Nothing like waking up to the worst possible news.
Because once again, a motor vehicle became a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a drunken, heartless and murderous coward.
According to a press release from the Montclair Police Department, around 30 people taking part in a “self-coordinated” Halloween ride were riding east on Kingsley Street and Tudor Ave around 10:39 last night when the group was struck head-on by a westbound driver.
One person died at the scene, while a woman lost her life after at 1:19 am Sunday after being taken to a hospital. Two others were injured; at last report, one was in stable condition with major injuries, while a person suffered a gash to the head, but declined treatment against medical advice.
The driver was identified by detectives, and 38-year old Valentin Alberto Rodriguez was arrested at his at his home around 2:40 am.
He was booked at the West Valley Detention Center on charges of:
Vehicle Code § 23153(a): Driving under the influence and causing injury or death
Vehicle Code § 23153(b): Driving with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% or higher and causing injury or death
Vehicle Code § 20001(b)(2): Felony hit-and-run involving death or permanent, serious injury
Penal Code § 191.5(a): Gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated
These charges could be upgraded to murder if Rodriguez has a previous DUI. Although it should be considered murder simply for leaving one victim to die, and dragging another to their apparent death.
This is at least the 59th and 60th bicycling fatalities that I’m aware of in Southern California this year, and the third and fourth we know about in San Bernardino County.
According to KTLA-5, Ortiz had quickly developed a love of bicycling after joining the Luna bike crew.
“She was kindhearted. She was happy all the time. She brought extreme joy to the group,” Ani Fine, a friend of Ortiz, told KTLA…
Among those attending the vigil was Yoly Shively, Umanzor’s aunt, who remembered her nephew as an outgoing person who enjoyed being surrounded by loved ones.
“He just loved being around people. I know that, and he just loved our family,” Shively told KTLA. “He was so sociable, I know, with all his friends.”
A crowdfunding campaign to help pay for Umanzor’s funeral expenses has raised over $10,000 of the $16,000 goal. There doesn’t appear to be a fundraiser for Ortiz at this time.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for Robert Garcia Umanzor and Rumor Ortiz, and all their loved ones.
The fun thing about health problems is the learning never stops.
For instance, I learned Wednesday that I can cope with low blood sugar, and I can cope with low blood pressure. What I can’t cope with is low blood sugar and low blood pressure.
My night was like an endless version of an Elvis Costello song.
And can someone please tell me if Lake America is anywhere near the Gulf of America? I get so confused.
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They got him.
Finally.
Police made an arrest for the intentional hit-and-run crash that killed 16-year old Jonathan “Junior” Flores, after chasing him into the parking lot at BMO Stadium two years ago.
Flores was taking part in an afternoon ride with around 40 other teens when an altercation took place between the driver of a BMW and some of the kids as they rode on Figueroa Street.
When the kids tried to escape through a gap in the fencing around the parking lot, the driver of a second car, who police allege was Rodriguez, broke through the gate and chased the teens into the parking lot, slamming into Flores before backing out and fleeing the scene.
To make matters worse, Flores was an innocent victim who had nothing to do with the original altercation, in which someone allegedly broke one of the cars’ mirrors.
Flores had been wanted on $2 million bond after police tracked both cars to his home.
He was taken into custody at LAX when police negotiated his surrender after tracking him to El Salvador.
Let’s hope the negotiations that led to his surrender didn’t include reducing the charges or possible sentencing, even though that seems likely.
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It only took five years, but we’ve finally seen justice for 16-year old Pedro Valdez.
That comes four months after a jury convicted Rocha of four counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and two counts of battery, along with the special allegation of causing great bodily injury in the commission of a felony.
Rocha ran down the kids, who were just out enjoying a bike ride, eleven minutes after he had battered a man and a woman at a laundromat, and intentionally stuck an employee with his car as he was leaving the parking lot.
Rocha remains in custody without bail, and faces 27 to life when he is sentenced on October 27th.
I just hope he gets enough time that he’s not back out on the streets in a few years, thanks to the revolving door on ur state prison system.
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Another mass casualty crash, this time in Australia, as a “vehicle” — evidently the 40-year old driver was not in control of it — plowed into five members of a Canberra bike club, resulting a scene a senior cop described as “beyond comprehension”.
