killed two people in an apparent DUI hit-and-run in Chatsworth last year could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Sixty-year old Chatsworth resident Nelson Rodriguez was sentenced to 15 years to life behind bars after pleading no contest to two counts of murder last month.

Rodriguez was convicted of killing 37-year old Ana Hernandez, who was 29 weeks pregnant, and 58-year old Matthew Zink as they rode their bikes on Plummer Street in January, 2022.

He fled from the scene, crashing into several other cars and objects before finally coming to rest against a wall on Knapp Street, west of De Soto Ave, where he was finally detained by witnesses.

There’s no word on why he was charged with murder, which usually requires driving under the influence, after receiving a Watson advisement following a previous DUI conviction. That informs the driver that they could be charged with murder if they kill someone while driving under the influence anytime in the future.

The only other explanation for the murder convictions is that police investigators concluded the killings were intentional, but there’s been no suggestion of that in the press.

There’s also no word on why Rodriguez wasn’t charged with hit-and-run for leaving the scene of multiple crashes.

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels.

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A 26-year old Long Beach man will be well into middle age before he gets out of prison.

Junior Alexander Munguia was sentenced to 21-years in state prison for fatally shooting 46-year old Fernando Rodriguez five years ago in a dispute over who actually owned a bicycle.

As we’ve said many times before, no bicycle is worth taking another person’s life. Or giving your own.

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Streets For All is hosting their latest virtual happy hour this evening, featuring Metrolink CEO Darren Kettle.

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The late, great River Phoenix was one of us.

And the Curries were, 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. Michigan’s Supreme Court denied an appeal from a man who was injured when his bike hit a “yard-wide” pothole in a public park, after the park’s lawyers argued the pothole was pretty obvious and easy to see. And implying it was his own damn fault.

No bias here, either. Residents of a couple Baltimore neighborhoods rallied against traffic calming and expanding bike lanes, calling Complete Streets a “complete failure” that prioritizes special interest groups over the needs of everyday people. Because people who ride bikes or want safer streets aren’t everyday people, evidently. 

Multiple North Carolina bicyclists went down when they were brake-checked by a road raging driver, who had honked and yelled over having to briefly slow down when the group of bike riders took the lane as they climbed a blind hill; no word on whether the driver will face charges, even though he used his vehicle as a weapon.

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

Police in Brisbane, Australia are looking for a bike-riding man, after he apparently deliberately scratched 20 cars along the same road.

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Local 

LA Walks is looking for a new executive director.

Streets Are For Everyone, aka SAFE, helped install the first two ghost tire memorials to honor victims of traffic violence in Los Angeles County; the program is similar to ghost bikes, but for people who were walking or in cars when they were killed.

Streetsblog says the 500-foot long, tree-lined bike and pedestrian Alameda Esplanade is partially open, and should be finished later this month.

Electrek suggest Commerce-based ebike and electric motorcycle maker SONDORS may be the next ebike brand to fail, as all signs point to a serious financial meltdown at headquarters — in fact, their California headquarters appears to be permanently closed, and their website is no longer taking orders.

ActiveSGV wants your input on the Santa Anita Avenue Complete Streets project in South El Monte.

One of the world’s biggest fundraising triathlons will take place in Malibu next month, when the star-studded Malibu Triathlon returns to Zuma Beach for the 38th year.

Metro, Metro Bike Share and the Auto Club of Southern California are offering a free virtual class on bikeshare 101.

 

State

Sad news from Fresno, where a 35-year old man was killed when he allegedly rode his mountain bike off the sidewalk, and into the path of trailers being pulled by a semi-truck. Which sounds more than a little suspicious, since it would require attempting the impossible by riding between the truck and the trailers. Never mind that a local Central Valley website seems to think a bike helmet could have protected him from harm when he was run over with a truck

San Francisco Streetsblog says the protected intersection and bike lane project on Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue is nearing completion, without the commercial armageddon feared by local business.

 

National

Streetsblog says young people of color must be at the forefront of the mobility justice movement.

Bicycling highlights 22 bicycle products they say are among the best made in the US. As usual, read it on Yahoo if the magazine blocks you. 

Speaking of Electrek, a writer for the site says stop calling it an electric bike craze because we’re looking at the future of transportation. Although a Santa Barbara paper evidently didn’t get the memo.

