Traffic Enforcement

In the span of little more than 24 hours, drivers killed three pedestrians in New York City this weekend.

Considering what happened to longtime street safety advocate Hilda Cohen last Friday afternoon, you have to wonder how many "scofflaw cyclists" are in actuality the victims of police harassment. The incident is also another example of wasted NYPD resources that could be used to make streets safer.

A man standing with his wife and kids on a Midtown sidewalk was hit by a cab driver yesterday in a precinct where speeding is practically unenforced by NYPD.

NYPD issued more tickets for riding a bike on a sidewalk than for speeding on surface streets last year, according to summons data and court records.

NYPD precincts in Manhattan wrote nearly twice as many tickets to cyclists in the month after the launch of Citi Bike than they issued to speeding motorists in the first five months of 2013, according to data from NYPD and the Daily News. While speed enforcement across the Manhattan and Brooklyn bike-share service area has increased this year, citations issued to cyclists outnumber speeding tickets by a wide margin.

Doug Gordon of Brooklyn Spoke fame reports that NYPD sent a battalion of bike enforcers out to the intersection of Chrystie Street and Rivington Street on the Lower East Side this morning. This is a T-intersection where no motorized traffic conflicts with the path of northbound cyclists. If you're biking north on Chrystie, it makes a lot of sense to treat a red light here as a "yield to pedestrians and cyclists" sign. That does happen to be against the letter of the law, however, and police were taking full advantage, handing out $190 tickets. (Meanwhile, the maximum fine for drivers caught speeding in Albany's proposed automated enforcement bill is $50.)

Transportation Alternatives observed nearly nine in ten Brooklyn motorists breaking the speed limit while compiling data for its new report on dangerous driving [PDF], but enforcement from NYPD remains almost non-existent. In fact, TA says it clocked more drivers speeding in 12 hours than NYPD ticketed in all of 2011. That's why speed cameras are necessary for city streets.

Turn up the volume and listen for the sociopathic pacesetter about halfway through this clip. This is southbound Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights, recorded with my bike-mounted camera at the intersection with Dean Street at about 9:40 p.m. last night.

Drivers going to and from the Henry Hudson Parkway at 158th Street pass a traffic signal at a crosswalk that cyclists and pedestrians use to access the Hudson River Greenway. The light flashes yellow until a crosswalk user requests a signal, at which point it turns red and drivers must stop at the crosswalk.