We Hope AKA Hotel Bicycles Come With a Helmet

AKA Hotels, a new, upmarket extended-stay hotel chain with a new outpost here in Beverly has added “complimentary use of exclusive AKA bicycles” to its service roster. It’s the first hotel in town to offer bikes, and we think it’s a great idea. We’d love to see our tourists riding about town! But there’s a problem: according to Beverly Hills Police Department data, 45 people have been injured while riding a bicycle in Beverly Hills over the past year. Thirteen of them were struck within an easy half-mile of the AKA hotel and four within a block or two. We sure hope they’ll be wearing AKA helmets!

While AKA Hotel is doing its part to reduce car traffic by putting tourists on bicycles, it sure looks like it is ground-zero for bike-involved injury collisions! Have a look at the past year’s bicycle-involved collision injuries near the hotel:

Six of the incidents citywide were hits-and run – not even including the recent April 3rd incident only seven blocks from the hotel wherein a motorist attempted to kill a rider with a vehicle then fled. That driver is still on the loose.

We applaud AKA for stepping forward to encourage cycling when our city is loathe to encourage anyone to ride. But maybe City Hall knows something that we don’t. Until we saw this data, we didn’t know how dangerous the streets really were in our ‘hood. But City Hall knows. Without bike-friendly streets and nary a posted ‘share the road’ sign, you know, maybe Beverly Hills is to dangerous to ride. We sure hope hotel patrons are provided a complimentary AKA helmet when riding around town. It looks like they’ll need it.