New York pedestrians completely ignore the traffic laws and would be outraged to hear that someone had gotten a ticket for anything they did in the street on foot, no matter how crazy or dangerous. If you haven’t ridden a bike in the city, you have no idea what it’s like. When you’re on a bike and have the right of way, at each intersection you have to figure out how to safely get around the hordes of idiots standing in the bike lane looking alternately at their iphone and for a break in between the cars to shoot out into. Often they think bikes don’t count, so will walk right in front of you (when the bike has the right of way). Also in no danger from the cops are people leaving their parked cars, who open their doors right in the paths of bikers, often killing them.

Many people bike safely in New York, by being very careful and attentive to both cars and pedestrians. Those who aren’t don’t last long before they end up in the ER. If an intersection is clear, whether or not it has a red light, it’s exactly as safe to bike through it at reasonable speed as to walk through it, except the bikers are paying a lot more attention to what they are doing.

Police have always been free to ticket dangerous bicycling and have always done so. What’s new now is a campaign to go after safe bicyclists, ticketing them for safely going through empty intersections or for pointless technical violations. Even bicycling in Central Park is a target, with people getting ticketed for going down a hill at 15mph. Not just regular traffic cops are being told to do this, the undercover force is out on the anti-bike campaign too. This is an organized campaign of harassment coming from the top levels of the NYPD. I’m interested to hear that delivery people are just given warnings, that’s good, but those like myself who use a bike to get to work or ride in the Park are being forced to stop doing this. That seems to be one goal of the campaign, with the NYPD police chief deciding to go after two things he hates: bicyclists and the Transportation commissioner. Bicycling in the city is going to be very effectively suppressed, with lots of shiny new bike lanes empty. Pedestrians may cheer this along, but just wait, you may be next…

”

— comment posted in response to Cops Also Ticketing Cyclists For Ignoring Stop Signs At Empty Intersections

"Bike etiquette: What do you do when what's polite isn't safe, what's safe isn't legal, and what's legal isn't polite?" »

Personally I feel this resolution is disappointing. Getting a case on record where the cyclist isn’t subject to the death penalty by frontier justice for smacking a car hood would have been nice. Currently the environment for non-police cyclists who smack the hood of a car is they deserved whatever happened afterword.

”

— response to Bicycling cop, assault suspect sit down, agree to drop charges

If you look at the public comments section ANY news story discussing cycling, you will find overwhelming criticism of scofflaw cyclists. It doesn’t matter what the story is about, if it mentions bicycles you will find people in droves calling for us to be run off the road – legally or physically – until we start following the rules of the road.

”

— Stop Signs - Not Just for Cars Anymore

UPDATE on Brasilian Crit Mass attack: driver has been arrested and charged »

posted to NPR just about 20 minutes ago:

Driver Who Ran Through Crowd Of Bike Riders Arrested

The driver of the car that plowed through a large crowd of people riding bikes during a Critical Mass event in Brazil last week is now under arrest, and may face charges of attempted homicide.

As we reported, the event, which several people captured on video, has caused anger and outrage. There were no deaths reported, but several cyclists are reported to be in the hospital recovering from their injuries.

According to the AP:

A police statement says Ricardo Jose Neis was arrested in th ecity of Porto Alegre after a judge ordered his preventive detention. Prosecutors say they are considering charges ofattempted homicide.

Under Brazilian law, suspects are not charged until police finish their investigation, which could take up to 30 days.

Neis, 47, was driving with his son last Friday, when they encountered a group of more than 100 cyclists riding in the streets of Porto Alegre. Their car then sped up and ran through the crowd — a result, Neis has said, of feeling threatened by the cyclists, who he claims were yelling and striking his car.

 

Brazilian authorities now say that 40 riders were injured in the incident.

After Neis and his son abandoned their car in a neighborhood, police located and identified the vehicle Saturday.

According to reports out of Brazil, it seems that police arrested Neis in a hospital — and his psychiatrist has recommended that he be kept under care while in police custody.

That’s the story from Brazilian news agency Zero Hora — which, since it ran through a translating program, may be a bit uneven, so apologies in advance if that’s misleading. But those basic details are reported in two separate pages on their web site.

Atropelamento em Massa na Massa Crítica Porto Alegre, Brasil (Mass Attack on Critical Mass Porto Alegre, Brazil)

Last Friday night, February 25th, driver Ricardo José Neis injured several riders participating in Critical Mass in Porto Alegre, Brasil. Media response and cyclist response still developing.

Read more about cyclists’ organized responses on the blog for Porto Alegre’s Critical Mass,  Critical Mass POA (Massa Critica POA). Site is in Brasilian Portuguese, you will need to Google translate.

Become a Sponsor of St Louis Bicycle Works today! »

Mission statement: The primary objective of BicycleWORKS is to increase the probability of positive life outcomes for “at-risk” youths in the Saint Louis area. This is accomplished by providing them the incentive and opportunity to develop their academic, vocational, and social skills through our Earn-A-Bike Program.

Thanks to the William H Kerr Foundation, we have a new challenge grant of ten thousand dollars. Each new “Sponsor of Bworks” will have their donation matched, up to 10k!

For 25 years the St. Louis community has supported Bworks with its kind donations of used computers, bicycles and countless hours of volunteering. This dedication from all of the volunteers and donors has propelled us forward to a level many of us only dreamed of.

Late last year we took several steps forward that will allow us to continue to accomplish our mission and touch even more children’s lives.

-We expanded our hours: to a fifth day of the week, just for kids! To keep our wait list as short as possible we opened on Wednesday nights for student class’s. We hope to expand even more next year.

-We signed a new lease: on a amazing space that will give us room to grow and expand all of the organization. We will finally have a dedicated space for each aspect of our programs.

-We hired a full-time Director of Operations: As much as we wish we could do it all with our amazing group of volunteers, it was time to hire a staff member to help out. Patrick has been a long time volunteer and we are happy he joined us as our first staff member.

-We added a new literacy program: Book Works is a one on one mentoring program to promote verbal and visual literacy, primarily through creative expression. Student writers learn to write and illustrate books under the supervision of tutor editors.

Many of you have been a material donor at some point in our history. You have helped us supply countless computers and bicycles to youth who would have otherwise not been able to afford such items. All while helping them learn academic, vocational, and social skills.

We are asking for your support to continue, and expand on what we started so many years ago. We hope that in this New Year, you will become a financial supporter of BWorks at one of the suggested levels today.

While there is a public perception that cyclists are usually the cause of accidents between cars and bikes, an analysis of Toronto police collision reports shows otherwise: The most common type of crash in this study involved a motorist entering an intersection and either failing to stop properly or proceeding before it was safe to do so. The second most common crash type involved a motorist overtaking unsafely. The third involved a motorist opening a door onto an oncoming cyclist. The study concluded that cyclists are the cause of less than 10 percent of bike-car accidents in this study.

”

—

Professor Chris Cavacuiti, being interviewed about his research on Toronto area data.

*edit from the original article: 

Dr. Cavacuiti is quoted as saying “The [Toronto Collision] study concluded that cyclists are the cause of less than 10 per cent of bike-car accidents”. Dr. Cavacuiti has asked us to make readers aware that the Toronto Collision study was actually designed to look at the cause of bicycle/motorist collisions but not culpability.

It is actually several studies conducted by Charles Komanoff and member of the Right of Way organization in New York that concluded that concluded that cyclists were strictly culpable for less than 10 per cent of bike-car accidents.

[via Cars Cause Most Bike-Car Crashes on Good Blog, via Cyclists Cause less than 10% of Bike/Car Accidents on Treehugger]