As you know, we at Streetsblog consistently remind car owners that it is their responsibility to not hit pedestrians and to exercise due care — meaning that they must operate their 3,000-pound killing machines at a speed slow enough to stop in an emergency.
Unless that "emergency" is a 200-pound beret-topped office-seeker rushing across four lanes of traffic against the light from between two trucks to get to a radio interview.
In the days after the Oct. 29 injury, GOP Mayoral loser Curtis Sliwa consistently declined to talk about the incident — and over the weekend, we found out why: a video of the incident had emerged that didn't make Sliwa look very good. WABC had it and the Post had it, but somehow we missed it until Talia Jane posted a gif of it on Twitter yesterday:
Given Sliwa's complete disregard for safety, this might be the only time we're willing to accept that maybe the driver did not deserve a summons for failure to exercise due care. Maybe. (We reached out to Sliwa and heard only crickets.)
In other news from a slow day:
- We held this headline from the busy weekend roundup yesterday to make sure you saw it. The New York Times did a huge service by investigating hundreds of police killings involving officers firing into cars because they were allegedly afraid of being run over. The story's haunting irony: Cops claim they can use deadly force because the car is a weapon — so what about the rest of us who are completely vulnerable to that weapon every day?
- The DOT is going to discontinue is contract with the Trump Organization, so now drivers will only have the traffic on the West Side Highway to curse about. (Patch)
- Like Streetsblog, amNY excitedly covered the rise in cycling over the Brooklyn Bridge.
- More LIRR overtime fraud. (NYDN, NY Post)
- Sure, tech is great, but it won't reduce our dependence on cars — and that's the real problem. (NY Times)
- Queens DA Melinda Katz just threw out five dozen cases because they hinged on investigations conducted by shady NYPD officers (NY Post, NY Times). But that's the same Melinda Katz who opposed a bid to strip the NYPD of control over crash investigations, which are often tainted by shady, pro-driver bias, as we reported earlier this year.
