Pier Raccuglia is no wimp when it comes riding bicycles. On Saturday mornings, he dons a bright white spandex suit and launches into an 80-mile loop stretching from Kendale Lakes to Pinecrest. He looks yanked from a Tour de France calendar on his $10,000 Canondale SystemSix, the tricked-out Porsche of…
Carlos Bertonatti will have to wait a few more months to face trial on charges of vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter after a judge granted his lawyer’s motion for a continuance this morning. At an 8:30 hearing, Judge David Miller rescheduled Bertonatti’s trial to begin on August 2. Police say…
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported who was at fault in this accident. We apologize for the error. The bicyclist who was ran into a motorcycle near the Soyka complex Tuesday night had been drinking, according to police reports.Pichardo Dearmas, a 52 year-old on a Huffy bicycle, was…
Just before 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, a man on a Huffy bicycle collided with a woman on a Yamaha motorcycle. They were just yards from the News Lounge and Andiamo Pizza, at the corner of NE 54th Street and NE Fourth Court. An ambulance rushed both of them to the trauma…
Minutes after Carlos Bertonatti drunkenly killed a cyclist on the Rickenbacker Causeway, an officer clocked him topping 80 mph as he tore down Crandon Boulevard and dodged traffic with a bicycle wedged under his fender. His blood alcohol content at the time was at least .122 — well over the…
The bus-stop ads popped up last summer. They showed an image of a cyclist riding — ahead of a car — in the center of the road. “Bikes May Use Full Lane,” the posters read in thick black letters. They were part of a bike safety campaign, courtesy of the…
Former Mayor Manny Diaz made bicycling a key part of his agenda (so much so that he’s now under a weird ethics investigation for accepting a bicycle from his staff as his going-away gift), and now Bicycling magazine has named Miami one of the best cities for bicyclists in America.In…
A loud thump made onlookers wince. During rush hour this past November 16, at the east end of the Venetian Causeway, a Beach Towing truck flipped an illegal U-turn and smashed into a fit, brown-eyed biker. The 19-year-old cyclist, Javier Arjona, was “thrown to the ground,” according to police reports…
This blog post is dedicated to the snot-nosed raver kid who almost killed me Saturday night. I was the redhead on the bike. You were in an Escalade, thumping that bad techno song from the ’90s. I’m pretty sure you were even sporting a sideways visor. Maybe you were driving…
Although this weekend’s warmer weather inspired some Miamians to hit the beach and bare all, others broke out their bow ties, ascots, and knee socks for the Tweed Ride. Nearly 100 cyclists, and one architecture historian, showed up for the leisurely ride through Coral Gables. If you missed it, you’ll…
About a month ago, county officials removed a spray-painted bike that was mounted on Bear Cut Bridge, near Virgina Key. The ghost bike was a tribute to Christophe Le Canne, the 44-year-old family man who was killed by a drunk driver two months ago. Public works director Esther Calas claimed it…
March is “Bicycle Month” in Florida. So we hope you shared the road on Saturday afternoon when Miami cyclists took to the streets for the Beer Snob Bicycle Crawl. According to Mike Bike Scene organizers, close to a hundred peeps showed up for the four-bar, crosstown ride that started at…
17.4 percent of all bicyclist deaths in America occur in Florida, which only makes up about 6 percent of the total population. Basically, Florida is the Red Asphalt State. According to USA Today, Florida is the deadliest state for both pedestrians and bicyclists. In 2008, there were 490 pedestrian or bicyclist…
So you’re speeding down the MacArthur Causeway in your beat-up Toyota when you spot a Miami Beach Police cruiser. Only it’s the same cop car you’ve seen there for the past month. It hasn’t moved an inch. It’s been glistening in the morning, slumbering at night — but there’s no…
Last week, county officials removed a mounted “ghost bike” — the cycling equivalent of a tombstone — from Bear Cut Bridge, near Virgina Key. The spray-painted road bike had been dedicated to Christophe Le Canne, the 44-year old who was killed by a wealthy, drunk-driving musician named Carlos Bertonatti one…
Cyclists flooded the Rickenbacker Causeway this past Sunday for a memorial ride in honor of Christophe Le Canne, the 44-year-old biker killed in a horrific hit-and-run accident last weekend. As you can see in the video — shot by a Riptide reader — hundreds rode in the memorial, which began outside Mast…
Bart Sherwood passes the grisly photos around the Miami-Dade County Commission chambers.In the first image, his face is scraped and swollen, his arms are wrapped in plaster, and IVs run into his body. In the other, one ass cheek is completely covered in gauze, and his back is a mess…
Three days after drunkenly killing a biker on the Rickenbacker Causeway and speeding away to his high-end Key Biscayne condo, would-be pop star Carlos Bertonatti is a free man this morning.Bertonatti posted a $100,000 bond late in the afternoon yesterday, Det. Rebecca Perez, a Miami-Dade Police Department spokeswoman, tells Riptide.At…
The surprise here is not that a Miami-Dade road was named in the top ten of The Daily Beat’s “75 Worst Commutes” listacle. The real surprise is that there are actually nine commutes in the country that are worse, and that only one South Florida road-way made the cut. Airport…
On Riptide’s message boards and across the web, Miami’s bikers have raged about Sunday’s gruesome hit-and-run accident near Key Biscayne that left 44-year-old cyclist Christophe Le Canne dead on the Rickenbacker Causeway. Carlos Bertonatti, a wannabe professional singer and all-around horrific driver — with more than 40 citations in 12…
It’s pretty rare that a major traffic accident in the road-rage-prone streets of Miami ends with both drivers heading to the spa together, but most accidents don’t involve singer/actor/model Tyrese Gibson. TMZ has photos of the car wreck, which took place on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown. It involved Tyrese’s Dodge…
At this point, it’s probably optimistic to say there are more than 100 Florida panthers left in the wild. Especially considering as many as 17 of them were killed by drivers last year, according to the Defenders of Wildlife. That eclipses 2007’s record of 15. The 16th dead panther was found…
