Elvo

https://www.ocregister.com/news/colli...thorities.html

Fire dispatchers initially reported that two bicyclists had collided, while the Coroner's Office was told that the male victim was a pedestrian who had been struck by a bicycle.

The California Highway Patrol is reportedly investigating the collision, which authorities say took place on county land. Coroner's Office officials will conduct an autopsy to determine the official cause of the man's death.

TrojanHorse

Did either bike appear to have lights? The path officially closes at sundown, right?

It sounds like the pedestrian report is incorrect but what a shame... RIP.

hamster

Pictures in the article portray two different bicycles, one road bike with aero rims and one that looks like something ridden by a homeless person. Lights are not evident on either.

eja_ bottecchia

WOW, it doesn't look like a high speed crash. Neither bike sems to have sustained much damage. The road bike looks like a Colnago.

Very sad. RIP.

skidder

Wow, north of Atlanta Ave on the Huntington Beach side of the SART. That's one of the wider areas of the SART and easy to see things during the day. But it is pretty dark in that area after the sun goes down, as there is only a landscaper's plant growing operation next to the levee, and no roads or homes that would shine residual light onto the path. There are signs at the entrances that say it closes around 6PM (?). Sad.

ZippyThePinhead

Looks like the people involved have been ID'd.

alicestrong

Oh what a shame...RIP...

Mr. Beanz

Riders riding wrecklessly, irresponsibly, both of them resulting in a loss of life. Wonder if any jailtime will be invloved?

Angio Graham

There must be more to this story. It is highly unlikely that two people riding on a flat surface could be riding fast enough to cause death upon collision. Especially since one of them was riding an Electra cruiser.

I would put the odds at about 1 out of 1,000,000

In sports you have violent collisions every day and death rarely results from them.

For those in California you can rest assured the nanny staters will be along shortly to pass hundreds of new laws and regulations.

hamster

My thoughts exactly. No visible damage on the bikes, and they couldn't have been going very fast in the dark without lights. I'd guess that the guy on the cruiser had a heart attack while riding.

ZippyThePinhead

A woman was killed on San Diego Creek Trail about five years ago when she and a rider collided. I'm sure the combined speeds in that incident were pretty low.

In this particular case, if the guy on the road bike was doing 15-20 mph, and the other guy was doing 5-10 mph, the effective speed at the collision could have been 20-30 mph. Apparently it was fast enough to be fatal to the one person.

Sometimes the correlation between the speed and the magnitude of the injuries sustained can be hard to understand. A friend crashed recently at about 15 mph-- in a moment of inattentiveness, he clipped the wheel of another rider-- and ended up with compartment syndrome injuries to one arm. I'd never even heard of this type of injury, but 5-6 surgeries later, they tell him he is fortunate not to lose the use of his hand/arm.

Mr. Beanz

Bad thing is, the speed imit is posted at 10 mph. I always say it's there for a reason. Legal issues I'm guessing.

Wouldn't it be something if the cyclist got so upset after the elctra rider crashed his Colnago that he gave the electra guy a beat down? Pretty sure not the case but I saw a grown man maybe 45 nearly beat down a kid on the beach path when the 10 year old kid drifted into his path causing a collison at 5 mph.

hamster

I recall seeing the statistics that an average of 6 pedestrians are killed by cyclists every year in the country. It's a tiny fraction of all crashes (supposedly there are 1000 cyclist-pedestrian crashes per year in New York alone), because you have to be very frail and/or weak to die from the injuries in such a crash. Nearly all fatalities are elderly. The woman from your article, 68, is actually on the younger side of the bell curve.

Angio Graham

It appears from that article that her fatal injuries occurred when her head hit the pavement.

I am curious how many fatalities occurr simply from the impact force of a cyclists hitting a pedestrian.

T1TO

Haven't been on this site for a while and this is the 1st thing i see....not good. R.I.P

jimxyz

My guess it was a head impact, either helmet to un-helmeted head, or head to pavement. It doesn't take great deal of force to cause a pretty severe head injury... I like the SART for a long ride without cars speeding past, but with the increase in pedestrian traffic, and slower bikers, I always figured it was just a matter of time before someone clamps down on the high speed road bikes (much the same way they cracked down on that on the bike path at the beach years ago).

bgross

Before we got off to the races with speculation, the surviving rider's injuries included three broken spinal vertebrae, a concussion, and other painful issues.
A revised story in the local newspaper indicated that the Electra rider crossed over into the other rider's path, but I seriously doubt that there were any post-impact 'beat downs".

Mr. Beanz

I wasn't speculating, I said it woud be something as in, I would not be surprised the way people are nowadays. That's why I added the "pretty sure not the case".

hamster

Almost none, I think. Head injury is the cause of death in nearly all cases.

Humans are pretty hard to kill in general, even if you try (even though Hollywood movies try to tell you otherwise). Can you guess the typical mortality rate of a gunshot wound to the chest? With modern EMT techniques, it's in the low single percentages, somewhere around 4%. The skull and the neck are the weakest points. Humans are born with specific reflexes to protect the skull and to prevent it from hitting any hard objects in a fall. Those tend to decline after 60, which is why most pedestrian fatalities are the elderly.

lostforawhile

if you read the comments, the one killed was a local transient with many arrests for public intoxication, and public deffacation, and also cited many times for riding improperly, It's bad that he died of course, but it's likely he was drunk and drifted into the other lane, being a homeless person and assuming he was an alacholic from what I read, he probably had a lot of health issue that contributed to his death.

can someone tell me how to turn spell check back on?

Biker395 

I ride on the South Bay bike path in darkness all winter. It is astounding how many people ride on it in utter darkness with no headlight of any kind.

Even more astounding ... I've had headlightless riders coming the other way give me crap because I had a headlight and they felt I was disturbing their night vision (it is on the lowest setting and angled away from oncoming traffic, BTW). That's what I call chutzpah.

Nowadays, decent headlights are cheap. There is no excuse for not having one.

No surprise to me that a head-on collision between two cyclists could result in a fatality ... you're talking about a closing speed of 30 MPH or more. All it takes is a broken neck or a head injury.

Angio Graham

I have ridden that same stretch with no headlight for about 37 years with no accidenst or problems at all. The only problem I have is from other cyclists who feel entitled to yell something at me about my lack of a light as I pass by.

The biggest issues come during the day from pedestrians who have never thought in their life to actually look or watch where they walk.

Biker395 

You ride in utter darkness with no light at all ... and on a road you share with others? Why would you do that? Lights are legally required and cheap to obtain ... as are rechargeable batteries. Why would you risk a serious accident by riding without a light?

Angio Graham

Well I ride with a light now but I did okay for 37 years without one.

Most parts of the south bay bike path have lighting.

Are you sure they are legally required on the bike path ? I would say about 2% of cyclists use lights on that stretch.

hamster

If you're using Firefox, right click in the edit box, there's an entry in the drop menu called "Check spelling".

Yes. CVC 21201(d). Any bicycle ridden at night in the street or on a bike path is required to have:
* A white headlight that is visible from the distance of 300 feet
* A red reflector on the rear
* A reflector on each shoe, pedal, or ankle
* Two reflectors on each side