mr_bill

STOP KILLING US!

Stop blaming us!

-mr. bill

Leisesturm

Could you give us some personal input here please. This is supposed to be a discussion forum, not a newswire.

bakerjw

From the second link.

It is legal for cyclists to ride outside of a bike lane in New York City if the bike lane is hazardous due to "fixed or moving objects, vehicles, bicycles, in-line skates, pedestrians, animals, surface hazards or traffic lanes too narrow for a bicycle or person on in-line skates and a vehicle to travel safely side-by-side within the lane."

If they are going to have bike lanes, then they need to be wide enough to accommodate the levels of traffic that use them to avoid issues with people moving out into the flow of traffic. In the instance where this latest person was killed, they did not describe how traffic was in the bike lane at the time.

Maelochs

I thought the two articles, juxtaposed, were all the commentary that was needed. Sickening, but informative.

DrIsotope

Unless there turns out to be video, or a ton of corroborating witness reports, we're never going to know what happened. NYC drivers and bicycle messengers behave terribly in equal measure.

But the implication that if she had been in the bike lane she might still be alive is just straight up victim blaming. Perhaps NYC is working on a new cycling safety slogan. "Stay in the bike lane or die. Bike NYC."

noimagination

Humans being human.

It is a constant, never ending battle to try to be better. I'm no different from the rest. Whether driving or riding, I sometimes forget that the goal "getting there" is greater than the goal of "getting there quickly + risk of not getting there at all (or causing someone else to not get there at all)".

Rick

I have seen videos of the NYC police parking in the bike lane and ticketing bicyclists that go around their parked patrol cars for leaving the bike lane. For many reasons this is wrong. How many people can afford to fight the ticket and end up paying the court costs if the judge sides with the patrol officer. When there is a cyclists death the police immediately go on a ticket writing campaign on bicyclists. NYC has done some positive things like lower speed limits in congested areas and more bike lanes for those who approve of them. There are no consequences for the motor vehicle drivers at the seen of an accident. This is condoning bad driving when the police will not take the time to do a proper accident investigation.

robertorolfo

What are you talking about? Really, do you have any clue? I see you (and all of your precious KOMs) are in Southern California, so why this comment? It's utter nonsense.

This. It takes no more than 15 seconds of riding or driving down the street here to observe a driver doing something illegal. That's not hyperbole, and yes, 75% of the time it's an Uber driver or a cab driver. The cops here don't care, and they don't do anything about it.

DrIsotope

Don't act like you don't know how bike messengers behave. I'm all for cycling advocacy, but automatically assuming a driver ran her down out of pure malevolence is hypocritical. She may well have been JRA. Might not.

robertorolfo

Of course I know how they behave, I ride here almost every day. Do you? Do you think that Qicksilver was a documentary or something? Because the reality these days is way different.

The amount of "dangerous" things that I see messengers doing is at a ratio of about 1 to 100 compared to dangerous things that car drivers do. And is a bike as dangerous to others as a car? Seriously, you made a BS comment and aside from being wrong, it was also in poor taste. Just suck it up and move along.

DrIsotope

Wrong is assuming you know what happened. Blindly assuming the car was 100% at fault is wrong. You have no idea what happened, and neither do I. That's exactly what I said in my post above, which got your feathers all ruffled.

Your statement about the dangerous actions of cars vs. the dangerous actions of cyclists is irrelevant here. It is again, assumption. You are speaking about things that you do not know.

robertorolfo

Ha, nice try. Nowhere did I mention who was at fault in this particular case. I simply exposed how patently absurd (and insulting in this context) your statement about the riding habits of messengers is.

You don't know. You have no idea what you are talking about. You are literally clueless, and yet you are trying to twist the argument and change the subject to avoid being wrong. But you are just that: wrong.

