TAKE ACTION: Ride to the Mandeville Canyon Assault Community Meeting, Monday, 6:30pm

****Rosendahl’s Office has cancelled this meeting****

On July 4th Stephen Box called me up and told me that two cyclists had just been assaulted by a motorist. The motorist had slammed on his brakes in front of them, intentionally, while they were descending Mandeville Canyon Rd at 30 mph. One cyclist had to have his nose reattached, Stephen told me.

I had trouble believing it, and I certainly didn’t want to. We all experience motorist aggression from time to time, but usually we ride away from it. Well, it’s all true, and LAist covered it extensively. In response, Councilman Bill Rosendahl has called a community meeting for Monday, July 14th, from 6:30pm to 8:00pm in at 11338 Santa Monica Blvd.

That’s why I’m asking you, the awesome readers of Westside BikeSIDE, to ride with me to the meeting in a show of support for these two cyclists, and as a representation of our common cause and solidarity.

I haven’t spoken up yet about this assault because at first I was shocked, and then I was swamped. Rosendahl, in response to the assault, asserted that cyclists need a bill of rights, and quoted from the Cyclists’ Bill of Rights (CBR.) He then jointly submitted a motion with Councilwoman Wendy Greuel and Councilman Garcetti for the LA City Council to endorse the Bill of Rights. So, as co-author of the CBR (history of the Cyclists’ Bill of Rights), I was pretty swamped dealing with the sudden attention. The Bike Writers Collective had their eyes on LA City Council a year or two from now, not right away.

Violence like this by motorists disgusts me. We’ve all met with it to varying degrees. The aggressive pass, the dramatic cut off maneuver, tail gating and honking. Yelling on an almost mile by mile basis. Some of it is motorist entitlement, some of it carelessness, and some of it is downright hateful. It is so common that it becomes muted, and we accept it.

Fuck that. This makes me so mad. I feel rage toward all those people who have treated my life carelessly simply because I chose a different mode of transportation. Hundreds of comments on the LA Times article justified violence toward cyclists, or even advocated it. This has got to stop. Did you know that the cyclist fatality rate per mile in the Netherlands is 1/20th of what it is here? This is insanity. It’s time to stop this in it’s tracks.

This is a problem for all cyclists of all kinds: we need to join behind our common cause, rise up with a unified voice, and yell STOP.

As Rosendahl said in reading the Cyclists’ Bill of Rights, “Cyclists have the right to travel safely and free of fear.”