Boy on bike killed

A Whittier boy riding his bicycle from school to home died in an accident Thursday afternoon. According to CNS:

A 14-year-old bicyclist on his way home from school was about a block away from his destination when he was struck and killed by a big rig in Whittier this afternoon, authorities said. The boy, whose name was not immediately released, was pronounced dead at the scene of the 2:47 p.m. accident at Lambert Road and Painter Avenue, according to the county fire department. Jason Zuhlke of the Whittier Police Department said the boy had been en route home from East Whittier Junior High School, a three-mile ride. He left the curb and tried to manuever between the semi, which had just started rolling forward, and the car in front of him," Zuhlke said. "There was a three-foot gap and the child did not wait. The truck was not moving fast, but the boy got stuck underneath and was dragged 40 feet."

Channel 4 this week ran a special report about the "road war" between bikes and cars:

It's a battle for space, and it can get bloody. Clarke has scars from an incident when a driver suddenly cut in front of him. (His was) one of 3,000 bike accidents each year that occur in Los Angeles County alone. There are an average of more than two dozen deaths a year.

Comments

[Richard Lawrence]

Dan is so right.

I have wondered for quite some time why the freeway should ever come to a stop. Maybe my logic is off, but if (and it's a huge if), traffic speeds could be regulated better, wouldn't that lessen the likelihood of a traffic wall building up?

I liken the situation to stories we hear of people getting crushed in a crowd that panics as they all rush for a small exit. If people further from the exit didn't run up to the front, the bottleneck would not happen. I would think the same thing occurs with autos. When i drive some freeways early in the morning, I can see the cars traveling 80+ mph and they catch up to the pack way too quickly only to have to come to a stop. If these cars were forced to go 45 or 50 - even 10 or 15 miles back, that would keep traffic flowing even if they might feel frustrated because the freeway is "clear" at the point where they are driving.

I like the rule of thumb in terms of seeing the wheels of the car in front of you. I do my best not to tailgate, and that certainly seems to be a good method for reducing the opportunity to do so.

[Dan Conrady]

CALIFORNIANS CAN REDUCE THE STOP AND GO TRAFFIC

I agree that traffic in California has not been properly addressed when it comes to development. I also acknowledge that the amount of cars in California is crazy. However, I do not believe that it causes all the traffic. Almost all of the stop and go traffic (except where there is an accident), is simply caused by POOR DRIVING (tailgating and speeding), which probably is one, if not the main cause, of most of the highway accidents.

Simply put, if a majority of the drivers would slow down a bit (which would save them some big bucks at the pumps) and stop tailgating, traffic (in most cases) would at least keep moving. Because everyone is tailgating, when one person puts the brakes on, everyone has to panic, slam on the brakes and everything comes to a stop (the ripple effect). Then, because everyone stops right on everyone’s bumper (not leaving about a half of a car length between them and the car in front of them), each car has to wait for the next car to start moving.

I can honestly say that a majority of the stop and go traffic that I have encountered on California highways was not because of an accident or someone stopped on the side of the road. It is because of all the POOR DRIVING (again, tailgating and speeding).

How do I know this – I’ve done it and it works. In fact, if you leave the right distance, sometimes you won’t even need to touch your brakes when the car in front of you does.

I was taught at a very young age that if everyone were stopped at an intersection and each driver could see the rear tires on the car in front of them, that when the light turns green, everyone could start moving at once. Again, not leaving that space at a stop results in each car having to wait for the car in front of them to move, which means slower traffic.

What really scares me is that we have so many people (not trained to drive on a race track) driving these full size trucks and SUVs on the highways like they are driving sports cars in a race. I honestly don’t think they understand that they are NOT designed for high speed maneuvering. Since they don’t understand that and they probably don’t care about anybody but themselves, alls I can recommend to you, is to slow down a bit and not tailgate. If you leave that safe distance behind the vehicle in front of you, you can keep from being in the accidents that the POOR DRIVERS cause. I guarantee that you will immediately start noticing that you won’t come to a complete stop in traffic as often, which also means the people behind you can also keep moving.

That’s my two cents.