Streetsblog New York City

It is hard to fathom how drunk Mr. Cidron could have been to have misunderstood he was on a bike path, apparently for the several miles between the Chelsea Piers and Clarkson St. More likely he had become depraved and knowingly rode on the path for the “fun” of it. How do we prevent this tragic incident from bolstering statistics on the so-called heightened dangers of bike paths vs. roadways? For every drunk driver on the bike path there are 10,000 on the road, each as potentially dangerous as Mr. Cidron.

“Raise awareness”, how about a mass rally to scream fucking bloody murder. Every cyclist on the East Coast should come. Don’t dignify the system by asking for a permit.

Terrible though this tradgedy is,
Right of Way, in its police report analysis analysis, “The Only Good Cyclist…”, found that drunk driving was the cause in only 4% of the bicycling fatalities that it studied.

http://rightofway.org/research/cyclists.pdf
See page 9.

I’m ready for a protest at City Hall on the level of 50-shots-fired-at-an-innocent-black-man. Does the Livable Streets movement have an Al Sharpton? I’m so fuggin tired of the carnage and the injustice on New York City streets

The driver should obviously be held responsible, but I hope the victims family also sues the Canon Corporation.

If they throw a big party like this (with free drinks?), they should take some action to make sure their guests don’t drive drunk afterward. In some places, bars offer free cab rides home to customers who are in no condition to drive. They have to come back in the morning to retrieve their own cars, but that’s better than spending the night in jail, or the morgue.

Steve, I agree that there is something perverse about calling an ‘accident’ the actions of a man that will likely be found to be criminal in a court of law. However, it’s my understanding the resistance to the labeling of car crashes as ‘accidents’ is related to the systemic predictability of them not a claim that any individual is immune to mistakes while driving.

Particularly looking at the bike path with its double yellow line in the middle it is entirely possible that a very intoxicated man could ‘accidentally’ believe that it is a roadway.

P, as to the tendency to label motor vehicle collisions “accidents,” I think it primarily reflects the fact that most of them fundamentally are accidental. I doubt that Mr. Cidron had a specific desire to kill Eric Ng, but I do suspect he intended to proceed down a bike path and probably told himself it was OK because probably no one would be out bicycling on a Friday night when they could be tooling around in a beemer like him.

Ultimately you are right–I can’t know what Cidron was thinking. My point is that it was both ridiculous and typical for the Time reporters to stress his “accidental” entry on the bike path when they had nothing to go on but the uninformed speculation of park workers, and there was a mile worth of objective evidence that should have tipped Cidron off that he was on a bike path. They should have just reported the facts.

Thanks Frank! Well put!

Justicia wrote, “We should work on developing a language and culture that attracts people of all backgrounds to the cause.”

In this regard, the Adventure Cycling Assocation and the Center for Minority Health have formed a partnership and developed an Underground Railroad Bike Route. Adventure Cycling and CMH formed the partnership to “promote lifelong health through a form of physical activity available to people of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds” — namely, biking.

Here’s a link to learn more about the Underground Railroad Bike Route:
http://www.adventurecycling.org/ugrr/index.cfm

To me, when Justicia wrote

“We should work on developing a language and culture that attracts people of all backgrounds to the cause”

it smelled a Ieetle bad. Like, by comparing “the cause” to the Civil Rights movement, you risk alienating some people.

White people?

The Civil Rights movement did “attract people of all backgrounds”. Looking at it as a model for freeing the streets shouldn’t alienate ANYone.

As disgusted and sickened as I am by this horror, I am not surprised.

Like the cyclist interviewed in the Times, I have often seen cars driving down the path south of the ferry and Chelsea Piers. On Thursday night (11/30) at 6pm, the bollard at the intersection of the Chelsea Piers service road and the greenway was definitely not there — nor was it there the previous day or week or month. I am skeptical it was there when the motorist exited Chelsea Piers.

I can easily see how a motorist could mistake the greenway path for a road at that location, and south of the tow pound and ferry — which cabs often seem to do. Without the bollard (flimsy and inadequate as it is) it looks like a road, down to the big yellow line down the middle. Cycling advocates complained years ago to the State DOT that the path is marked to look too much like a road and that driver confusion was inevitable.

