$230 Tickets Await Light-Running Bicyclists
We’ve only gotten one bicycling ticket in our life–for riding on a deserted sidewalk on Flushing Avenue back when the street was one-way–and it was for $25. One poster on Brooklynian, though, just got hit warned that she could get a fine of $230 for running a red light at St. Mark’s and Fifth Avenue….
We’ve only gotten one bicycling ticket in our life–for riding on a deserted sidewalk on Flushing Avenue back when the street was one-way–and it was for $25. One poster on Brooklynian, though, just got hit warned that she could get a fine of $230 for running a red light at St. Mark’s and Fifth Avenue. It is a reminder (to us, anyway) that the city needs to come up with a separate batch of rules for bicycles. There are plenty of situations where it makes sense for bicyclists to wait for a red light to turn green or to stay off a sidewalk; there are others, particularly in the out boroughs, where it’s just silly to apply automobile rules to bikes to the letter of the law. For example, on low-traffic side-streets, red lights could be treated as stop signs. Like the kids-in-restaurants issue, common sense and courtesy are what are needed most.
The Idaho stop law has been kicked around in a couple state houses. Here is a video from earlier this year explaining it: http://www.vimeo.com/groups/4263/videos/4140910
Personally I think major changes to the rules such as the Idaho Stop Law would have to be gradual (the fines are much higher than $230). It’s a cultural shift.
bikers want to be treated as a new special class. everyone must adjust to this new status.
Problem is, bikers have not yet lived up to the responsibility of using judgement to “proceed with caution” from the rules of the road.
Your “average” bilker is still starting from the “my rules / no rules” rather than “i adhere to rules of the road but proceed with caution from there”.
As a new special class, with new special rules: please license them, tax them, and require liability insurance. This is a crowded crazy city filled with selfish assholes and you can’t just “wing it” like its some town model in the Netherlands.
The city is a machine, please lets integrate whatever this is going to / supposed to be.
I bike into Manhattan every day for work. And here’s the simple solution:
Just stop at the red light.
I’m not glad this cyclist got a $230 ticket, but I’m glad that police are enforcing the laws.
A “separate batch of rules for bicycles?” Silly. Unnecessary.
Just stop at the red light.
What is so hard about that my fellow cyclists can’t understand?
Just stop at the red light.
C: