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The New York Post recently ran an editorial about dangerous cyclists on the streets (and bike paths) of NYC. The author, Kyle Smith, cites being run over by a cyclist as the impetus for his article:
One Saturday afternoon in the fall of 2007, I lay picking pebbles and asphalt from my epidermis on the jogging path in front of the U.S.S. Intrepid. The top layer of skin on my entire right side, from wrist to foot, looked like it’d been removed by a sushi chef. My right foot was useless (and still hurts as I write this). The bicyclist who had just hit me at approximately the speed of a proton accelerator stood over me screaming that I had gotten in his way.
Read the whole story at www.nypost.com. (Thanks to Corey the Courier for pointing this out.)
there are a lot of cyclists out there that make it really dangerous for other people on bikes, so I agree on that part but then he seems to be just attacking all cyclists and a nice jab about impotence just discredits the whole complaint. how about when i’m going the right direction and all those people walk out into the street, without looking at where traffic is coming from. also how about when i go through a green light but i have to wave through all the people jay walking. the streets are over run with people on cellphones, at least the dangerous bike riders are paying attention.
New York along with every other major and minor American city could learn a lot from Berlin, Germany about how to help bikes, cars and pedestrians get along.
sab – yeah, Kyle’s a twit, you’d never catch a cyclist making blanket generalizations like that about drivers.
Some of the comments on that Post article are pretty cringeworthy…
Ugh. So many jerks, so little time. Dangerous cyclists are a problem in NYC, but it always pisses me off when the response involves claiming that all cyclists act this way, that they don’t deserve to be on the road, or that cars (!) are less of a problem.
a loud horn is effective if you get the feeling a pedestrian nearby is about to enter the road in front of you:
http://www.deltacycle.com/product.php?g=1
it helps because sometimes pedestrians are turned off to the presence of smaller, quiter vehicles, like bikes.
in my experience i find that pedestrians are avoidable since i can easily spot them in daylight from my high perch. Also their movements are mostly slow and predictable. except for some situations, mostly in dense urban environments, i mostly fault cyclists like myself for pedestrian/bicyclist collisions.
No one notices the multitude of perfectly polite and cautious bikers out there, the very fact that they are not causing a problem makes them invisible. the only visible ones are the a-holes.
Same goes for drivers, i get passed by hundreds of cars daily and i only remember the ones who rode too close or tired to door me. . .
this author should have enough common sense to know that.
Hah…the worst accident I ever had on a bike was caused by a pedestrian (well, a runner, anyways). Riding along the Charles River (a multi-use path in Boston) one morning, I yelled, “on your left,” as I passed him, and he obligingly jumped to the left (avoiding the leavings of a none too law abiding dog owner’s pet) into my front wheel. I went over the bars, my left arm and leg were gouged up good, and both my wheels were pretzels. He paused for about 30 seconds while I made sure I didn’t have any broken bones, then trotted off, no worse for the wear. Just a quick note for all of you…cab drivers tend to not want to pick you up if you’re bloodied and carrying a broken bike.
This article is nothing more than the angry rant of somebody who’s just been injured and should not be taken seriously. His bigoted and racist statements, however, are quite appalling and the fact that a newspaper would actually publish this is astounding.
well said ’sab’
at least the dangerous bicycle riders ARE paying attention
I was run over by a cyclist when I had the walk sign. I looked in every direction before I crossed the road since I’m aware of the many cyclists that does not stop at red lights. Not to say that they never stop but they mostly don’t from what I’ve seen. The bike that hit me came from so far that I was not able to see it probably because it was a fast, fancy racing bike. I was badly bruised up and swollen in both knees, palms, jaw and had a brain bruise. My knee hurt so much I had to have it x-rayed. I was dizzy for over a month. I still consider myself lucky that I was not any worse off. I did not yell at the cyclist, actually a very nice person, who was not thinking carefully when he ran the light. I only made him promise that he will wear a helmet when he’s riding and tell his friends not to run red lights. I lost money from not being able to work and had to pay for medical bills which nobody ever reimbursed me for. I believe all this bickering between pedestrians and cyclists comes from the unavailablility of safety education and lack of knowledge of rules for cyclists. The law is that cyclists are not allowed to ride on the sidewalk yet I see them doing that frequently. The law says that cyclists are to follow traffic laws just like cars yet many cyclists think that law does not apply to them. I have a lot of friends that ride bikes, very nice people who made faces when I told them they should stop when there is a red light. The cyclist that hit me apologized profusely and told me he has not had an accident riding a bike for years. That’s a scary thought – people will only think about being careful after something bad happens. That means a lot of people are going to be killed, become disabled, or suffer pain before some cyclists decide they have to be a bit more considerate of pedestrians who are simply minding their own business. A woman was in a coma for days last I heard from being hit by a bike that was running a light, she has two children. Pointing fingers saying because someone else does not obey law does not mean one should disobey the law. Just because others are inconsiderate does not mean one should be inconsiderate. All this bickering seems superfluous when we consider the consequences of irresponsible behavior from cars, bikes, and pedestrians. With the increasing number of bicycles zipping around, it’s too challenging for any normal person to avoid them. My personal feeling is that bikes should only be street legal if they are licensed with operating head lights in the evening. At the very least, the cyclist will have an opportunity to read about the traffic laws and head lights will be safer for everyone concerned. Thank you for reading this.