I have received more tickets when riding a bike than driving a car. While I feel I deserved every ticket I got driving (and then some), I did not deserve any I received while riding a bike. By “deserve”, I mean that I endangered or possibly endangered other human being(s).
On 17-July-2019 on my typical bike commute home, I had the most infuriating encounter with a police officer in my life. And I have had my share, so this is saying something. To understand it fully, I need to explain some history that can explain why I reacted the way I did and why I think the situation played out as it did.
I ride the 8-mile trip from my home in Red Hook, Brooklyn to work (52nd and Park) nearly every day on my own hybrid. When I don’t ride all the way in, I at least ride a Citibike the 2 miles to and from Borough Hall 4/5 station. I have been bike commuting since 1988 (living in SF) and in NYC since 1997. I generally obey traffic rules. I stop at red lights, ride on the street in the proper direction and always yield to pedestrians. I typically wear a helmet and have a bike bell and lights. Basically, I want to avoid interactions with police at all costs. I am very angry with the NYPD. There is not a day that I commute to Manhattan that some driver doesn’t do something illegal that endangers my life or the life of a pedestrian or cyclist around me. Usually, there are multiple incidents. They range from:
- Failure to yield to through cyclists when turning and crossing a bike lane
- Failure to yield to pedestrians in crosswalk
- Running a red light
- Blocking intersection and/or bike lane because they could not make it through intersection during light cycle
- Stopped or parked in bike lane
- Speeding
- Passing too closely
- Illegal turns
- Backing up ½ a block (often at high speed) on a one-way street
I have never seen a driver doing one of these dangerous actions get pulled over by a police officer. To be fair I have seen cops talking and giving tickets to drivers, but I had not seen the action that led up to the encounter. Despite my exposure to so many dangerous actions (my round-trip ride exposes me to 85 minutes of traffic per day), no officer happened to be in the right place at the right time when I experience one of the many illegal acts I see daily. In cases where I have seen a cop after witnessing an egregious traffic violation, the story is always the same. Nothing I can do. “I need to see it” (which he would have if he had not been reading the newspaper) or in one case when the trucks blocking the bike lane (in my neighborhood in Red Hook) were still there, the officer simply could not be bothered and said “It’s an industrial area” and shrugged. Police officers are constantly making decisions about what laws they will enforce and what infractions they will look the other way.
In contrast, I have seen many stings targeting bicycle riders, particularly along the 1st Ave bike lane in Manhattan. They ticket there in the rush hour morning knowing they can get a big yield and show the outraged pedestrians that attend the police community board meetings that they are cracking down on cycling scofflaws. Any statistical analysis of crashes resulting in injury or death would show that cycling represents a fraction of a per cent of the contributing factors. I have received the following tickets in the past 20 years, riding in NYC:
- At night, rather than go around an officer and the car that they pulled over on Columbia St. into on-coming traffic lane, I got on the sidewalk (shortly before it was officially converted to the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway). There were no pedestrians. The officer pulled a Starsky and Hutch move and blocked my path to ticket me. I fought this ticket but had to pay the fine anyway.
- With 2 bags of glass bottles on my handlebars (stopped for wine on my way home from work), I mounted the sidewalk on my block which is cobblestone and very bumpy. There were no pedestrians and I would have stopped and/or dismounted if there were. Officer was lying in wait to catch me. I could only imagine that neighbors had complained about fast cyclists on sidewalks, and there are plenty of them. I was not riding fast. I went to the Red Hook Justice Center and had to promise I would never ride on the sidewalk again.
- I was heading to work on 1st Ave and moved out of the bike lane to the right side of the left turn (car) lane and proceeded straight on a green light. The “bike” light was red as the car turn lane had a green arrow. I told the officer that gave me the ticket that I was legally allowed to go straight on a green light and that the DOT brochure on bike lane usage recommends that cyclists get to the right of turning vehicles and specifically says that what I did was lawful. He refused to listen. He gave out many tickets that day, because when I went to court to fight it, I saw some of them. All these tickets were nullified and dismissed. No court hearing necessary. But they did not tell me that till I took time off work and appeared in court.
- On 1st Ave in Manhattan on my way to work, I stopped in the bike lane at a red light. I saw no pedestrians or cars and proceeded through slowly, with one foot off my peddle and the other scooting me through. The officer was waiting behind a bus shelter and gave me a ticket. I paid this fine.
- Seeing a sting operation like the one above, I stopped to give the officer a piece of my mind. I was fed up with seeing mild-mannered cyclists getting tickets while cars regularly disobey speed limits and fail to yield to pedestrians and cyclists. I had several drivers violate my right of way that morning. I was on a Citibike and had earbuds in, though I was not listening to anything. I wanted to tell the officer that this action is misguided and that we need to be protected from real dangers. He ticketed me for wearing headphones to show me who was boss. I was livid. I intended to fight the ticket, but the day of my appearance came, and I could not find out where to appear as the DMV website was not responding to my search on the ticket. When I finally went (a few weeks late) my license had been suspended and it cost me $120 to reinstate it, which I paid along with the fine.
During this same 20-year period I have had only one ticket in my automobile. A red-light ticket I got when driving in an unfamiliar area in Washington DC.
With this history and knowing that more cyclists were killed by drivers in the first half of 2019 than all of 2018, I was biking home on July 17th and on Old Fulton St heading towards Furman Street. There is a Citibike rack there and bike lane that is almost always blocked by one or more cars. On this day, I saw a cop talking to a driver in one of the two other cars blocking the bike lane. As I passed, I shouted, “I hope you are ticketing them for blocking the bike lane”. Normally I would go through Brooklyn Bridge Park as Furman Street has become hellish for cyclists since the shoulder has been given over to taxis and cars by the hotels and construction and since cars speed with impunity. But it was a beautiful night and I knew the park would be packed, so I opted for Furman. When I got to the end, I was surprised to see Atlantic Avenue fully scraped for repaving. The lines in the road at end of Furman were also gone. At the end of Furman, I saw a cop parked at the corner to the right. There is an option for vehicles to turn right (into dead end) or left to Atlantic and Columbia St. Vehicles turning right have a stop sign. Vehicles turning left have a traffic light to obey. I was turning left to join the bike path on Columbia St. I had a green light and continued through. I was very surprised to hear sirens and a cop acting like he was going to follow me into the bike lane if I did not stop. I did and asked what the problem was. He claimed that I failed to stop at the stop sign. Because I rode to the right of the lamp pole that is in the street, he said I was subject to the stop sign and, also, that I made an illegal left from the “right turn lane”. I was livid. I ride to the left of the pole because drivers don’t leave me room in the left lane. It is much safer to stay away from the cars speeding to make it through the light. My anger was visible, and he took his time writing me the ticket. When he came out of the car there were two tickets:
- Failure to stop while entering road/bicycle
- Disobeyed traffic device while operating bicycle
He explained the reasons he ticketed me, and I went into a small tirade about how drivers are constantly threatening my life and of all things he decided to ticket me for a made-up infraction. Then he told me that on Old Fulton, it was he that ticketed the cars in the bike lane.
I took the tickets and left in anger, but then it dawned on me that the whole interaction was pay back for me angrily shouting at him to ticket the bike lane blockers. He must have passed me on Furman so he could wait and have a chance to ticket me for something. I will fight this because I had a green light and did nothing unlawful, but my respect for the police has reached an all-time low.
