Tags: beverly hills, beverly hills courthouse, bike ride, bikes, celine mahdavi, critical mass, hit and run, louis deliz

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Last Tuesday and Friday (July 27th and 30th), cyclists gathered at the Beverly Hills Courthouse to protest what they feel is a light sentence handed down by Judge Elden Fox to the hit and run driver involved in a serious accident in West Hollywood.

The driver, Celine Mahdavi, hit cyclist Louis Deliz and left him critically injured at La Cienega and Holloway on December 1st, 2009. He was hospitalized for 49 days. She was taken into custody shortly after the accident on Sunset Blvd.

The bicycle left at the scene after Celine Mahdavi critically injured a cyclist on December 1, 2009.

Mahdavi pleaded “no contest” to felony hit and run charges and threw herself on the mercy of the court, instead of accepting the plea deal offered by the DA. Judge Fox gave her 90 days of community service, and 3 years of probation.

The cyclists complain that Mahdavi will spend less time in community service – 720 hours – than Deliz spent in the hospital – 1176 hours.

Cyclists are calling it the last straw. Bikeside LA President Alex Thompson said “this sentence is symbolic of the lack of respect cyclists get throughout the justice system.”

A recurring theme among the speakers at the event was that “driving is not a right, it’s a privilege” and that at a very minimum, there needs to be be a revocation of that privilege in these serious accidents.

They say that the light punishments handed out on hit and run accidents essentially make it advantageous to drivers to try to flee the scene, putting not only cyclists at risk, but the general public as well.

The cyclists also were on their regular end-of-month loosely organized Critical Mass bike ride as part of the Friday events, briefly coming back from the Beverly Hills Courthouse through West Hollywood streets. They traveled on Satna Monica Blvd. before heading south out of our city on Fairfax Avenue. One Beverly Hills Police officer estimated the number of riders at 1,300 as they handed off their observation of the riders to West Hollywood Sheriff’s deputies.