A pair of Tacoma, Washington brothers face murder charges for killing a man they had robbed less than two hours earlier, after the victim spotted the men and chased them down an alley to recover his stolen bicycle and necklace.

F! cars don’t have lights, so Formula 1’s Red Bull Racing team used bike lights to light their drive down the Las Vegas Strip.

Nevada’s Burning Man has issued guidelines for ebikes at the festival after deciding not to ban them — for now.

Utah is opening new world-class downhill mountain bike trails as phase one of the new Solitude Mountain bike park.

A Denver couple were violently attacked with a bat and five-foot tow chain when they spotted their stolen bike, and tried to buy it back from the person who had it. Which is another reminder to let the cops deal with it — if you can get them to, that is.

Colorado bikewear maker Pactimo is donating $60 from the sale of bike jerseys and running t-shirts designed by a Maui artist to benefit victims of the recent fires on the island.

An Abilene, Texas newspaper says pedestrians are worried for their safety after a man riding a bike was hit by a driver, in a town with limited bike infrastructure. Evidently, they couldn’t find any bike riders to talk to. 

The Arkansas Farm Bureau is attempting to educate rural farmers on what to do when they encounter a spandex-clad bicyclist on a gravel road, and vice versa.

Kalamazoo, Michigan installed a lane reduction and two-way parking-protected bike lane on a major street, while insisting there’s still enough room for downtown traffic to flow freely.

A Michigan developer is suing a township over its requirement that builders fund bike lanes in order to get their projects approved, claiming it’s unconstitutional. Which should be a hard case to make, since it’s a pretty common provision throughout the US.

They get it. A Kentucky paper says yes, people on bicycles are required to stop for stop signs, then goes on to explain why someone reasonably might not.

Life is cheap in New York, where a 19-year old flatbed truck driver faces a whopping $500 fine or 15 days behind bars for killing a bicycle advocate as he rode his bike home from the market; the driver got a lousy traffic ticket for failing to yield.

New York’s Great White Way could soon have a two-way bike boulevard running next to Union Square.

She gets it. A Princeton, New Jersey pedestrian and bike safety educator says if people ride their bikes on the sidewalk, it’s because a lack of safe infrastructure means they don’t feel safe on the street.

Good question. The family of a Maryland man killed while riding his bike wants to know why the hell the driver hasn’t been charged.

Kindhearted Florida cops gave a 10-year old boy a new bike after a driver crashed into his old one.

 

International

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from bike scribe and historian Carlton Reid, who marks a full century since cars drove people walking off the roads.

He gets it. An op-ed from a Toronto ER doctor says the bicycling injuries he sees are preventable if the city would just build more bike lanes.

He gets it, too. A Halifax, Nova Scotia writer tries Googling “bicyclist” and “pedestrian” compared to “person biking” or “person waking,” and discovers the difference is more than semantics.

After a pair of Scottish men were convicted of killing and burying the body of a man taking part in a fundraising bike ride in a drunken crash, a government watchdog has launched an investigation into the police who investigated the missing person’s case.

James Corden is one of us, as the former Late Late Show host was ordered to move his bikeshare bike when he tried leaving it in front of a posh restaurant in London’s Mayfair district.

A British designer has launched a new line of bike-friendly streetwear in a collaboration with Lime, featuring the company’s lime green branding.

The largest bicycle association in the Netherlands announced they will no longer insure fat tire ebikes, citing a 90% chance they’ll be stolen. So there’s hope, then. 

A US Army major maintained her readiness by riding over 1,000 miles on local mountain bike trails while she was deployed in Poland.

After a writer buys a “super cheap” Chinese ebike, he quickly concludes it was a super bad idea.

A 14-year old Malaysian boy was injured when he crashed his bike into a house while being chased by a dog, which wisely ran away after he hit the wall.

 

Competitive Cycling

American Sepp Kuss is confirmed for the Vuelta, marking his fifth-straight grand tour in support of Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard, as their Jumbo-Visma team looks to sweep all three of this year’s grand tours.

 

Finally…

Seriously, how bad a driver do you have to be if you can’t even escape bike cops with a Dodge Charger? That feeling when a DeSantis supporter’s naked bike rides and fake fuzzy balls would run afoul of Florida’s new drag ban.

And even the great fail sometimes.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin

15 to life in HB DUI hit-and-run, MI cops accused of beating bike rider, and CA Sen. Portantino buzzed on bike by driver

Happy first day of Spring, even if it doesn’t look or feel like it here in Los Angeles today. 

