[Reader-submitted photo]
An EVG reader shared this from this afternoon...
I was just on First Avenue and St. Mark's, and a silver car drove past me, moving uptown on First Avenue in the bike lane! The guy was driving in the bike lane! I was shouting you are in the bike lane, and a delivery guy with a handtruck who was in the car's path was shouting the same thing.
But the guy kept driving, and turned left on 9th Street right where Kelly Hurley was hit. I chased after the car, but he zoomed down 9th Street and turned left onto Second Avenue. I went back to the corner of First Avenue and St. Mark's hoping he would come around, so I could snap a photo of the car, but he didn't. The car was silver, and I didn't see what kind of car it was.
Anyway, it was shocking to see someone do this right after a cyclist was killed here. It was shocking that the guy ignored us. His window was down, so he had to have heard us. It goes to show that First Avenue is a free-for-all. It is yet more evidence to me that cops need to be stopping not bikes but cars on First Avenue and ticketing them and informing them of the rules of the road.
40 comments:
That is revolting but I am not surprised! It really is a free-for-all and I think we need to communicate our outrage to the police. Number one, the traffic lights need to change. There can't be one green for cars and bikes, that's a death trap. Bikes need their own green while cars have a red. Number two, cops have to go after motorists who are not checking their blind spots and endangering cyclists. This has to stop!
And stopping bikes and ticketing them also. The car was an aberration. RECKLESS bicyclists are standard.
Not to brag or talk smack, but that bag of dicks and shit in the silver car is lucky I wasn't riding there. Because I would have caught him. I think this lowlife drove on it precisely because a woman got killed there and thought it was a joke, or maybe the psycho thinks it's actually legal to drive there because the boxtruck driver killer hasn't been charged, or even identified (to my knowledge)
This sounds nutty, but I suggest to everyone who lives around, hangs out, even those who wait on line for food there to keep their phones on video cam mode.
So the truck that the police said made a left onto 9th Street from the far right lane and killed Kelly was an aberration too?
The cops are useless. See the article in this week's Village Voice, "How to Get Away with Manslaughter." Hit a bicyclist, no big deal.
Of course, bikers do themselves no favor, and put themselves at risk by frequently disobeying traffic laws. This afternoon I witnessed several bikers going the wrong way on First Avenue as well as on several streets, including 7th Street.
Do yourself a favor one day and spend a bit of time (half an hour) near a busy EV intersection. Count the number of drivers and the number of bikers who run red lights or drive in the wrong direction. If you can document that the first number is greater than the second, I'll buy you coffee or tea at The Bean on 1st and 9th.
Bill
At 8:20 PM, Anonymous said:
And stopping bikes and ticketing them also. The car was an aberration. RECKLESS bicyclists are standard.
The difference is that cars kill.
I'm more scared of the bicyclists than one psycho driver
Why not the same outrage when bicyclists go/weave in/around cars in the car lanes ?
The bus lanes
The sidewalks
Going the wrong way
Not stopping for lights
Stopping in the crosswalks
Bicyclists speeding
Gang of bikes taking over and running over car hoods ? ( 10th Street 1st Ave )
etc etc etcetera….
Anyone remember New York? Where we made our way through childhood and adolescence into adulthood without bike lanes and helmets and we rode up and down and across our city all day into long summer nights sometimes with sometimes against traffic sometimes no hands sometimes on a wheelie sometimes eating a slice sometimes straight sometimes on a beer and a joint never disrespectful of others that shared those streets whether auto or pedestrian never bringing about or needing a cop's oversight never suffering from or the cause of misplaced "outrage"...? You remember don't you?
Unfortunately the cars make it dangerous to bicycle. I see just so often cars on the bike lanes, blocking them, creating nuisance and danger. NYPD, with its car bias, seems to ignore it.
On a more principle reflection, cars should be banned from such a densely settled island as Manhattan, save for licensed (and better trained) cabs, public buses, and transportaion means for the elderly and infirm.
Remember, most Manhattan residents don't even have a car. They suffer from the noise, exhaust, and threat, but don't even have any benefits. They have to wait at traffic lights, just so that cars can go. Without cars, pedestrians would not have to wait, but could reach everywhere much faster. Who pays pedestrians for all those restrictons and loss of mobility?
Let's reclaim our streets.
I see the shit-for-brains quotient has really increased here, Grieve.
Glad to see you continuing to promote fomentation of the anti bicycle loonies.
Another example showing the bad design of putting parking places away from the sidewalks.
To the EastVillageResident advocating banning cars, except cabs, buses, and vehicles for the elderly and infirm: Cars and trucks are essential. For example, do you expect cabs to deliver food from farms to food stores? How would clothing stores get there stuff? Etc.
Bill
I'm willing to bet nearly anything that the guy in the silver car was actually a cop.
I see them make all kinds of illegal and dangerous manoeuvers.
Scuba, no difference at all. Cars may kill immediately, Bicycles maim, injure and kill. Ask the elderly who have been run into by reckless bicyclists whether they dispute this.
