Brickbat: Easy Riders
After a hit-and-run driver intentionally ran down and killed bicyclist Matthew von Ohlen, the New York Police Department responded in a dramatic fashion. The next day, officers were on the scene, ticketing cyclists for traffic infractions and giving them pamphlets on safe bicycling.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio has made Vision Zero, the campaign to eliminate pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities in New York, a central element of his mayoralty.
Is that the name of his economic campaign, too?
I believe your thinking of the Democrat platform.
Vision Zero would make a nice super hero.
Again,I your thinking of Captain Planet.
Well if he has zero vision that would make him a blind superhero.
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With all due respect, Sophie — Talk about “Vision Zero”!
Why is it pols always set goals not base in reality. How would you eliminate all bike and pedestrian deaths? Or all ‘gun deaths’,Name a bad thing and they are going to wipe it out,with new laws.
bring an end to the democrat party? there’ll always be cockroaches
And Hillary is their queen.
arch-nemesis of Vision Zero?
The trick to being a successful Pol is to take a problem, turn it upside down and inside out and find a way to use it to your advantage. It looks like you are doing something yet the problem remains and worsens.
“Never let a crisis go to waste”
As Fist points out below they used this crisis to increase revenue.
Those tickets won’t write themselves.
We can only pray that tickets never ask guns what the trick is to being animate.
So a bicyclist is deliberately killed and the cops lecture and ticket other cyclists? So if a woman is raped, do they go around lecturing women on how to dress and act unattractively and give out tickets for indecent exposure? The inappropriateness would be about the same, no?
Yes
Eh, maybe no. Cyclists in Boston have developed an incredible sense of selfrighteous disregard for the traffic laws; I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same in NYC. I’m not saying that running one down isn’t overkill, but there may actually be some sense to deBlassio’s action.
Exactly. I don’t have a problem with this. You’d probably cut down on accidents in general and road rage specifically if any biker out there ever followed the rules of the road.
Abusus non tollit usum.
Don’t assume that cyclists aren’t also motorists. I am well aware that being all over the road is annoying to other road users, regardless of what they happen to be driving at the time.
I believe that is exactly what they are doing in Europe.
Well bicyclists are highly annoying. They ride too far out in the road, slow traffic, get in the way, and they of course have that attitude that they are legally allowed in the road and are thus legally allowed to ride 3 feet out into the lane.
They seem more dangerous than anything else.
And absolutely no excuse for those britches unless they are luging down a mountainside in France this summer.
That’s true, but they will ride on sidewalks, or the wrong direction, or blow through stop lights, etc. if they think it will save them a second. I make it a game every time I see a bicyclist to not see them clearly and deliberately break a law while I’m watching and I think I’ve maybe seen one guy that didn’t. Complete lack of enforcement of these rules is a huge part of the problem.
And they are horrendous douchers, the lot of them.
Many carry that obnoxious air superiority for getting.
It sounds ridiculous but next time you see a cyclist at a red light having to wait, you can almost read the entitlement wanker on their face.
And they present dangerous road conditions for everyone else.
Power vehicles should have outright right of way for everyone’s safety. Only a dipshit pol can be convinced that traffic flow should be hindered by guys that have to go slower than cars. And wear tights.
JD,
Everyone knows that they are legal. The problem is that they ride out into the road causing people in 2 ton vehicles to ride into opposing traffic to get around. Who thinks that is safe for the majority of road travelers.
Point being that since they are legal, all speed limits should then have to be 5-15 MPH depending on grade regardless of everyone else wanting to take advantage of modern, efficient technology.
Bottom line is that most bike guys are assholes.
Do you complain when runners run on the road? How about walkers?
Everyone should be courteous to other road users. I race bikes (for “fun”) and I realized that the reason certain cyclists ride the way they do is because they drive that way too.
Beware of tribalism causing you to blame the other group in it’s entirety for the behavior of certain individuals. If a motorist sees a careless motorist, they say “what an idiot that guy is” but if they see a careless cyclist they may say “what an idiot cyclists are”.
Walkers are generally smart enough not to walk in the road on high speed roads and highways.
But runners do. (When I used to run, I ran wherever I rode.) So what do you have against two wheeled vehicles iff they have no motor?
Sometimes cyclists have to ride in the road because debris collects on the side of the road. Also, riding too close to the side of the road encourages motorists to try to squeeze by with little room to spare for the cyclists.
That said, riding 2-3 abreast is needlessly antagonizing and I do have to laugh at the people wearing the tight pants to go on a 3 mile ride.
Generally bikers are required to share the lane with cars. They can only hog the lane if it is impossible for a car to fit next to them on a particular stetch. Though in new york people are probably double parked all over the damn place so sharing the lane is often impossible. But if I had to bet I’d say the biker was probably doing something wrong. Of course the driver deserves to be run over by a very heavy vehicle for what he did.
There is an absolutely fabulous road connecting Morrison and Evergreen Colorado. Less than 30 minutes from downtown Denver, but it looks like you’re in the heart of the Rockies. My wife and I love to drive it on weekends, but it has become a source of endless irritation, thanks to the self-righteous bikers who ride it in packs. The road is barely wide enough for two cars to pass, but there they are, sometimes 2 or 3 abreast going 10 or 15 miles an hour. The road has many twist and hairpin turns and one is never certain when he will round a turn and find a group of cyclists sailing along in the middle of the road. There are several “Share The Road” signs, but there is no road to share! I would love to stop some of the inconsiderate creeps and give them a “pamphlet”, but my wife says we can’t afford the defense attorney bills.
Can you imagine all of the CO2 those guys are pumping into the air with their exercising.
Is there a minimum speed limit on the road? What if it were a line of model T Fords doing 15 mph on the road, would that somehow be better?
(Many cyclists are jerks. Many motorists are jerks. Most cyclists are motorists.)
So what’s your complaint? You love to drive that road on weekends, obviously not in a hurry to get anywhere. You get more time to appreciate it going slow. Unless, of course, you & your wife enjoy it as a thrill ride, zooming along it at a dangerous speed.
Living in the seacoast area of New Hampshire I can say without fear of contradiction that the “bike people” are assholes.
Tribalism. You just insulted me and I have done nothing to you.
You know who else blamed an entire group of people for the (supposed) actions of a few?
Barack Obama, black lives matter, Donald trump, Harry Reid, nancy pelosi?
Stalin, hitler, Castro, Chavez, pol pot, Kim, sharp ton?
Michael Moore, Rachel maddow, all leftists?
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