Three riders were injured; one, a 32-year old woman, died at the scene, while a 39-year old man remains in critical and unstable condition. The other victim, a 34-year old man, was treated and released.
The victims were in the left lane of a four lane divided highway — the equivalent of our right lane — when they were struck by a driver traveling in the same direction, for some unknown reason.
Yet the driver still has not been charged or cited, for reasons known only to the local police.
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I’m including the information from this email I got yesterday.
We’re launching Bike Streets in LA County! Log every ride with Bike Streets and help us build the Low-Stress Bike Map. Ride and help us reach our first weekly goal of 20 riders. bikestreets.com/join
Here’s the web link to the map: bikestreets.com/ca/los-angeles As we add Low-Stress routes, a network of dark blue lines will start to take shape. (See Denver’s as an example.)
Nope, nothing to see here. Half of drivers in the UK say they honk at bike riders at least once a week, and half of bike riders have experienced drivers shouting or swearing at them in the last year. Which is either an indictment of the country’s crappy bicyclists, or its impatient drivers. Or both.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro weighs in on LA’s mayoral race, saying Councilmember and mayoral challenger Nithya Raman was ridiculed for celebrating a new crosswalk in her district, even as the pavement beneath it remained cracked. So Shapiro evidently thinks the councilmember somehow controls the Bureau of Street Services, which is under the mayor’s purview. And that she was the one responsible for bankrupting the city, which halted street repair work.
That about sums it up. The Los Angeles Times says Orange County DA Todd Spitzer’s buyback program for illegal e-motos and hacked ebikes means the country is treating ebikes like guns. I don’t know if that means they are taking ebikes too seriously, or not taking guns seriously enough.
A 38-year old man in was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree homicide, along with a host of other charges, for the hit-and-run death of Savannah, Georgia’s “Flag Man,” who was known for riding around the city with a giant American flag attached to his bicycle; the charges suggest police believe the driver acted intentionally when he veered off the roadway to strike the victim on the center median.
British TV hosts were left flabbergasted when a man known as Britain’s “most hated cyclist” for his helmet cam videos of lawbreaking drivers, said the new 20 mph speed limits in Birmingham don’t apply to bicyclists, arguing that speed limits are for motorized vehicles. He may be right, depending on exactly how the law is written. Or not.
Tour de France champ Tadej Pogačar continue to dominate the Vuelta, padding his lead on a day when he barely survived a near-crash on a descent. Unless disaster strikes, the race is now a question of who else will be on the podium with him, rather than who will win.
May 11, 2026 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on LA moves to ban pretext stops — again, ghost tires installed at 99 Ranch Market, and pickup a weapon of mass destruction in Florida
Los Angeles is banning pretext stops.
Again.
Several years after a fight with the police commission led to actions that would supposedly prevent cops from stopping drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians on some flimsy pretext to conduct what would otherwise be an illegal search, the city is doing it again.
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted in favor of new restrictions on so-called “pretextual” traffic stops, signaling a growing impatience with the Police Commission’s failure to rein in a controversial LAPD tactic that critics say enables racial discrimination.
The vote requests that the department’s all-civilian watchdog adopt new guidelines similar to San Francisco, which bars police officers from pulling people over for broken taillights and other minor equipment violations unless there is a safety threat.
It has long been a problem with bicyclists, particularly bike riders who were the wrong color or in the wrong neighborhood.
Call it biking while Black or brown.
Roll a stop after almost coming to a complete halt, or fail to signal a lane change, and a flashing roof rack could light up behind you. And next thing you know, you’re standing on the side of the road in handcuffs as a cop rifles through your clothes and belongings.
That’s what led the city to eliminate the bike licensing requirement all the way back in 2009, because officers would too often pull people of color over on the pretext of checking for a bike license. If they didn’t find one — which was usually the case, since most people didn’t even know they were supposed to have one — and you could be humiliated at best, arrested at worst.
It was biased policing at its most heinous, particularly in the Rampart district.
The city council cancelled the requirement as a result. But advocates found themselves before the Police Commission a few years later, fighting for a promised reduction in pretext stops by making officers justify and record the stops on their body cams.
You can tell how successful that was, since the city council had to come hat in hand to ask the commission to do for real this time.
