And we wonder why cyclist and pedestrians get killed
this asshole watching TV 

^ Send to Gothamist!

JohnMalcolmson said:

^ Send to Gothamist!

I did 

I actually knew Devra back in high school (we had a lot of mutual friends and ran in the same circles) and I worked with her older brother the summer after I graduated college. We weren't really close, but she was always the nicest and most welcoming person. It's a horribly sad situation from beginning to end.

Matt Budofsky said:

I actually knew Devra back in high school (we had a lot of mutual friends and ran in the same circles) and I worked with her older brother the summer after I graduated college. We weren't really close, but she was always the nicest and most welcoming person. It's a horribly sad situation from beginning to end.

Very sorry for your loss Matt, that sounds horrible.

By Shane Ferro

It’s Shocking How Badly New York City Is Failing Cyclists

https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a28336573/vision-zero-nyc/

Last night, the five borough bike club (5BBC) had an event at a midtown bar.  They invited Dan Flanzig of Flanzig and Flanzig to speak.  His firm is in the same line of work as Lucarelli and Castaldi, and they sponsor a number of clubs and back Transportation Alternatives.

I'm bringing it up because his presentation, while pretty basic, was also pretty good.  It was on what to do and not to do, when involved in a crash with a car/immobile object/etc.

I suggest checking out their site, which is way more detailed than L&C's  

Their page "bike crashes" has a wealth of information, including NYC and NYS laws relevant to cyclists.

https://www.newyorkbikelawyer.com/bike-crashes/

Dan also handed out laminated business cards containing advice on what to do when involved in a crash.  

If you ride with your phone, I think it might be a good idea to at least download local laws and 'what to do after a crash' and store the files somewhere on your phone.

https://www.newyorkbikelawyer.com/bike-crashes/what-to-do-after-a-crash/
https://www.newyorkbikelawyer.com/bike-crashes/n-y-state-n-y-c-bike-laws/

Received a failure to yield red light ticket about two weeks ago in Queens. The ticket was finally entered into the system but is showing I owe an assessment fee of $88 on top of the $50 violation fee. Plus, 3 points on my license. I know the assessment and points are not supposed to apply since I got the ticket on my bike. Anyone gone down this route before? Do I plead not-guilty and argue in front of the judge? Or should I lawyer up?

JasonFugett said:

Received a failure to yield red light ticket about two weeks ago in Queens. The ticket was finally entered into the system but is showing I owe an assessment fee of $88 on top of the $50 violation fee. Plus, 3 points on my license. I know the assessment and points are not supposed to apply since I got the ticket on my bike. Anyone gone down this route before? Do I plead not-guilty and argue in front of the judge? Or should I lawyer up?

Maybe instead of carrying a photo copy of my drivers license on the bike, I should carry the photocopy of my passport, that way they can't issue me driving points on it... 

Jason, contact the DMV to get your 3 points on your license annulled since you were riding your bike and not operating a motor vehicle.

@AndrewJohnson my thoughts exactly

@Thierry Bonnaire So I assume I should do this after pleading guilty? Additionally, I don't think I should be paying the additional assessment either. This isn't my first rodeo - I've never had to pay the assessment before. 

Well tonight I had my first crash of the season. I was out doing my interval training in my usual location. In my third set of my pyramid sprints, a car came up next to me, and got not even a few feet ahead of me and then turned right onto a side street. I tried to stop but unprepared I ended up over the bars. I smashed my orange Kask helmet, and my glasses broke cutting me in the face. The car of course did not stick around. And yes I've been riding there many years with plenty of high power lights, and reflectors, reflective clothing. Feeling a bit banged up, but nothing serious it seems. A bit of ice and Ibuprofen tonight, I'll have the shop look over the bike tomorrow to be sure nothing serious (like a cracked carbon frame).

Terrible thing to happen. You can never let your guard down it seems. I hope you're feeling better tomorrow.

@Bruce van-Schalkwyk good information about the insurance. And yeah it happened quite quickly being that I was working out my focus was probably not quite what it should have been. Oh well it is what it is. Obviously I will have to double up my efforts on being more vigilant in the future. 

Damn, that’s terrible. Heal up, Andrew!

Hope you feel better Andrew (and that the bike is okay)!

@AndrewJohnson, it sounds like you weren't hit by the car?   In any case, please heal up, that's not bueno. 

As a PSA to the Kissena club, I recently took the step of increasing my UI/UIM insurance significantly.  After reading this blog post (https://pvcycling.wordpress.com/tag/uninsured-motorist-coverage/), I took it pretty seriously.  Reading through the blog post it appears that this insurance is available for folks who don't own a car which is likely the case for 95% of the Kissenitas.  

By increasing my annual premiums by $200 a year, I've got a $1.25m insurance policy.  Knowing that an ambulance ride costs $200k, and bandages from the hospital another $100k, I'm now covered.   If I'm involved in a hit-n-run on my bike, walking, etc., I'm covered.  My wife is covered.  I'm on my bike much more than I'm in my car so this is likely we're I'm going to monetize my insurance anyway (I have a 1993 jalopy w/ 275k miles on it, my bike is worth much more).  I hope I never have to use it but considering the coverage I think it's totally worth it.