Lastly, I wouldnt be surprised if the SDOT deliberately took the bollards down to avoid lawsuits by cyclists crashing into them — which is why NYC DOT doesnt have a bollard at the entrance to the protected bike path at the south approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. Which is another place where I’ve seen motorists driving straight at cyclists.

To follow up on JK…

Yup if the DOT doesn’t do something, next crash killing a cyclist will be on the protected path approaching the Brooklyn Bridge.

See cars in it all the time. Over the summer, my girlfriend rode into to Bike Habitat to work. THREE DAYS in a ROW she saw a car in the bike path.

And I know someone who saw a car in the bike lane and rode over to an NYPD cop and asked him if he was going to write the car a ticket. The officer told the person to, “Mind their own business.”

Of course it is that EXACT lassiez-faire attitude that is going to get more cyclists killed. That’s gotta change.

I have to chime in here with my experience on the West Side bike path while on my daily commute. I have seen cars driving down the path twice, one of them at speed, which was horrifying. I could easily have suffered Eric Ng’s tragic fate. In one case I was able to get the plate number. I called 911 and reported it, leaving my name and number. I never heard anything back, but the officer did say that mine was the appropriate response. So to #26, while I share your destructive urges in the face of such shocking and dangerous stupidity, I think calling 911 is all you can do.

What’s the solution? Clearly, we need better markings or bollards on the bike paths, particularly at the intersections. Better enforcement of the laws would help too – I told a cop about one of the cars I saw on the path and he seemed indifferent. I hate to concede this point, but it could be a little confusing to the unfamiliar driver. The path really does look like a miniture road. In my opinion, some of these accidents (yeah, it was an accident…the driver didn’t mean to hit the cyclist) could be avoided if cyclists were more careful. I shake my head at the riders I see down in their aerobars, at night with no lights, ignoring the red bike light indicating they should stop at a crossing.

Since my messenger days, I’ve really toned down the aggression in the saddle, and I think it dramatically reduces the risk. Get a headlight and a tail-light, stay out of your aerobars, and don’t run the red lights, and you’re much less likely to get hurt. Maybe if Eric Ng had a light (the Times article didn’t comment definitively on this, but it seems that he didn’t), he might not have gotten hit. The car that came barelling down the path at me served away from me as it passed and I have a headlight. The West Side path is generally the safest place to ride in Manhattan, and barring these freak (I’ve only seen it twice in two years) idiotic moves by drivers, it will continue to be a model bike path for the city. I wouldn’t ride anywhere else on my way to work.

Although the New Yorker “Holy Rollers” article was in my opinion a bit lightwieght (and the “cyclists are the n*gger of NYC” comment was just absurd – thanks for including that, Ben), the piece did raise the larger issue of cyclist reponsibility. This cuts across many of the cycling issues we discuss in this forum, including cars in Central Park. Many cyclists ride around like they don’t have to obey the rules, and it hurts our cause. If park racers yell at pedestrians, messengers run over people in the crosswalk at a red light, and delivery guys ride on the sidewalk, that’s how people will see us. We need to ride with some common sense so we are better prepared when the unthinkable happens.

My thoughts are with the Ng family.

And you know what, crzwdjk? United States cities HAD a workable bus system…until Rosa Parks integrated it!

Then what? Pretty much disbanded. “Well, if BLACKS are gonna ride the bus and sit where they like, we’ll fix their wagon: we’ll destroy the service.”

Look at the photos of the civil rights movement from the ’50s and ’60s. Those are the middle class riding the buses. Very different from today.

So, yes they are linked!

