A California Highway Patrol cruiser. Photo by John Schreiber.
A 43-year-old noted automotive designer from Santa Monica was killed in a motorcycle crash with another vehicle on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.
Jacob Loniak died at the scene, coroner’s Assistant Chief Ed Winter said.
Loniak was a mechanical engineer who worked at the Volvo Monitoring Concept Center, a principal in the Off World Motors company and a design teacher at Art Center of College Design.
According to social media, Loniak was a veteran motorcycle rider. He also designed a wearable motorcycle. It’s a single person, electric, exoskeleton motorcycle, which stands vertically, and in which, the rider straps in and uses pneumatic muscles installed in the skeleton to steer it. The bike has a reported top speed of 75 miles per hour.
The collision that killed Loniak occurred on northbound PCH near Topanga Canyon Boulevard just before 8:30 p.m. Thursday, California Highway Patrol Officer Patrick Kimball said.
The other driver stopped at the scene and was not cited or arrested, Kimball said. The crash shut down the northbound lanes of PCH for about five hours, the CHP reported.
—City News Service
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