City seems to have no plan (or funds) for controlling and policing increased bicycle lanes and biking. From delivery bikes (electric and otherwise) to private ridership it's the wild west on the streets. I think reducing the speed limit has helped with cars but the city's priority seems to be development above all else. More people, less oversight.
There is plenty of blame to spread around in regards to reckless drivers and cyclists neither group is innocent of breaking traffic rules. As a pedestrian all i know is that it has gotten a lot more dangerous to cross a street these days, one needs to look 360 degrees before stepping off the curb. I still can't believe that more phone zombies get through all of this unscathed, perhaps not paying attention to where you are going is a good defense.
The cyclists who ride on the sidewalk piss me off. too. Can't pedestrians ever get a break ---a safe place to walk?
Used to be NYC was a true walking city--but now all these self-entitled twats, both cyclists and car drivers, recklessly endanger innocent people.
Yes cyclists can be assholes and no one is defending cyclists that break the law, but the amount of people that can't understand the different dangers presented by a bicycle and a two ton car are freaking ridiculous.
Man, I'm so pissed right now. Four wheels is luckier than a four legged dog that I wasn't there because, I would have run over even JQ LLC if necessary to catch this cretin. These people cannot be allowed to violate the law (and cyclist's rights ARE human rights just in case there's any confusion) and get away with it. Photograph, videotape, whatever it takes -- drag them out of their cars and shame them for all to see. Social shame worked in the China, and it'll work here. $10 bucks says the silver desperado is a Drumpf supporter. $10? Make it a $100.
It's shocking it's come to this. The cops don't want to do anything. Fine. That's what social justice is for. The community will dole out the justice when the law's unwilling or too damn lazy to pry their heads out of their buckets of donuts to do so. Sickening.
The sad and unpleasant fact is, bike lanes give bicyclists a false sense of security. It is not a safe zone. In fact, and unfortunately, considering a bike lane a safe zone can get you killed or injured. Before bike lanes, the timid and the fearful simply didn't ride a bike in most of Manhattan, and rightly so. The streets are dangerous and will always be as long as there are motor vehicles on them, which will certainly stretch through all of our lifetimes.
This isn't to say that a false sense of security had any part to play in Kelly's tragic death. But you can scream all you want about crazy drivers, crazy bicyclists, and craziness in general. The fact is, encouraging everyone to ride bikes has inherent dangers that we have to live with. Or, as 10002 suggested, eliminate the bike lanes and go back to what the city had always been before: a place where you knew that biking was dangerous, where vehicles and pedestrians had a better handle on their environment, and where bikers were responsible for their own safety.
I rode Manhattan streets for decades and stopped after the advent of bike lanes because I no longer felt safe, oddly enough. Too many bikers, too many blind spots, too many confused pedestrians, too much to watch out for. When I did go out at the end, I headed for the relatively saner backwaters of Red Hook and other parts of Brooklyn. For transportation, I use mass transit and taxis, which is what the city is built for, after all.
I'd love to see bike lanes work, but they're what software developers used to call "kludgy." They're a retrofit, an insertion into an existing vehicular system. Don't complain about their inability to deliver 100% safety to bicyclists. It will never happen. For that, we need a complete rethink of city streets; perhaps some being cars/trucks/buses only, and some reserved for bicycling...although again, that is simply disrupting the existing system and degrading its effectiveness. Above my pay grade.
I am tired of the hysteria. When you claim you are more afraid of a 20-40 lbs bicycle than of a 3000-6000 lbs motor vehicle, it reads like pure hysteria. What's more, a bicycle's top speed is like 30 mph, whereas vehicles can and do exceed 40 mph even on our small busy streets here. We are talking physics at its most basic level. Force = Mass x Acceleration. Beyond that, statistics overwhelmingly prove that motor vehicles are the greater threat to pedestrian well-being. It's not even close, not even in the same ballpark.
Additionally, the anti-bike comments are barking up the wrong tree in that they use any post that contains mention of a bike as a forum to complain about bikes. This particular post is about grossly unsafe driving by cars--a threat to pedestrians just as much as to bikers. Stick to the topic at hand at least. Jesus Christ.
Anonymous 10002 Let me guess: Trump voter?
10:19 AM
Let's have some perspective. Less pedestrians are killed these days in NYC than pretty much anytime since before the advent of automobiles. This revisionist NYC history is ridiculous.
Look, I have issues with cyclists, too, but I am horrified that this woman who was riding in the bike lane was literally crushed under the wheel of a truck that made an illegal left turn, crossing four lanes of traffic to get to her. She was a person. And she could have just as easily been a pedestrian. This box truck driver decided he was going to save some time on his route, made a dangerous and illegal driving maneuver--again, he could have just as easily hit a pedestrian--and drove his truck on top of a person. Do you all get that? Stop the bickering about which is worse--bikes or cars--and get off your asses and go to the next community meeting in May and demand this man be arrested.
