Good day all. One of the “Big Things” Progressives love is bicycles. They are forever building bike paths and lanes, usually to the detriment of the needs of real people. There is also the arrogance problem of bicyclists. They think they’re special an entitled.
This has led to a number of issues. Cyclists tend to ignore traffic rules and cut off people in cars. If they’re lucky, the driver will see them in time and be able to stop. Many times they can’t, and you end up with a cyclist, at best, getting thrown from his or her bike and the bike being trashed.
Another issue are packs of cyclists who flat out ignore the fact that there are people walking around who may not hear or see them. This has led to a lot of collisions between with some serious injuries to the pedestrians, and in some cases, death. This has happened frequently in New York City, and Bill de Blasio won’t do anything to curtail it. Here are the details from the New York Post:
Mayor Bill de Blasio has aggressively pushed a bike-friendly agenda, adding about 100 miles of dedicated lanes for cyclists amid a spike in rider collisions, but he’s done little to address the danger that bikers themselves pose.
We all know what a car verses pedestrian can do, and we all take precautions to avoid running over people or getting hit by a car. We all know that when we see a ball roll in front of us, the best thing to do is lock up the brakes because a child is probably going to be chasing after it.
With bicycles, you can’t hear them coming, and they are moving, in many cases, faster then a car is allowed to in the same area. You have a 20+ pound chunk of metal carrying upwards of 200 pounds of rider moving at 30+ miles an hour. If they hit someone, people are going to get hurt, with the person on foot usually taking the worst of it.
Since 2011, bicyclists have injured more than 2,250 pedestrians — including at least seven who died — according to stats from the city Department of Transportation and published reports.
And I think it’s safe to say that in every case, the biker was to blame, either riding to fast or thinking that he had the right of way no matter what.
Injuries are up 12 percent this year, rising to 127 through June 30 from 113 over the same period in 2018, the NYPD says. Most of the injured last year were in Manhattan, where 134 pedestrians got hurt, nearly half the citywide total of 270. Two pedestrians have been killed so far this year.
Now if I’m driving in a car, and I hit someone, and possibly kill them, I’m in a world of trouble. There will be an investigation, and quite probably a court appearance. You would think this would be the case in NYC when a biker runs down someone walking along. You would be mistaken.
The latest was Michael Collopy, a 60-year-old Chelsea resident who was plowed into by a bicyclist while standing in a bike lane in the Flatiron District on July 31 and died a week later. The bicyclist fled.
“He was one of the good ones in the building, a nice person,” said Jay, a doorman in West 23rd Street apartment complex where Collopy lived. “He was always full of jokes.”
Fleeing the scene of an accident? Gee, the Angry Girlfriend had something similar to that happen to her when an Amazon delivery drive crashed into her parked car and then drove off. (Thanks to a video we had, the driver was identified) In this case, the biker killed someone and then ran away. I would think a charge of involuntary manslaughter would be appropriate. Of course, the police have to be actually looking for this jerk.
Also killed was Donna Strum, 67, who was smashed by a cyclist on April 24 while crossing West 57th Street near Sixth Avenue. She was in the crosswalk. An unidentified 40-year-old cyclist ran a red light and struck her, fracturing her skull. She died on May 4. The biker told cops that his gears malfunctioned and his brakes failed. Cops issued him a summons and he was released.
Excuse me? A summons? How about an arrest warrant? As for the bicycle, it should have been impounded right there as evidence. Was it? What do you think? What’s worse is these morons are mowing down children.
“People are mad,” said Adrienne Rivetti Jensen, an Upper West Side resident whose 5-year-old daughter, Mabel, suffered a gash on her forehead when a speeding biker clipped the girl in Riverside Park on April 8. Mabel, now with an inch-long scar, was at first afraid to return to the park after the accident, said the mother.
“She got hit while we were just walking on the pathway — and a lot of cyclists were speeding past us, yelling at us to get out of the way,” the mother recalled. “In the Uber to the hospital, I started to feel really angry. He could have killed her. He was going really fast.”
