CALIFORNIA BICYCLE NEWS AND CYCLING SAFETY TIPS BLOG

On February 26, a bicycle accident injured Susan Bell’s young son on Alameda Island in California. Her son and some friends were riding to Alameda Towne Centre. Bell’s son was attempting to cross the street when a vehicle struck him head-on. His friends said the car flung him into the air. He suffered a separated shoulder and needed 19 stitches. Neither Bell’s son nor any of his friends were wearing a bicycle helmet.  “It’s just a total blessing he is not dead,” Bell told the Alameda News. Bell is going public with her story in hopes to raise awareness about bicycle safety in the beach community, which is home to many cyclists and pedestrians.  The intersection of Grand Street and Otis Drive, near where the bicycle accident occurred, has seen four accidents in the past three years.  Local cyclist Gene Oh claims that the responsibility has to fall on both…
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Sally Meyerhoff, a world -class marathon runner, tragically died in a bicycle accident south of Phoenix on March 8, according to CBSNews.com. She was riding in Maricopa, Arizona when she collided with a truck.   Investigators have not indicated whether Meyerhoff was wearing a bicycle helmet. Meyerhoff, 27, was a title-winning marathon runner at Duke University.  She won the P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n Roll Marathon in 2011, becoming the first female to win the marathon. She had qualified for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trial.  Meyerhoff was currently training for the Olympics as well as the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Meyerhoff died instantly from the collision. Preliminary investigations show that Meyerhoff failed to yield at an intersection. There were no indications that the truck driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

On May 18, the Mesilla Valley Bike Coalition will be hosting a Ride of Silence at the Mesilla Plaza in New Mexico, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News. The Ride of Silence is commemoration people who have been injured or killed in automobile-bicycle accidents. Trina Witter, co-founder and president of the Mesilla Valley Bike Coalition, encourages all cyclists to come out and join the 10-12 mile ride. The coalition tries to find the cause of bicycle accidents and prevent them in the future.  Witter believes that the vast majority of the accidents are preventable. “We don’t call them accidents,” she says. Since its founding in 1999, the Mesilla Valley Bike Coalition has been lobbying for bicycle safety legislation.  They have asked the New Mexico state government to ban the practice of partial paving, which is a cost-saving effort in which the government builds or repaves roads and leaves a thin…
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