11:59 Before you burst a Blood Vessel. look around you as you so 'lawfully' peddle through the streets and OBSERVE. Notice that 99.99999 percent of the vehicles STOP at LIGHTS? With those same eyes notice how 102% of your 30 pound Bikes are UNLAWFULLY riding against the lights, down the wrong lanes and in counter directions at unsafe speeds. No it isnt a MIRAGE. You are just a pro-Bike bigot.
By the way, what percent of the time do you LAWFULLY Observe the Law?
RE: "It is yet more evidence to me that cops need to be stopping not bikes but cars on First Avenue and ticketing them and informing them of the rules of the road." I agree that the car mentioned should have been pulled over if there was a cop in the area to see it. BUT they need to step up the ticketing of bikes for disobeying the law. I am constantly threatened by bikes as a pedestrian who lives in the East Village. Bikes rarely stop for red lights, and frequently go through them at such fast speeds. It is also common to see bicyclists wearing 2 headphones illegally instead of one which is legal, alienating them from their environment and making them even more of a hazard. It is quite terrifying crossing the street in the E.V. with so many bikes and so many disobeying laws, not knowing where a zooming bike is going to suddenly come from and wondering if they see you and if they will gauge their frenzied swerve away from you right. Ticketing should fall where there is wrongdoing - whether car or bike.
No, just a New Yorker... TINVOWOOT
The cops are too busy doing supper important things like removing art from the sidewalk in front of Tompkins so the new EV generation won't be offended. Life-threatening incident in progress? Pffft.
I'm sure Captain Greany of the 9th is on it.
@11:51am: You are 1,000% right. You said what I keep trying to say, but you said it better than I ever could.
Because bicycles don't kill people Mr Dumas.
Andrew Israel's statement that "bicycles don't kill people Mr. Dumas"
is incorrect. A woman was killed by a speeding bicyclist in Central Park a few years ago, and there have been other deaths caused by bikers.
Bill
What a stupid comment andrew israel! Someone gets knocked down, hits their head hard on the pavement or on the curb. Could have a cracked skull---and then dies from that impact. Not dangerous and deadly enough for you? so getting your guts splattered on the street by a car is all that counts as dangerous? you're a putz.
@Andrew Israel: Does being maimed by a bike rider count, or only being killed? Please clarify.
Andrew Israel makes a valid point as evident by the fact people being killed by a bicyclist is an extremely rare and unusual event that is captured by NY Post headlines for multiple days. Hypersensitive anti-bicyclists may want to believe differently but that does not make it so.
@10002-
Yes, I remember it. People were more aware of their surroundings and less distracted with bullshit back then. But with the advent of social media and cellphones those halcyon days will never return
@11:48-
"Four wheels is luckier than a four legged dog that I wasn't there because, I would have run over even JQ LLC if necessary to catch this cretin"
It's good to see similar vigilance, but what the hell does injuring me have to do with it. If you take that route, according to the way justice is meted out on the streets, the cops would have cuffed you and sent you to the tombs instead of pursuing that driver. This is the problem I mentioned before here about a majority of bikers riding with reckless abandon and entitlement.
@olympiasepiriot-
You know what, you may be right, by the sound of this citizen report, this probably was a cop, probably a detective. Cops are trained to steer vehicles adeptly at a certain speed.
@Andrew Israel.
There was an incident almost 2 decades ago of a pedestrian being plowed and killed by a biker going downhill east on 45th street and Lexington, which is a one way west street. The widow had tight connections with city officials and lobbied for stricter enforcement and the city subsequently raised the charges and extended regulations for bike offenses.
@12:53am: Do you think being merely maimed by a bike rider is not a big deal? Tell that to those (esp. the senior citizens) whose quality of life can be destroyed in one split second if they are hit by a bike. You think being hospitalized with broken bones, and then perhaps having to go live in a nursing home, is somehow an acceptable outcome? I disagree strongly.
I feel that all pedestrians should have the right to walk and to cross streets without having to be in fear of their physical well-being - without fear that the next time they step off the curb, it may be the end of their recognizable quality of life.
Bike riders want their own lives to be respected/protected; how about they respect the lives of pedestrians who are far too often terrorized by reckless/careless bike riders?
At 11:59 AM, Anonymous said:
When you claim you are more afraid of a 20-40 lbs bicycle than of a 3000-6000 lbs motor vehicle, it reads like pure hysteria. What's more, a bicycle's top speed is like 30 mph, whereas vehicles can and do exceed 40 mph even on our small busy streets here.
This was my point in saying, "The difference is, cars kill." Sorry I didn't spell it out more clearly.
Having been knocked down by bikes and walked away, and knocked down by a car and put in a month-long coma with multiple fractures, I'll take the bike every time.
The state DMV decided to throw out the case on Lauren Davis's death because of NYPD incompetence and deception.
The judge at the hearing was even worse. Everyone better be aware of their surroundings on the road.
http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/04/28/citing-erroneous-nypd-report-state-dmv-judge-declines-to-take-action-against-driver-who-killed-lauren-davis/
Post a Comment