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He says those pictures will be examined along with video of the collision, which according to NYPD records shows that the truck driver dragged Lefevre and his bike for several yards as he made an unsignaled right-hand turn.

If there is one thing I would ask NYC motorists to do just out of the goodness of their hearts, it is to use their turn signals.

Every other day I have to guess if a slowing car is going to turn right or go straight, because its operator is unwilling to lift a finger and activate the device installed expressly for that purpose. Every other week I guess wrong, and I’m caught in a bad spot.

Sometimes, the motorist will honk to indicate their displeasure with me for continuing straight through the path of their unsignaled turn. Yet I am the one in extreme danger while they are only briefly inconvenienced as a direct result of their own poor driving. The situation is completely avoidable.

Most cyclists are perfectly willing and able to pass right-turning vehicles on the left—we just need to know that is what they are going to do.

I honestly think the majority of people feel there’s little which can be done to reduce deaths/injuries caused by motor vehicles. Whenever I’ve discussed this with people, the pat answer is usually “you have to die somehow”, or “it’s the cost of doing business”. We used to think the same way about crime up until the early 1990s. It was just accepted as a fact of life that you might be robbed, raped, or even killed if you stepped out the door. The only way this was turned around was by actually significantly reducing crime rates. When this happened, people wanted them reduced even further, to the point where we went from about 2000 murders annually to around 500. I feel if some measures we take now reduce the carnage to the point where it happens infrequently enough to make the front pages, then we might have public support for reducing it even further.

So a guy kills a 14 year old, with an unlicensed vehicle, flees, and refuses a Breathalyzer and is not charged for killing another human, a teenaged human at that.

Wow.

Read the story below that one, a guy who defended himself by killing a “360-pound, machete-wielding home intruder” is getting out of jail after 4 years, and he is getting out EARLY. GAH!

For example, Madrid’s MetroSur, built for about $1.7 billion in today’s money, or $45 million per km, gets only 140,000-170,000 riders per day, for a total of around $10,000 per rider. This is fine, but not very low, since the very low construction costs are matched with low ridership per kilometer, more comparable to a tramway than to a subway; most Parisian projects are considerably cheaper per rider, even though Paris builds on-street light rail for the same cost Madrid builds tunnels. In contrast, Second Avenue Subway is about $25,000 per projected rider, high by non-US standards but not obscenely so; I know of no cheaper project in the US under construction right now, including some with quite reasonable per-km costs.

There’s no better way to spend time with your family and friends that’s both fun AND affordable than to jump into the car and escape to one of the great regions of New York!

I know they have to beg people to go spend money upstate and stuff, but if they want the NYC’s residents and visitors to make the trip they need to give us better ways to get there than “the car”. (What car?)

ohhleary:

I see you chose to conveniently overlook my citation of the study in Fort Collins, a city that is a gold-level Bicycle-Friendly Community and has one of the highest mode-shares of cycling in the country.

I’m afraid I was a bit distracted by your referring to the country’s most dangerous sidewalks (go get ‘em, Orlando!) as evidence that riding bicycles on sidewalks is deadly. But Fort Collins is a “gold-level” bicycling community. Okay.

One problem with the conclusion you embrace is that the study makes no attempt to quantify the portion of cycling trips made on sidewalks vs. streets. How can we compare the injury rates without knowing the non-injury rates? (We can’t.)

The other problem is that you cherry picked the results. When riding in the direction of traffic, the study finds fewer injuries in every category for those riding on the sidewalk. It’s only when going against traffic that the sidewalk claims a larger share of injuries. If you are operating under the assumption that the portion of injuries alone means something—a bad assumption—then you must think that it’s safer to be on the sidewalk than the street for Fort Collins cyclists riding in the direction of traffic.

I don’t know if it’s from sloppiness or eagerness to have your own beliefs validated, but you did substantially misrepresent the results.

Since you chose to discount my entire argument based on your flawed logic that studies on sidewalk riding in other cities have zero consequence to conditions in New York,

Well, not exactly. My position was that you don’t have good evidence to support your surprising claim that legalizing sidewalk riding (which is routine among working NYC cyclists, either way) would result in a lot more deaths. The more I look into it, the worse your evidence looks

I’m not going to waste my breath with the rest of your screed.

Considering the accuracy your breath carries to the topic, I’m sure that’s for the best.

(Source: n8han)