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An Orange County man could spend the rest of his life behind bars for the drunken hit-and-run death of a man on a bicycle.

Twenty-nine-year old Garden Grove resident Victor Manuel Romero was sentenced to 15 years to life following his conviction for second-degree murder and hit-and-run causing permanent and serious injury in the death of 33-year old Raymond MacDonald in Huntington Beach four years ago this month.

The wreck that killed MacDonald, a homeless resident of Huntington Beach, was just the second of three crashes in an alcohol-soaked crime spree that night.

Romero started off with a bar fight outside a local nightclub, following by crashing into the bar owner’s Caddy on his way out of the parking lot. He then slammed into MacDonald, before crashing into a tree, all without stopping until the tree stopped him.

He still had a blood alcohol content of .18 — over two times the legal limit — when he was tested hours after the crash.

Romero was subject to the murder charge after signing a Watson advisement following a 2012 DUI conviction, and admitted to police that he remembered signing it when he was arrested after running off from the last crash — after trying to claim that he’d been carjacked.

Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels.

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Three Michigan state troopers are facing criminal charges for beating the crap out of a bike-riding man last August.

All three have been charged with misdemeanor assault and battery, while one of the officers also faces a felony count of misconduct in office for the incident that began with a simple traffic stop, for not having lights on the victim’s bike.

The victim, who hasn’t been publicly identified, attempted to flee by riding off on his bike on the sidewalk after officers approached him, likely because he allegedly had a small amount of suspected fentanyl and/or heroin on him.

According to UpNorthLive,

A traffic stop was then conducted and the bicyclist was placed in to custody after “several physical strikes, taser deployment and OC spray deployment,” according to the report…

As the head of the state police said, excessive force against anyone by a police officer is “unacceptable and inexcusable.”

Especially for not having lights on a damn bicycle.

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Clearly, state senators — and Congressional candidates — aren’t any safer out there than the rest of us.

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Streets For All produced their own PSA.

Which in this case, stands for Public Safety Ad.

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After years of talk and wishes, extending the Ballona Creek bike path eastward from the current terminus at Syd Kronenthal Park could be on verge of becoming a reality.

Or at least, a study to determine the feasibility of extending it could be.

Trying to extend it westward from its current terminus near the Pacific would just mean a lot of soggy bike riders.

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In just nine seconds, this clip perfectly captures the problem with riding on the sidewalk, particularly against traffic.

Because drivers entering from side streets and driveways tend to look towards oncoming traffic, and may not see someone coming from their right.

Let alone note someone traveling at greater than walking speed.

https://twitter.com/Bicicleto_ZGZ/status/1637143240523632642

Which is not to say they shouldn’t. But I prefer not to trust my safety to some motorist not having his or her head up their ass.

Then again, they should also stop after crashing into someone, unlike the jerk in the video.

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Celebrating 120 years of great bike art.

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The war on cares may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on rolling.

No bias here. A Menlo Park columnist says bike-riding councilmembers display their own bias through an unwillingness to preserve parking in a bike lane project intended to improve safety for school kids, arguing that there’s very little risk of a kid getting doored or hit by a driver backing out of a parking space.

Police in Denver are looking for the road-raging occupants of a stolen car who shot and wounded a man riding a bicycle, after a confrontation that began when they nearly crashed into him.

No bias here, either. A Florida columnist and retired paramedic says no kid needs a $2,000 ebike, because he once saw a kid riding one roll through a stop sign while looking at his cellphone. And somehow uses the tragic 40-year old case of boy who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt to illustrate the dangers of ebikes.

A bike rider on the Isle of Man was stopped by police three times and ordered to put his bike in their van after drivers complained about being unable to see him in foggy conditions. Which means they should slow down and drive more carefully due to the conditions — not have someone on a bike kicked off the road.

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Local 

A suspect could face charges for shooting a man who was riding his bicycle on the Expo Line bike path near the Sepulveda E Line Metro station, nee Expo Line. Police detained the bike-riding suspect after he was spotted by fire fighters responding to the scene; no word on what may have led up to the incident.

 

State

Calbike calls for passing AB 825 in the state legislature, which would legalize sidewalk riding anywhere in the state on streets and highways that don’t include a Class I, Class II, or Class IV bikeway.

The San Diego Union-Tribune looks back on the city’s first mass bike ride in 1921.

