We stand by our story: Monday's winter "storm" was a bit of a bust — and public officials completely over-reacted to it.
That said, cops in New Jersey (NJ.com) and New York (AP) spent a lot of time dealing with bozos who drove too fast in the icy rain — further evidence that cars are a failed technology. Storms like Monday remind us that the rest of us non-car drivers are forced to pay for all the damage drivers do to themselves and others.
The worse news? School is not canceled for public school students today, so tens of thousands of extra cars will be on the road during the morning rush hour and at around 4 p.m. Stay safe everyone (because Buddha knows it's next to impossible with all these 3,000-pound steel cages moving around out there).
Here's the rest of yesterday's news:
- Cops say a drunk driver plowed into a row of police vehicles in Maspeth on Saturday (the irony being that the cops' cars were parked illegally on the sidewalk, as they always are outside of the Fleet Services stationhouse). (NYDN, NY Post)
- Nice to see Guse of the Newsuh covering the latest protests against the corrupt Stipulated Fine Program, which reduces traffic summons fees to delivery companies like FedEx. (Point of information: Streetsblog's prior reporting makes an uncredited cameo in the story — kind of like David Bowie in "Zoolander").
- Like most of you, we lost a lot of time on Monday playing with the New York Times's interactive feature about the subway map. Didn't learn much, mind you, but had fun. We kind of wish Clifford Levy's Metro minions would put such resources into valuable investigations, like Streetsblog's ongoing series about recklessly driving cops.
- In case you missed it (we did!), Nicole Gelinas did an op-ed in the Post about one possible solution to fare-evasion — but Andres Salomon took it down piece by piece on Twitter.
- And also in case you missed it (we wish we had), our former Streetsblog colleague David Meyer offered up (we hope kicking and screaming) a bizarre piece about how Citi Bike's Instagram page shouldn't feature pictures of people riding without helmets. The Tabloid of Record has long shared Marcia Kramer's pro-helmet agenda, but this story was truly bizarre, given that mandatory helmet laws would destroy Citi Bike, which is a crucial part of our public transit network. Perhaps that's what the pro-car paper wants? (NY P0st)