The problem is, in a bizarre quirk of the city charter, neither the council nor mayor has direct authority over the police. The Police Commission makes the rules on an independent basis, sort of like the Federal Reserve and other federal commissions in the pre-Trump era.
So the City Council is asking them, once again, to please ban the practice once and for all.
We’ll see how well that works out.
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As long as we’re rolling video, KCBS-2 covered Saturday’s ghost tire installation at the 99 Ranch Market in Westwood.
Three people were killed inside the store when a 92-year old woman hit a bike rider while apparently turning left onto Westwood, then continued on the wrong side of the road until plowing into and through the market.
Yet amid all the other questions over how to prevent something like this from happening again, no one seems to be asking whether a 92-year old woman belonged behind the wheel in the first place.
Until we start asking ourselves the hard questions and taking the difficult steps to address them, it’s not a question of whether this will happen again.
But when. And where.
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Once again, a motor vehicle has become a weapon of mass destruction, after a truck driver plowed head-on into a Deland, Florida group ride.
The cycling group was estimated at 14 riders. FHP said the bicyclists struck were a 38-year-old male from DeLand, a 37-year-old male from DeLand, a 41-year-old male from Lake Mary, a 29-year-old male from DeLand, a 42-year-old male from DeLand, a 49-year-old male from DeLand, and a 33-year-old male from DeBary. No names were provided.
Most of the riders were customers of a Deland bike and surf shop, while one of the most seriously injured was reported to be the store manager.
The driver of the 11-year old pickup remained at the scene, and faces a fine of $65 to $300, and a whole 3 points on his driver’s license for failing to remain in his lane.
Chances are, he’s going to be drastically uninsured for the damages and injuries he caused.
But surprisingly, that statistic is reversed in 13 states, where more victims are women than men.
According to Cycling West,
In Idaho, women were 60 percent more likely to die in cycling crashes. Montana showed a gap of about 47 percent, and Utah 18 percent. The contrast with neighboring states is striking: in Colorado and Nevada, men were 170 percent and 160 percent more likely to be killed, respectively. In smaller states, however, limited data may make firm conclusions difficult.
States with higher female fatality rates span both rural and urban areas. Only Florida and California reported more female cycling deaths than Arizona, which ranked second nationally in per-capita deaths among women. Arizona also ranked third for male cyclist fatalities.
I don’t know what you can conclude from that, except maybe more women ride in those states. Otherwise, I don’t have a clue.
No bias here, either. New York’s most consistently anti-bike columnist complains that plans to redesign iconic Park Avenue are a “convoluted mess,” arguing that a proposed lane reduction would add to Midtown gridlock, and that “like most recent traffic-pattern disruptions, the Park Avenue scheme is a Trojan horse for bike lanes.”
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Um, okay. British actor Benedict Cumberbatch was accused of a road-raging meltdown when he confronted a bicyclist who had chased him for blocks, accusing him of repeatedly breaking the law on his cargo bike, with Cumberbatch arguing that the other man sas “verbally abusing” him, before calmly charming bystanders and posing for selfies. Yeah, sounds like he was really out of control, all right.
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Local
This is who we share the road with. The suspect who plowed through a group of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department trainees, killing one man and injuring more than two dozen people, will go to trail after backing out of a plea deal.
This is who we share the road with, part two. The LAPD is looking for the hit-and-run driver who killed a 65-year old man near Figueroa Street and 75th Street in South Los Angeles, after the Chicago Cubs fan had come to the city to see the Dodger’s-Cubs series with family members last month; as always, there’s a standing $50,000 reward for any fatal hit-and-run in the city of Los Angeles.
This is who we share the road with, part three. A 13-year old Santa Ana boy was killed in Garden Grove when the electric motorcycle he was riding hit the center divider, sending him flying; he was on the bike even though you have to be at least 16 year old and have a motorcycle license to legally ride one. But at least the police and press made clear he was on an e-motorcycle, rather than an ebike, this time.
A commenter on Pink Bike wants to know what dogs are doing on bike parks, after a pooch nearly took him out on a jump. Damn good question, actually, though it’s not clear if the dog is a stray or someone’s pet.