Very interesting comments from Sproule and crzwdjk. Unlike the situation in most of the country, New York City’s mass transit system, parks and sidewalks are class- and race- integrated. However, the public roadway space in New York is very different. There, you have a diverse mix of drivers, most of which believe they “own the streets” vis-à-vis bicyclists and pedestrians, and which consequently drive and park their vehicles in an aggressive, unsafe and often unlawful manner. Included among this group are suburban commuters speeding down the HOV lane in Central Park alone in their SUV’s on their way to work; working class commercial drivers who double- park in and out bicycle lanes because it’s the quickest way to get their job done and there’s no enforcement; parents double-parking as they drop off their kids at public school after a twenty-or-fewer block drive from home (why do they do it?); and Mr. Cidron, who decided to drive a couple of miles to his booze-up in his BMW even though mass transit and walking were options, perhaps because car ownership is so much a part of his sense of self that he would have felt naked without it.

As anyone who bicycles regularly in the city knows, some of all of these different types of drivers believe they have a pre-eminent claim to the road and that they should not have to obey the rules regarding speed limits, right-of-way, passing safely, double parking, and bike lanes. Such drivers view bicyclists as interlopers and a nuisance. No, they rarely if ever actually intend to kill bicyclists. But do they routinely drive and park in a manner that recklessly creates a risk of serious injury to bicyclists and pedestrians? Yes–all the time. And do the cops do anything about it? Almost never.

In the case of Mr. Cidron, I would say that he engaged in an attack on bicyclists and pedestrians by driving (apparently at cruising speed) down both lanes of a dedicated pedestrian/bike path at night, a path that in many places has physical barrier that would prevent a pedestrian or bicyclist from getting out of the way from an oncoming vehicle. I think there were enough “reminders” on the bike path to infer that, if Mr. Cidron was sober enough to navigate his way for a mile on the path without having wrecked his car, he must have been sober enough to know he was on a bike/pedestrian path (or at the very least on a two-way pathway with a yellow divider in the middle which would require him to stay to one side to avoid oncoming traffic).

Sproule is absolutely right that everyone would ride with a light front and back and helmet. I was almost in tears when I read the interview with Ng’s father, who explained that he had helped his son attach reflectors to his bike just days before the collision. Imagine how that father feels now–having lost his son, wondering if it would have made a difference if he had just attached lights in addition to reflectors, or if he should never have taught his son to ride a bike in the first place. Yes, bicyclists should protect themselves, and ride safely even if it means some level of delays. But in any event, we know from that interview that Ng’s bike probably had reflectors, so unless Cidron was cruising down the path with his lights off, he should have seen Ng. Moreover, it is considered a scenic bike AND PEDESTRIAN path, so Cidron certainly can’t be excused on the ground that he anticipated the travelers he might meet that night would have had a light. No matter how intoxicated, Cidron must be presumed to anticipate the reasonable consequences of his actions, no less than if he decided to drive at cruising speed down a several block long section of the sidewalk surrounding Central Park. Those hex-paved walks have even fewer “reminders” on them than the West Side Greenway that cars are not allowed; no one would be speculating whether Ng was at fault or if Cidron’s acts were “accidental” if Cidron had struck a pedestrian Ng on Central Park’s exterior perimeter walkway.

So my view is that Cidron’s attack last Friday is just a serious and tragic example of the general attitude of New York drivers toward bicyclists (let me say again that there are of course exceptions). That does not mean that these drivers–including Cidron–are “evil” or incorrigible; they just need to be persistently reminded, counseled and educated in a non-confrontational but direct way about the risks they create for others. The Ng killing has convinced me of the imperative need to devote as much time as possible to this task and I’ll be recording and posting footage of my efforts. I urge others who bicycle regularly in the city to do the same. Here are some of the sessions I filmed this morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQCOH_xrL5E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiA0Mw9yG3M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tsDGYE2gA

I know that it’s not easy to find the time or nerve to engage in these traffic counseling sessions, and there is a risk of a violent confrontation. However you could have said the same thing back in the 1970s and 1980s about telling a rude fellow subway passenger not to use multiple seats or otherwise invade other users’ space, and now the situation has completely changed–in part because riders in general have become less afraid to assert their rights (and a lot of other reasons I don’t have time to go into now). As far as I’m concerned, the “streets renaissance” concept is about converting NYC streets from an anomic and Hobbesian contention for space (credit to RightOfWay) to a civilized realm of human interaction and cultural articulation. The only way to get from point A to point B is to start interacting and articulating–online and off.