Leisesturm

This is getting as bad as the comment stream in the articles themselves. I lived and biked hard all over NYC from 1977 (born there 1959) to 2001. I returned in 2004 and commuted between Crown Heights and Chelsea till 2009. The messengers had definitely toned it down during my absence. I myself did a stint as a messenger in the late 80's when it was CRAZY. I wasn't nearly as to the wall as most but I definitely roasted more red lights in a day than most normal commuters will ever toast in a lifetime. I am not sure what that truck did to that cyclist but it was likely not malicious but ... there were two people in the cab? The shotgun rider should definitely have seen something. Why else be there?! A truck in NYC is a bull in a China shop. It really shouldn't happen at all but if it must ... well two sets of eyes in the cab would be one way to do it. It's way past time for NYC to make non-essential motor traffic verboten in the City Center.

Rollfast

I'm not fluent in Hebrew or the languages of droids.

Rollfast

How about...

CliffordK

I have to wonder if part of the issue is the demands on the bike messengers.

She would have been in the bike lane with all of the skaters and beach cruisers, except she needed to shave off those extra couple of seconds to get her next delivery done.

If bikes have exceeded the capacity of the bike lanes, then it is time to widen the bike lanes.

UniChris

If the bike lane weren't blocked by construction the way it was, or (as it often notoriously is there) intruded upon by street vendors, it might be useful to a number of categories of cyclists, especially those city planners want to get on bikes. On the day in question it's likely it was usable by no one, which is indeed a problem that needs to be fixed.

But with so many intersections at such a short distance, even if the lane were clear it still would not facilitate rapid travel through such a busy area. It's not really clear that there is any design which would facilitate moving rapidly through a congested urban environment without a constant series of interactions with others, each creating a risk.

There does not yet appear to be any public information about what specifically happened to cause this tragedy that contains details that could actually be learned from. At best people project their own lengthy experiences and longstanding concerns onto it, but that doesn't explain why this particular so vibrant and promising person is dead a whole lifetime too soon.

CliffordK

One could convert EL lines to bike lanes.

But, apparently the one place they did that, bikes are prohibited.

New York, of course, has issues of too many people and too much traffic of all types.

One option is that whenever a bike lane & sidewalk are blocked, then doing a lane drop. But, then where do the cars go?

UniChris

I've had that dream too.

They're actually supposed to do that now. But even when the lanes are clear, while it is possible to use them fairly safely if one is cautious, they're still not a nice experience and still do not facilitate rapid travel through a dense environment.

livedarklions

Not going to comment on this particular crash because I have no idea what really happened, but it does occur to me that there are parts of NYC where the notion of safe rapid travel is pretty much impossible for any form of ground transportation unless all car and truck traffic is banned. I don't believe that's a realistic possibility.

Leisesturm

You're joking, right?

Leisesturm

Where do they go indeed ...

Leisesturm

Hmmm ...

robertorolfo

Yes, and it seems like things have changed a lot since then. Mostly I'd say it's because there simply don't seem to be as many messengers as there used to be (likely because of the internet, email, pdf's, and e-sign software...). For every true bike messenger I see, there are probably 50 delivery guys (40 of whom will be on e-bikes), and they are not the same thing. And the messengers that I do see are actually pretty well behaved compared to said delivery guys, as well as the typical Citi Bike red light runner and hipster doofus that dresses up like a messenger but isn't actually working.

CliffordK

Part of the reason for bike lanes is that cars and bikes move at different speeds.

So, moving the bikes to the side of the road, traffic in general moves smoother (plus, mixing 10 MPH bikes and 40 MPH cars is a problem. )

Around here, the street side bike paths only have a few bikes. And, when necessary, one can safely pass slower moving cyclists in a block or so.

But, as the number of bikes in the bike lanes increase, the same demands of slow/fast interactions would come up as one sees on roads. 2-way?

Shopping carts in bike lanes?

People may choose to use the bike lanes when sidewalks are more appropriate, but too many pedestrians.

So, yes... if the demands on the bike lanes outweigh the infrastructure... time to improve the infrastructure.

Around here there is a lot of discussion about "Road Diet". Some of it is taking a pure 4-lane road, and reducing it to being: 2 bike lanes, 1 driving lane in each direction, 1 center turn lane.

What the cities find is that traffic in each direction moves just as well, perhaps better by keeping cars from parking in the middle of the lanes trying to turn, or avoiding swerving around bikes.