A 27-year old woman pled guilty to the hit-and-run death of a man riding a bicycle in London’s Hackney neighborhood, who was riding while on a hands-free call with his parents at the time of the crash; the woman, who was high on “hippy crack,” aka nitrous oxide, and doing 50 in a 20 mph zone, will be sentenced to something below the 12 years she would have faced had she gone to trial.
A Philippine study argues that the national standard of 8-foot wide bike lanes is insufficient, concluding that physically separate bikeways must be at least 8.7 feet to be safe and comfortable for bike riders, while bike lanes on roadways should be at least 8.9 feet wide. Although you may need to read Tagalog to get the most out of the report.
Thirty-eight-year old Italian amateur cyclist Felice Giangregorio was provisionally suspended after testing positive for for EPO for the second time, derailing his comeback after a previous four-year suspension, and casting doubt on the European gran fondo scene. But the doping era is over, right? And it’s a virtual guarantee that if European amateurs are doping, Americans are, too.
July 21, 2025 /
bikinginla / Comments Off on Car a weapon of mass destruction in East Hollywood, vigil for WeHo bike rider, and Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and…Pee-wee
Day 202 of LA’s Vision Zero failure to end traffic deaths by 2025.
One of those resulted in a conviction for a hate crime after Ramirez sucker-punched an employee at a Whole Foods Market in Laguna Beach, telling an officer it was because the man was Black, and “he hated all Black people,” although the conviction was later overturned on appeal.
But maybe it’s time we ask why people with a demonstrated history of violence are allowed to continue operating a potential multi-ton weapon of mass destruction.
Because until we take cars away from violent felons just like we do guns, tragedies like this will keep happening.
Even the corgi honored a request from the family of Blake Ackerman that everyone wear Hawaiian shirts to the vigil for the fallen bicyclist to remember his love for the islands. Photo by Damian Kevitt,
Ackerman’s fiancé Victoria “Torie” Ball was there representing the victim, since his family chose to mourn in private, in what Streets Are For Everyone founder Damian Kevitt described as “a very emotional time for the family.”
The website reports that West Hollywood Mayor Chelsea Byers and Councilmembers Danny Hang and Lauren Meister attended, along with Culver City Councilmember Bryan “Bubba” Fish.
Unfortunately, no representatives of the City of Los Angeles chose to attend, even though the dividing line between the cities is literally the curb on the north side of the street, with Fountain in West Hollywood and the sidewalk in Los Angeles.
According to Kevitt,
“They (Ackerman’s family) thanked us for the work we’re doing–not only remembering Blake, but making sure this moment leads to real change. It’s about more than what happened. It’s about preventing future tragedies.”
Mayor Byers echoed that sentiment. “We’re here holding a vigil for Blake, who died on Fountain Avenue while riding his bike, and we’re vowing to fight for safer streets in West Hollywood and across the region,” she said. “I’m grateful that a council member from Culver City joined us tonight–it shows this is a regional issue. We’re all fighting for a future where people don’t have to risk their lives just to ride a bike.”
Amen to that.
A poster for another fatal hit-and-run was posted across the street from the Ackerman vigil and ghost bike, for a crash less than two weeks earlier, and just block away.
You can just imagine the lessons learned by future school kids as they admire memorabilia from Alamo legends Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, William Travis, and yes, Pee-wee Herman.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
Once again, the LAPD failed to use their hit-and-run alert system, and waited months to tell us a man in his 60s was severely injured when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver, while riding his bicycle in LA’s Pico-Union neighborhood in the early hours of May 28th; there is a standing $25,000 reward for any hit-and-run resulting in serious injuries in the City of Los Angeles.
Nelson Vails, 1984 Olympic cycling hero and the first Black man to win an Olympic medal, says he likes RAGBRAI, aka the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, because it’s just a relaxed ride, and not a race.
More proof cyclists are tough, after Julian Alaphilippe popped his shoulder out crashing his bike on stage 15, popped it back in, and still finished just off the podium — even though he thought he won, except a) two riders finished far ahead of him and the rest of the peloton, and b) Primož Roglič knocked him off the podium in a photo finish.
We’re launching Bike Streets in LA County! Log every ride with Bike Streets and help us build the Low-Stress Bike Map. Ride and help us reach our first weekly goal of 20 riders. 
