A bike rider was doored in West Hollywood Sunday morning. And naturally, the guy on the bike got the blame.
According to WeHo Online, the crash occurred at 8275 Santa Monica Blvd, across from Hamburger Mary’s, around 11:17 am.
A witness said the victim cut through between two cars, one parked and the other in the right lane, when the driver threw open his door right in front of the victim. “He literally just cut through,” she said. “This guy was opening the door, and there’s no way he could have seen the biker try to cut through the two cars.”
Unless, of course, the driver checked his mirror or looked behind him before opening his door.
According the website, the bike rider was expected to be okay, but his vintage road bike was totaled. And the car door didn’t fare too well, either.
Bicyclists are legally allowed to split lanes like that in California. Though it’s more prudent to ride outside the door zone, for reasons exactly like that.
The road is slated to get a green, painted bike lane. However, if it’s like the bike lanes further west on the boulevard, it will still place bikes directly in the door zone.
WeHo Online ends the story like this, showing that they get it, anyway.
Dooring — when a driver or passenger opens a vehicle door into the path of an oncoming cyclist — is one of the leading causes of bicycle injuries in urban areas. California law requires drivers to check for cyclists before opening a door, but enforcement is rare, sadly, for all involved, crashes like Sunday’s are not.
There’s no word on whether the driver was ticketed. Or if, like the witness, sheriff’s deputies blamed the victim, too.
Image by DJ_Moertel from Pixabay.
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CicLAvia has announced the first two events of 2026, starting with a CivSalon next week, and a new route connecting Santa Monica Blvd and Westwood in West LA next month.
Although if they’ve posted anything about the former online yet, I can’t find it.
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South Pasadena stands accused of going from the promised protected bike lanes to…sharrows, which have been shown to literally be worse than nothing.
Let them know what you think about that.
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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
(“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” for anyone who’s forgotten high school French or philosophy.)
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Gravel Bike California fights the freeze in LA County.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A Toronto bike rider was doored by a cop, then blamed for the crash — without doing anything wrong.
No bias here. Someone opposed to a Cork, Ireland bike lane set up a crowdfunding page to pay legal fees to fight the “Gaza destruction project that is active travel;” after 20 days, it has raised the equivalent of a measly $463.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A former British Big Brother winner went on the attack against people riding bicycles on park trails “at Tour de France speeds,” and getting “absolutely furious” at dogs wandering across the trail. Admittedly, as one of the commenters said, you should always slow down around dogs and children because they are utterly unpredictable, and prone to running out in front of you at any time. On the other hand, it’s up to dog owners to keep their dogs leashed and under control, if only because it’s their responsibility to keep their pet safe.
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Local
KCBS-2 and KTLA-5 report on Friday’s Critical Mass ride in honor of fallen bicyclist and mom Regan Cole-Graham and her unborn daughter Ophelia, who were killed riding an ebike in Playa del Rey; they were killed by an 87-year old driver on Pershing Drive, where a road diet and bike lanes were installed in 2017, then removed a few months later because a relative handful of pass-through commuters complained.
Hundreds of bicyclists turned out on Saturday for the annual Chinatown Firecracker run and bike ride to mark the year of the Fire Horse.
State
The ebike industry is backing California’s SB 1167 to separate the ped-assist ebikes from electric motorbikes.
A 34-year old man riding a Class 2 ped-assist ebike suffered serious injuries in San Diego’s Southcrest neighborhood Saturday morning, when he allegedly rode through a stop sign and was broadsided by a driver crossing on the cross street; the victim suffered multiple broken bones, including a fractured vertebrae, jaw, multiple ribs and left wrist.
Seventy kids took home new bicyclists in Goleta on Saturday, thanks to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County and primary fundraiser Kirk Greene, who raised close to $17,000 by riding over 6,200 miles for the 2025 Bike4Kids campaign.
Around 150 people turned out for San Francisco’s first-ever Bayview Black History Month bike ride on Saturday.
National
The Southern Nevada Bicycle Coalition launched the third phase of their Let’s Get There Together campaign, urging everyone to “slow down, look twice, be respectful, and follow the rules of the road,”
That’s more like it. Oklahoma is building a walkable, bikeable masterplanned community on the shores of Lake Eufaula, designed so a car isn’t needed for people who live and work there.
Road.cc takes a look back at the first Trek built, a hand-brazed, steel-frame sport touring bike built in a Wisconsin barn in 1976.
International
Road.cc recommends the world’s steepest, hardest and most fearsome road gradients to put on your bike bucket list.
Congratulations to World Bicycle Relief, which has now put its one millionth heavy-duty Buffalo Bike on the roads of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Reuters says Havana is experiencing yet another bike boom, as the US cuts off Cuba’s oil supply.
A “self-confessed leisure cyclist” recounts his five-day, Lycra-free ebike journey from London to Paris.
Dutch prosecutors are appealing the acquittal of two manufacturers of Stint e-cargo bikes for culpability in the death of four children, who were killed when the brakes failed on the ebike while a daycare worker was taking five kids to school, and she rode into the path of an oncoming train; only the daycare worker and one of the children survived. Prosecutors can’t appeal an acquittal in the US, but it’s more common in European courts.
Here’s another one for your bike bucket list. The 450-mile La Voie Bleue bikeway stretching from the Luxembourg border to Lyon, France has been voted the most beautiful long-distance bicycling route in Europe.
Yet another study shows that ebikes aren’t cheating, as Spanish researchers compared e-mountain bikes to regular mountain bikes, concluding it’s the terrain and level of assistance that matters, not whether or not the bike has an engine.
A 30-year old South African man is attempting to set a world record riding 6,200 miles from Cairo to Cape Town to raise funds for a grocer trying to create jobs for about ten thousand young people.
Competitive Cycling
Reputed cycling superstar in-waiting Paul Seixas soloed to victory at the Faun-Ardèche Classic with a more than 28-mile breakaway on Saturday.
Saturday’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad turned into a demolition derby, with 39 riders failing to finish the men’s race and 28 in the women’s, including Swiss cyclist Stefan Küng, who required surgery for a broken leg.
As for the race itself, European champ Demi Vollering outsprinted Polish champ Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney to win the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in a two-woman breakaway, while Mathieu van der Poel soloed to the win with a ten-mile attack on the men’s side.
Twenty-year old British cyclist and former Junior World Track Cycling Champ Matthew Brennan scored an impressive victory in his debut with Visma-Lease a Bike, sprinting to victory in Sunday’s Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne.
Also on Sunday, France’s Romain Grégoire claimed the Faun Drôme Classic, outsprinting American Matteo Jorgenson on an uphill finish following a ten-mile, two-man breakaway.
Road.cc reminisces about the crappy kits of yore.
Finally…
If you can’t park a car, maybe you should ride a bike — or just ride a bike, period. If you’re carrying a loaded gun and over an ounce of coke on your bike, with two prior felony convictions, maybe obey the damn traffic laws.
And that feeling when you crash your bike and go to the ER, but your 28 buck lipstick is still perfect.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.