Streetsblog New York City

BAH! He was 17 years old, of course he had a clean license, I had a clean license the day I got mine too.

drosejr, I'm pretty sure you can drive at 16 across the US at this point.

More to the point, though, how is it that I'd be hauled off to jail if I walked down the street swinging a lead pipe over my head, not to mention if I ran headlong into a standing crowd swinging same, but if I'm tucked inside my lead pipe I can do whatever I want with impunity?

Also, compare the property damage that Kim-Bee was accused of to this property damage.

Huh? For real? Is NYPD on crack?

Embarrassing. I remember effing-up as a 17 year-old driver. I skidded off a country road at ~80 mph, and I got ticket even though there was nothing but jack rabbits and sage brush for 20 miles in either direction and that was 30 years ago. It makes me proud to have moved to the big city were folks is all civilized n stuff.

We need a simple measure to rally around; for example, a law that mandates arresting the driver if a bystander is injured as a result of the incident.

I wrote to a few people on the nyc.gov Contacts page, but that's probably as useless as anything else.

I failed my driver's test when I was 17. Failure to yield to oncoming traffic when turning left. I had never seen anyone do it, so I had no idea that I was supposed to. I retook the test a month later and passed.

You have to be 18 to drive in NYC, unless you take an approved driver's ed class, in which case you can drive at 17.

Is this the vehicular version of malpractice suits--i.e., the kid won't face charges but he'll have so many lawsuits on his hands that he won't be able to afford to drive? Or am I missing something here? it seems to me the people he plowed into are going to have some really interesting discussions with personal injury attorneys in the coming days.

"The kid won't face charges but he'll have so many lawsuits on his hands that he won't be able to afford to drive? Or am I missing something here? it seems to me the people he plowed into are going to have some really interesting discussions with personal injury attorneys in the coming days."

No fault, so we all pay. And I don't see how any 17 year old can afford to drive in NYC. My daughter wants to, but I was told the insurance would go up $1,800 per year, and I told her to let me know when she could afford it. I'm also aware that the first year or two, before you know how to control a vehicle and where to direct your attention, is the most dangerous.

They should have kept the drinking age at 18 and raised the driving age to 21 IMHO.

It does not make a lot of sense to blame hapless individuals or police departments for a structurally violent transportation system requiring immediate remedy.

The vast world-wide system of transport based on automobiles is so structurally violent, wasteful, and devastating that it demands immediate intervention as a treatable and preventable disease.

This is a broad top-down issue requiring extensive evaluation and action on the tensions between free will and large-scale obsessions with extremely negative outcomes.

Obsessions with extremely positive outcomes is where we should be heading to cause the scale-appropriate positive change.

Nanterking,
you mention a VA law, and looking it up I do in fact see the that drivers in VA are charged with this violation. Do you have anymore details on this law? Unfortunately I don't know how to find VA laws, but if i had access to this maybe i could ask my assemblyman, senator and councilman to enact a similar law.

NYPD wasn't there to witness the infraction. Okay. What if instead of using a car the 17 year-old had shot up the bus stop. Would they still claim no crime was committed?

I grew up in Florida and spent my early adulthood there. Even though I lived on opposite sides of the state I had police in two locations tell me "if a cop didn't see it, it didn't happen". I guess eyewitnesses mean nothing and all I can figure is whoever runs the NYPD police academy also runs the police academies in Florida.

I bicycle on Douglaston Parkway and the cars speed there regularly without risk of being ticketed. It's dangerous on a bike but the alternates are mostly worse.

Although, it's in the city limits, this is the suburbs. Strip malls, unsafe streets, no where to walk to. The product of a city designed by individual land developers largely unchecked by city planners. Each maximizing the use of their own plot to the detriment of the area as a whole.