After the front wheel of a Palm Springs man’s bike was stolen — not his whole bike, despite what the headline says — he sees the futility of getting it back as a sign of the breakdown in the fabric of society.

A Palm Spring organization installed a ghost bike for fallen bicyclist Nelson Esteban, who was killed in an early morning collision last week. Although it will only stay up for 30 days, and no other form of memorials will be allowed.

Heartbreaking news from Bakersfield, where a 16-year old girl riding a bicycle suffered life threatening injuries when she was struck by a motorist. Which is a hell of a lot better way to say it than their headline, which managed to remove the humanity from both parties. 

Tragic news from Sacramento, where a man riding a bicycle was killed by a hit-and-run driver Saturday night.

San Francisco’s Financial District now has its first protected bike lane; meanwhile advocates push back against a proposed center-running bike lane on Valencia, calling it worse than nothing.

 

National

Portland bike riders mark the last day of winter with the annual Worst Day of the Year Ride.

Life is cheap in Sitka, Alaska, where a 21-year old woman got just four years for the hit-and-run death of a 20-year old man on a bike, after drifting onto the wrong side of the road while coming off a meth-high from the night before; she then drove to her father’s house and attempted to conceal evidence of the crime.

Oregon’s ebike rebate bill received an extreme makeover in the state legislature, making the rebate program an extension of Oregon’s existing Clean Vehicle Rebate Program while modeling it after Denver’s highly successful program; general residents will now receive just a $400 rebate, while low-income residents will be eligible for up to $1,200 on the purchase of a new ebike.

Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens is one of us, as the “avid cyclist” was hospitalized after being injured in a collision while riding his bike; no word on the condition of the five-time Ivy League champ.

Nearly 1,000 people turned out for an annual 51-mile Selma to Montgomery, Alabama bike ride, beginning at the famed Edmund Pettus Bridge and ending at the State Capitol.

 

International

Road.cc looks back fondly on the Diamondback Andean, which they call the craziest bike of the last decade.

British Columbia’s Stolen Bicycle Avengers use Facebook to reunited purloined  bikes with their owners.

A writer for The Guardian credits the Dutch city of Groningen, where two-thirds of all trips are made by bike, with building the template cities all over the world are using to increase bicycling and reclaim streets from cars.

Josh Reid, son of British bike scribe and historian Carlton Reid, relates his flight-free journey by train and ferry to Africa to take part in an 830-mile unsupported race skirting the Sahara Desert.

The 58th Presidential Cycling Tour of Türkiye, the country formerly known as Turkey, has been postponed until October due to the recent deadly earthquakes.

Half of Pakistanis admit they don’t know how to ride a bike.

An Aussie Lamborghini driver faces charges for running down a man riding a bicycle in a Melbourne nightclub district, which was voted the city’s scariest area for bicyclists a few years ago.

An Australian man was the latest to learn the dangers of overheated ebike batteries, after he was forced to jump from a second-floor balcony to escape flames; another man’s ebike battery exploded while he was riding it, setting off a small grass fire. .

Continuing Down Under, a new $6 million project by the Australian government and bike safety nonprofit Amy Gillett Foundation aims to educate “governments and engineers about best-practice road building for safe cycling,” as well as testing new methods of documenting how safe streets currently are.

Still more from Australia, where a 24-year old man faces life behind bars for killing a bike-riding 84-year old man while illegally riding his dirt bike up 55 mph while popping wheelies on a bike trail.

 

Competitive Cycling

Dutch pro Mathieu van der Poel dropped the entire peloton in a solo breakaway win at Milan-San Remo, the year’s first Monument and the third Monument win of his career.

Two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar said he had no regrets after falling just shot of the Milan-San Remo podium in fourth place.

Indian paracyclists competed with general category bicyclists in a race across the country, with the top paracyclist finishing in third place in just nine days; the top women’s paracyclist — and only woman in the race — finished in 16 days, despite riding with just one leg.

Cycling Tips offers photos from a rainy, foggy and muddy LA Tourist Race, featuring 50-miles on dirt trails through the mountains above Los Angeles, while packing 7,500 feet of elevation into 21 mile segments.

 

Finally…

Probably not the best idea to bash another man over the head with a baton in a dispute over an allegedly stolen BMX, after police refuse to intervene. Nothing like sightings of a bike-riding ghost regularly plunging to his death by riding off a quarry cliff.

