Streetsblog New York City

The NYPD has never hesitated to park in the city's bike lanes (this van was parked on the Bowery last summer). Photo: Ben Fried

We at Streetsblog aren’t big fans of sidewalk bike riding. As we’ve said before, if the police truly must take time away from targeting the most dangerous traffic crimes, like motorist speeding and failure-to-yield, sidewalk riding is the kind of infraction for them to worry about. Pedestrian space is scarce enough in New York City.

But that doesn’t excuse this story of entrepreneurial police work out of Park Slope.

Last Friday, at least two separate cyclists were ticketed for traveling a couple car lengths on the sidewalk of 3rd Street, between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. Why were they on the sidewalk? To get around the police car blocking the bike lane, the vehicle of the very same officer doing the ticketing.

Makalé Faber-Cullen was riding home from work at around 6:00 p.m. when she hit a traffic jam on 3rd. A police car was parked in the bike lane. Cars had enough room to go around it, but not easily, and Faber-Cullen said she didn’t feel safe entering the queue of tightly-packed drivers. “There really wasn’t a passage through,” she explained, “so I went on the sidewalk for maybe 20 or 30 feet, just to go around the police car. I got back on the bike lane right after that.”

After re-entering the bike lane, however, the police officer called out to her, asked for her ID, and slapped her with a summons for riding on the sidewalk. Faber-Cullen said she’d felt a bit sheepish about making the mistake of not walking her bike the short distance, until she caught up with a family of three — two parents and a three-year-old — also on their bikes, and started speaking with the father.

“He said he’d been gotten by the same officer five minutes ago,” said Faber-Cullen. “It was infuriating.”

Pulling over a cyclist for riding on the sidewalk is one thing. Parking in the bike lane and waiting until someone inevitably goes the wrong way around? That’s another story. There wasn’t any public safety problem until the officer arrived on the scene.

Read more…

A study released today finds that two out of three motorists speed on Brooklyn’s McGuinness Boulevard [PDF], a notorious Greenpoint thoroughfare where locals have for years called on the city to take action to prevent pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths.

Since 2005, no fewer than five pedestrians and cyclists have been killed by drivers on McGuinness Boulevard. Image: CrashStat

The McGuinness Boulevard Working Group — comprised of Transportation Alternatives, Neighbors Allied for Good Growth, Community Board 1 and area residents — conducted four surveys between Norman and Nassau Avenues in February and early March. Clocking cars and trucks with a radar gun, the group found 66.25 percent of all drivers exceeding the 30-mph speed limit, with 36 percent speeding by 5 mph or more.

Surveyors found that 62 percent of all truck drivers exceeded the speed limit, with a top truck speed of 47 mph. “At that speed, a big rig would require 346 feet to reach a full stop, well over the full length of a football field,” the report reads. “Equally as alarming, the MBWG found that 34 percent of all trucks were traveling 5 mph or more above the speed limit.”

According to state DOT data cited in the report, from 2005 to 2009 there were 57 crashes on McGuinness involving pedestrians or bicyclists, or an average of nearly one crash per month. Of those, 44 crashes involved pedestrians, with one resulting in death. The remaining 13 crashes, involving cyclists, resulted in three fatalities.

Two years ago, 28-year-old Williamsburg resident Neil Chamberlain was killed by a hit-and-run driver as he walked near the intersection of McGuinness and Calyer Street. In December 2009, cyclist Solange Raulston, 33, was struck and killed by the driver of a flatbed truck at McGuinness and Nassau Avenue. The driver was not charged.

Despite outrage over those deaths, and a 2010 study that chronicled rampant law-breaking, McGuinness is still a poorly designed street dominated by speeding drivers.

“This study is a call to action that must be taken seriously by Ray Kelly’s NYPD,” said TA’s Paul Steely White. “The NYPD must step up enforcement of speeding in general, and in particular on McGuinness Boulevard. Until they do, everyone will be risking their lives any time they’re near this dangerous road.”