@Scott Kuhlke Honestly I'm not even sure if I didn't hit the car or not. In the panic to avoid and try to brake and steer into the turn with s/he, and being completely unprepared for a panic stop) The bike went up and over me, and everything is a blur until after I landed. Either way, too late now. I do own two cars and drive often, although I try to commute as much as possible by bike, I'm pretty sure my car insurance would not cover anything, but I do have decent medical through work... Later I'll read the info above, need to get some stuff done today...

@Bruce van-Schalkwyk, to your point, sure the motorist may have coverage and sure, try and get them to cover the costs.  But, when accidents (sorry, crashes) happen, most people aren't thinking clearly, are only concerned with protecting numero uno, and usually don't know off the top of their head that they're covered.  The driver will likely think it's you're fault and spin any facts of the situation to their advantage when speaking to the police.  Best to be fully protected yourself.  And then even if they do get cited, they may not a) have adequate coverage to cover you, and b) the agents at their insurance company are incentived to pay out as little as possible. 

For example, my car was hit in Houston while I was driving.  The driver, while presenting an insurance card and being cited, actually wasn't covered for the incident and his insurance company was happy to tell me go to pound sand.  Yet because I had UI/UIM coverage, my insurance company covered the repairs and my deductible pay out was actually lower than had he had insurance ... go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here's another link from the same blogger that talks about this: https://pvcycling.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/please-get-r-done/

There's talk of NYC voting in a mandatory helmet law for cyclists.  There are so many reasons this is wrong, not the least of which hitting one's head is not the real risk in bike riding, getting hit by a car is.  And a helmet won't change that.

Transportation Alternatives has a petition to say no to a possible helmet law.  I signed it.  

https://campaigns.transalt.org/node/180?version=button

^ I don't see how a helmet law is harmful, anymore than a seatbelt law is.  I suppose one more excuse for the NYPD to stop people...

Jules said:

^ I don't see how a helmet law is harmful, anymore than a seatbelt law is.  I suppose one more excuse for the NYPD to stop people...

When it was implemented in Australia, it drove down the number of cyclists, even though the health benefits to the masses outweighed the deaths, and the real savings in human life wasn't from helmets, but from better road design.

Take a look at this abstract: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0001457596000164

"Consequently, a helmet law, whose most notable effect was to reduce cycling, may have generated a net loss of health benefits to the nation. Despite the risk of dying from head injury per hour being similar for unhelmeted cyclists and motor vehicle occupants, cyclists alone have been required to wear head protection. Helmets for motor vehicle occupants are now being marketed and a mandatory helmet law for these road users has the potential to save 17 times as many people from death by head injury as a helmet law for cyclists without the adverse effects of discouraging a healthy and pollution free mode of transport."

WOW. I’m stunned that a helmet law would drive down cycling more than homicidal drivers and total lack of prosecution of same. Then again, this is clearly the age in which reality is stunning.

When discussing cycling as a mode of transportation, helmets are viewed as one more hurdle, more friction, for people to get on bikes. -- i.e. the more we require or force on people, the less they ride. 

I'll add that there are many obvious reasons why wearing a helmet is better/safer. Jules, you are right, there's some parallel here with seat belts (altho, I never have to bring a seat belt, they are a part of the car, a helmet is not part of a bicycle, i.e. more friction)

Using head injuries deaths as a metric is probably a terrible way to get any real measurement, as most crashes, helmet or not, don't result in death.

After 30 years of riding and racing, I have seen people crash with helmets, I've seen people crash without helmets, not one has been even remotely close to death. Empirically, however, whenever the crash included the head, riders with a helmet fared better.

I would imagine that lobbying the Citi bike scheme would help this not get passed

the important piece here of course, is that at some point -- and some would argue we are at that point -- we have asked, regulated, forced everything that a rider can do to be safer, and we are still not safe.

At this point, as a society, we need to realize that riding a bicycle is not specially dangerous, the danger comes from cars and their drivers, and specifically the brutal combination of heavy weight, high torque power, and driver distraction we live in today.

Simply, the car and driver are the danger. Better regulating and enforcement towards cars will likely have a much higher impact than riders wearing helmets.

Mark Taylor said:

I would imagine that lobbying the Citi bike scheme would help this not get passed

It looks like the hubbub has died down in the city.  Further, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson is opposed, and that counts for quite a bit.

Eloy hit on the salient issues in his post above.  Cycling isn't dangerous.  Driving is dangerous.  For everyone, but that impacts those who don't drive.  

With helmets and bikes, there has been so much bad information pushed, and that has arguably exacerbated the issue.  For years, Bicycling magazine loved to cite something to the effect of '77% of all cyclist emergency room visits are for a head injury.'  The problem is the stat doesn't tell us what percentage of all crashes result in emergency room visits, or how many emergency room visits there are per hour of use or mile traveled or some kind of worthwhile metric.  

Helmet wearing is used as a way for the media and public to pretend they can divine whether the injured/dead cyclist is a responsible citizen.  And that's terrible, as most cyclist deaths are caused by cars, and I have yet to find any studies looking at whether or not helmet use would have made a meaningful difference in those deaths.  

Getting run over by a 5,000-lbs vehicle traveling at 30mph or more is hard to survive in any circumstance.  And SUVs are probably worse than sedans/coupes/station wagons as the front ends are sufficiently high that the cyclist/ped doesn't get pitched onto the hood and over the top.