And no, you can’t ride your bike on Formula 1 courses before zipping around at 200 mph anymore.

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.

Repeat drunk driver kills OC pedestrian, support Culver City mobility lanes, and bike-riding French Resistance fighter dies

You might want to rethink plans to ride your bike for the next few days. 

The forecast for LA County is calling for dangerously heavy rains and high winds, with flooding in low-lying areas and blizzard warnings for higher elevations. 

So even with the best rain gear, the smart money is on staying home if possible, or finding some other way to get around. 

Hopefully, it will clear up before Sunday’s Valley CicLAvia

Photo by energepic.com from Pexels.

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This is why people continue to die on our streets.

A repeat drunk driver is on trial for murder and DUI for killing a pedestrian while speeding through an Orange crosswalk in 2021; 40-year old Sitani Pinomi still had a BAC of .10 several hours after the crash.

Pinomi was convicted on two previous DUI charges, and had signed a Watson advisement acknowledging that he could be charged with murder if he ever drove drunk again and killed someone.

Which he allegedly did.

Just one more example of authorities keeping a dangerous driver on the road until it’s too late.

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This past weekend, my wife and I visited Culver City for the first time since those heady pre-pandemic days, and were struck by how pleasant the city’s Mobility Lane Project made walking in the downtown area.

And how restricting car traffic made other modes more inviting than driving, which is kind of the point.

Now the city is conducting a survey to gauge support for the project, which could be little more than a fig leaf for the city council’s newly empowered conservative majority to rip the entire thing out.

So take a few minutes, and share your love for the city’s safer and more welcoming streets, so maybe they’ll think twice before removing them.

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The Washington Post remembers World War II’s Girl Partisan of Chartres, after the death of heroic French freedom fighter Simone Segouin,

Her battlefield experience began when she was just 14, recruited by the resistance commander she later married as he hid out on her father’s farm.

The teenager helped him exchange messages with other resistance members on a bicycle she had stolen from a German patrol outside a hotel in Chartres after slashing the tires of their other bikes.

She repainted her bike and, in the guise of a sweet-faced farmer’s daughter carrying baguettes in a basket, moved around the German-occupied countryside without suspicion. Her bike, she said, was her “reconnaissance vehicle.”

She later learned to use handguns, rifles and submachine guns, as well as becoming an expert in explosives and guerrilla tactics. Yet was still just 18 when she captured 25 German soldiers as Allied troops rolled into Chartres, then fought with them to liberate Paris.

She was 97-years old when she died Tuesday.

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BikeLA, the former LACBC, is teaming with CD4 Councilmember Nithya Raman to host a feeder ride to Sunday’s CicLAvia, beginning 9 am at the Balboa Orange Line Station, RSVP requested.

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Sycamore Canyon riders are being told you can’t get there from here, at least for the next week.

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The self-proclaimed Lock Picking Lawyer demonstrates why saving a few bucks on a cheap lock isn’t worth it.

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

Once again, someone has sabotaged a British bike trail, as a 41-year old bicyclist suffered a concussion, broken collarbone and three broken ribs after hitting a wire strung across the trail, in what witnesses said was an apparent attempt to steal his bike.

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

Seriously? The local paper takes up the charge after a single UK pedestrian complains about bicyclists riding at “breakneck speeds” in Sheffield’s pedestrianized town center.

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Local 

Sad news from North Hollywood, where a man in his 20s was killed when a driver rear-ended the e-scooter he was riding on Vineland Ave near Riverside Drive early Wednesday.

Streets For All is hosting an information session March 1st for anyone considering running for their local neighborhood council. And yes, they want you to.

The Los Angeles Times says distrust of politicians is running high in the CD6 special election, following the resignation of former Councilmember Nury Martinez after she was heard making racist remarks on a leaked recording.

Pasadena Now considers plans to close several miles of the Pasadena Freeway to motor vehicles for a few hours, and open it up to bike riders, skaters and walkers for October’s ArroyoFest.

Streetsblog reports Pomona will build a bike path along San Jose Creek from near Ganesha Park to Cal Poly Pomona, providing a safer route to several local elementary schools.

New Congressman Robert Garcia, former mayor of Long Beach, announced a $30 million grant for the Shoreline Drive Gateway project, which will demolish the northbound half of the existing Shoreline Drive to create new park space, including a new bike path.

