The latest in our ongoing series, "S#!t We Put Up With Every F@&%ing Day," reminds us of Mom's old rule: "If you can't say something nice to someone trying to defend street safety, keep your mouth shut."
I was reminded of my mother saying that when I saw this brief video posted this morning on Twitter by Bike Commuting NYC.
"Being a New Yorker" apparently means being "polite" aka bowing down to drivers.#bikeNYC, if a car is blocking the 5ft the city has seen fit to give you, just go around. After all, the city only gave drivers 40+ feet of space, we can't possibly expect them to stay in their lane. pic.twitter.com/XcrtM2XRGx
— Bike Commuting MA (@driversofnyc) August 29, 2018
The action is fairly (and unfortunately) commonplace: The cyclist gets cut off on the First Avenue bike lane just north of E. 49th Street by a livery cabbie, takes a picture (presumably to report the cabbie), sidles up to the window to discuss how the driver put the cyclist in grave danger, and is ignored by the cab driver.
Pretty standard stuff — until a random woman on the sidewalk decided to lecture, you guessed it, the cyclist.
"You cannot go on the side?" the woman asked facetiously. "You cannot go on the side? You're being ridiculous. You could have just gone on the side without being a bitch."
The cyclist points out that bike riders are given five feet of street space, compared to dozens of feet on most avenues for drivers, and that everything works fine when cabbies remain in their space so cyclists can remain in theirs. Left unsaid, of course, is that the manuever being recommended by the yenta on the sidewalk — swerving around the illegally parked cab — was exactly the last thing Madison Lyden did on a bike before she was crushed earlier this month by a garbage truck driver, the ninth cyclist to be killed this year.
"It's just about being a New Yorker and being polite and going on the side," the woman says.
"He shouldn't be blocking the bike lane," the cyclist says.
"You're just being a bitch," the woman concludes before walking away.
Later, Bike Commuting NYC reflected on the incident.
"It was just bizarre to have the random woman lecture me about 'being polite,' she said. "I was trying to ask the driver if he could move over out the bike lane (he ignored me), and she just decided to jump in."
Only in car culture, kids, only in car culture.
