It's a Tough Life for a Cyclist, On or Off the Bike

By Eric Richardson
Published: Friday, July 25, 2008, at 11:43AM

Mangled Wheel Eric Richardson [Flickr]

The owner of this Trek mountain bike will be surprised to find his ride home out of service.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The owner of this bicycle, locked to a rack on Hill street, probably plans on riding home at some point today. What he doesn’t yet know is that his ride has been disabled, thanks to the sloppy work of a hurried UPS driver. Even worse, he’ll most likely never know what happened.

This Trek mountain bike was locked up to a bike rack on Hill street this morning at roughly 10:30am, when a UPS truck pulled up to the adjacent red curb. The driver hopped out, delivered a few packages, and then got back into the truck. Pulling out he paid no attention to the swing of the truck’s rear end, only caring not to hit the car parked in front.

The impact to the wheel spun the bike around the rack, but the driver didn’t notice the impact or the man yelling to him that he had hit something.

Cyclists face enough peril on the street, so one would like to think that they’d at least be safe once properly locked up at their destination. In at least this case, though, that wasn’t to be.



Comments

1
BlogReader writes:

If the rider was in downtown chances are that he reads this blog.

# on Jul.25.2008 AT 02:05 PM
2
Eric Richardson writes:

While I appreciate the thought, I’m pretty sure blogdowntown hasn’t reached that level of market penetration.

# on Jul.25.2008 AT 02:13 PM
3
tornadoes28 writes:

Since it appears the driver of the UPS truck did not realize he had hit the parked bike and that he was not really driving recklessly, I would not put too much blame on him.

He and other drivers of trucks like this should definately understand that the back of their truck swings out like that when they pull out sharply. Maybe he should have known and in that case he would bare more responsibility.

I know there is only so much room on the sidewalk but maybe that shows that the bike racks are too close to the curb.

# on Jul.25.2008 AT 02:39 PM
4
Eric Richardson writes:

tornadoes: The bike rack was also next to red curb, not a legal parking spot (or even a loading zone). But yeah, it’s certainly worth asking the question about whether racks need to be farther in from the curb.

# on Jul.25.2008 AT 02:48 PM
5
cochon writes:

yeah. that sucks. not as bad as new york though.

# on Jul.26.2008 AT 11:41 AM
6
Kolby writes:

Being too close to the red curb or not, the driver is still to blame for the damage to city property and the bike. Can UPS even park in the red zone legally? To me, this seems to be a clear-cut hit and run accident. It wouldn’t be too hard to report exactly which UPS truck hit this bike given that the time and location are known.

Moving the bike parking might be a good suggestion, but from the comments I’ve read here, you guys seem way more forgiving to that UPS driver than I am. :-)

# on Aug.09.2008 AT 11:38 AM

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