So this arrogant piece of human debris didn’t bother to stop and apologize, do everything he could to help the little girl and try and make things right? Why am I not surprised? Sadly, this is the rule, NOT the exception. There are two types of people who ride bicycles. Those who are just having fun or using them to move around, many of them people to young to drive. Then we have the arrogant, self absorbed holier than thou types who will pour thousands of dollars into their bicycles and think they have the absolute right to bike along anywhere they want.
The latter types are generally found in the more “Progressive” cities, and not only are they arrogant progressives, they’re bullies. They will move right into traffic and expect people in cars to slow down and get out of their way. Since cars/biker collisions usually favor the car, it’s the driver that gets held liable unless it can be show the biker was not following the rules of the road. Good luck with that in a Progressive city.
These bikers have been known to smash windshields with hammers, scrape the paint with keys and other metal objects and in some cases, groups of them have attacked drivers who get out of their cars to discuss the matter with them. I understand that this is a real problem in the newest Turd World shithole, San Francisco.
Meanwhile, rather than take the hint that perhaps it’s time to pull things in a bit and give pedestrians more space to pedestriate, Dumbass de Blasio is closing down more streets and sidewalks.
Hizzoner has been putting in place a plan to install 30 new miles of bicycle lanes per year, reduce parking spaces and add hundreds of Citi Bikes.
I don’t know the layout of NYC very well, but from what I’m seeing, not a lot of planning or common sense has been utilized.
One that was recently installed next to the FDR Drive, between 33rd and 34th Streets, gobbled up a walkway and a vehicle lane used by ambulances trying to get to Bellevue Hospital. Another on Eighth Avenue in Midtown stands out as an example of a poorly planned path that pits pedestrians against cyclists in a battle for limited pavement.
As you would expect, there has been some conflict between people on foot, the vast majority of people in NYC, and the bikers.
Hordes of bikers weave through idling cabs and throngs of pedestrians, creating collisions and even sparking fistfights.
As for Mayor Bill de Blasio? Is he doing anything to correct and minimize all the problems? You’re kidding, right?
But the mayor has ignored the growing threat to walkers.
He has gone after one group however. Of course, these are actually people working for a living and using their two wheeled modes of transportation as art of their job.
The one cyclist group he has attacked is electric-bike riders, who are primarily food-delivery workers. He has blasted them for going the wrong way on streets and riding on sidewalks and has launched a crackdown against them.
These people must be a real threat to the safety of pedestrians to have Mayor Moron going after them, right? WRONG!
But just nine of the 270 reported pedestrian injuries from bikers last year were caused by e-bikes, according to a report on the transportation-news site Streetsblog.
Like most people in America, I rode a bike when I was a kid. After I got my license, the only bike I rode had a motor on it. (Motorcycle) I haven’t been on a bike, powered or otherwise in decades. The Angry Girlfriend, who grew up in China, doesn’t even know how to ride a back and has no desire to learn. (She likes driving a car)
In most places in this country, bike riders tend to be aware of others and try not to be complete assholes. It’s usually in the major cities run by Democrats that you see the problems of bike riders contemptuously mowing down pedestrians. Of course, those of us, (Not me of course, nor do I condone the following), who have had enough have been known to take out a few bikers. Just opening a car door in their path and going “Oops! Sorry, I didn’t see you there racing up behind me at high speed. I hope you have insurance because you’re paying for this door!”
Then there are the more vicious and not at all legal things. A baseball bat swung at a rider as he goes past, wire across the path, something that will blow the tires out on the ground. Yes, all these have happened and it never ends well for either party. However, if the bikers don’t start cleaning up their act, it’s going to get worse, not better.
Thatisall
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~The Angry Webmaster~
Postscript
When I was about 8, I was involved in a car/bike accident. I was lucky that I wasn’t killed. The scar on my head has since faded, but I learned my lesson. 30 years ago, my father was refinancing the mortgage. The mortgage broker handling the account came for a visit. She was one of those arrogant biker types. However, when I met her, she had stopped being arrogant. Why? She illegally cut across traffic and was hit by one car and thrown into another.
She was legally dead for a few minutes, but the paramedics managed to get her heart started. One leg was so badly shattered that it was nothing more then screws, pins and fragments. It was also two inches shorter than the other one and she was undergoing very painful procedures to have it lengthened. Needless to say, her biking days were over.
