3-Way Street (by ronconcocacola)
This video actually makes me kinda sad. I’m against strict application of car rules to people on bike, so long as the people on bike are sensible (if they are flagrantly insensitive to the other road users around them, ticket). The reason is simple: a person on a bike relies on momentum; once stopped, it takes far more effort to get started again. Additionally: 1) When they slow down to a safe, approaching speed or come to a stop and then start again, the speeds are comparable to pedestrian speeds. When a car slows down, or comes to a stop and starts up again, it barely comes close to pedestrian speed, and the effort to bring it back up to really dangerous speeds, 10+ mph, is negligible. A car stopping at an intersection every block or 2 or 3 is a minimal effort. 2) Much less mass: person on a bike going between 5 and 10mph is not in the least comparable to a car at the same speed. 3) A person on a bike is capable of registering much more of the available stimuli in the surrounding environment than a person in a car (headphone wearing notwithstanding… seriously, that’s not cool on a busy street). A person on a bike can see and hear and sense much more and can react to it more quickly.
All three users of the road in this video force their way through an unavailable intersection, disregard others, and disengage from the world around them. Hell, I see all of this behavior in completely pedestrian areas like the major underground passageways at Union Square, Herald Square, etc. Also, there are entirely too many people going the wrong way down a crowded street. You want to cut down a one way block with no cars out in Bushwick or Inwood or Astoria during the day, that shouldn’t pose a problem (and if the situation changes, you yield the road entirely). But the wrong way on Park Ave? From my own experience, the vast majority of wrong-way riders (and sidewalk riders, and many of the other transgressions) are food delivery guys who are typically immigrants. In fact, that group makes up about 80 or 90% of the problem riders that cross my path when I’m riding or walking. This isn’t a problem that can be solved by blanket-ticketing all NYC bikers (like they are currently doing, for spurious infractions and non-infractions more than, it seems, for dangerous riding), nor is it a problem that can be solved with more legislation. Maybe more signs in other languages? Definitely more education. And, yes, ticketing, but targeted ticking of dangerous behavior. Otherwise, NYPD better start ticketing every pedestrian crossing against the light or hopping out in the middle of the road, and every person opening car doors into traffic or parking/stopping in the bike lane. If you’re defense is “I’m enforcing the law/doing my job”, then you have no cover when you act selectively.