 

State

The NRCDC says it’s time to cut polluting projects from the state transportation budget, and realign spending with the state’s climate priorities.

The California YIMBY website — that’s Yes In My Back Yard — examines how NIMBYs have hijacked the state’s CEQA anti-pollution laws to block housing and other needed developments.

Ventura County’s Carpinteria Creek Bike Path has reopened, following repairs due to January’s rains. And just in time for this weekend’s coming deluge.

An “avid” Bakersfield bicyclist for the past four decades calls out the poor quality of the city’s bike lanes, saying biking the streets of Bakersfield just isn’t safe anymore. There’s a Buck Owens joke in there somewhere, but it’s escaping me at the moment.

For a change, a bikelash works in our favor, as Palo Alto agrees to rethink a proposal to ban ebikes from local preserves after residents complained about the plan

 

National

House Beautiful offers “ingenious bike storage racks that won’t cramp your style,” many of which actually aren’t. Unless you consider a barn or storage closet a bike rack.

It turns out that one of the two people killed riding bikes in my bike-friendly Colorado hometown was a 76-year old retired FBI special agent and Vietnam vet, who was riding the bike his wife gave him for Christmas.

A Colorado artist and frame painter describes how riding her bike made her fall in love with the state again, saying her bike feels like a drawing tool.

This is who we share the road with, too. A Chicago FedEx driver played the universal Get Out of Jail Free card, claiming he just didn’t see a little old lady crossing the street with her walker before he slammed into her with his truck, killing her.

A Minneapolis news site deflates internet conspiracy theories over why protected bike lanes get plowed faster than traffic lanes when it snows; the answer is simply that there are no parked cars blocking bike lanes. Or at least, there shouldn’t be.

A bikelash worked in our favor in Ohio, too, where an outcry from bike riders defeated a proposal to strip local control over bike lanes from the Ohio budget.

New York Streetsblog proposes a lithium battery trade-in program to reduce the number of dangerous old ebike and e-scooter batteries at risk of fires, with newer, safer models.

Life is cheap in New York, where a USPS driver faces a lousy misdemeanor charge and summons for failing to yield and exercise due care for killing a man riding a bicycle two years ago, despite a long record of reckless driving both before and after he was hired.

The Washington Post seems shocked that older Americans are participating in extreme sports like Ironman triathlons and the Iditarod Trail Invitational, tackling the Alaskan backcountry in subzero temperatures by bicycle, foot or skis. My own brother was in his 60s when he ran his sled dog team in the Iditarod four times, and his 70s when he tackled his first major cross-country bike tour.

 

International

Momentum Magazine offers advice on what to do if bike riding is a literal pain in the back.

The British bike boom has officially gone bust, as bike sales in the UK have dropped to their lowest level in two decades.

British news anchor Dan Walker was unconscious for 20 minutes after he was struck by a driver while riding his bike, which suggests that his bike helmet may have kept his skull intact, but didn’t prevent a traumatic brain injury, aka TBI. Meanwhile, drivers complain that he was wearing dark clothing and wasn’t riding in the glass-strewn bike lane.

After bike-riding Brit broadcaster Jeremy Vine blasted a “maniac” van driver for a right cross turn directly across his path, drivers slam him for not dressing like a hi-viz clown.

Life is cheap in the UK, where a truck driver walked without a single day behind bars for a “perilous maneuver” that resulted in the death of a bike-riding man; a judge imposed community service and a lousy 15 month license suspension.

The self-governing island of Jersey is introducing what they call the world’s first smart cycling scheme, which will use smart bike lights to collect data from individual bike rides, including routes and destinations, as well as road conditions, busy spots and conflicts.

Fans of Dutch bikes can now get an e-Gazelle, starting at the equivalent of four grand.

Your next ebike could have no chain or belt, or any other kind of direct propulsion system, thanks to a new German ride-by-wire drivetrain.

 

Competitive Cycling

Yes, British cyclist Tom Pidcock can descend faster than you. Or me, anyway.

 

Finally…

The right seat could keep gravel riding from being a pain in the butt. When you’re riding your bike at 1 am, with eight — count ’em, eight — active warrants and carrying meth, put a damn light on it, already.

The bike, that is, not the meth.

And not only is Jimmy Carter one of us, so is his wife Roselyn.

https://twitter.com/paulvaldezsf/status/1627818357272592386

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

Oh, and fuck Putin, too.