“Speeding along McGuinness Boulevard has been a problem for as long as I can remember and it’s getting worse,” said City Council Member Steve Levin. “We have to get speeding under control for the safety of bicyclists, pedestrians and other drivers.”

McGuinness Boulevard runs through the 94th Precinct. To voice your concerns about traffic safety directly to Deputy Inspector Terence Hurson, the commanding officer, head to the next precinct community council meeting. The 94th Precinct council meetings happen at 7:00 p.m. on the first Wednesday of the month at the Church of the Ascension at 122 Java Street. Call the precinct at 718-383-5298 for information.

Brooklyn City Council Member Steve Levin wants NYPD to explain the way it investigates traffic crashes, and is preparing legislation that would bring department procedures in line with state law and significantly increase the number of officers trained to deal with cases involving serious injury and death.

Steve Levin

In a letter to Commissioner Ray Kelly [PDF], Levin questions the practice of deploying the Accident Investigation Squad only in instances where someone is killed or is believed likely to die. Currently, crashes that result in injuries that are not considered fatal are handled by precinct cops who aren’t trained to conduct full-scale investigations.

Delaying AIS engagement in fatality cases in which injuries were initially not thought to be life-threatening has severely compromised subsequent police work. When a doctor told officers that cyclist Stefanos Tsigrimanis wasn’t in mortal danger after being hit by a driver in Brooklyn, AIS called off its investigation and did not return to the scene for 46 days. Because NYPD was unaware that pedestrian Clara Heyworth had died after she was struck by an unlicensed driver, AIS was not dispatched until at least three days after the crash, as physical evidence slipped away.

According to testimony presented at the February City Council hearing on NYPD traffic enforcement, AIS protocol also violates state traffic code. Writes Levin:

According to Article 22, Section 603-A of the New York Vehicle and Traffic Rules, a detailed investigation into a vehicle accident must be conducted when an accident “results in serious physical injury or death to a person.” The section specifically defines “serious physical injury” as that which is already defined in section 10.00 of the penal code. Section 10.00 of the penal code defines “serious physical injury” as physical injury which “creates a substantial risk of death, or which causes death or serious protracted disfigurement, protracted impairment of health or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ. “

As this type of investigation is only authorized to be carried out by AIS and as AIS limits itself to the investigations of those accidents in which one has either died or is deemed likely to die instead of all accidents that result in serious injury, I do not see how the NYPD can reasonably claim to be in compliance with Article 22, Section 603-A of the New York Vehicle and Traffic Rules.

Read more…

Video footage indicates that NYPD was wrong to conclude that cyclist Mathieu Lefevre caused the October 2011 crash that took his life, according to Steve Vaccaro, the attorney representing Lefevre’s family.

Last week, the Lefevres and Vaccaro saw video of the crash in its entirety for the first time. In a letter delivered Tuesday to Supreme Court judge Peter Moulton, Vaccaro says NYPD purposefully did not disclose that the video, which at first did not appear to match the police description of how the crash unfolded, required specific decoding software to function properly.

Photo by Chieu-Anh Le Van via Support Justice for Mathieu Lefevre

Lefevre was hit by the driver of a crane truck making a right turn at the intersection of Morgan Avenue and Meserole Street in East Williamsburg. The driver kept going, and was identified as Leonardo Degianni after police found the truck. Based on video of the crash, NYPD Accident Investigation Squad detective Gerard Sheehan wrote in his closing report that, though Degianni did not signal before turning, Lefevre “should not have been passing on the right side.” Degianni was cited for failing to signal a right turn and failure to exercise due care. Nevertheless, Sheehan attributed the crash to “bicyclist error.”

“The suggestion that Mathieu Lefevre was in any way at fault for the fatal crash demonstrates once again the lack of understanding of the rules of the road among NYPD officers, including, remarkably, members of the Accident Investigation Squad,” says Vaccaro. “NYPD seems to be relying on VTL Section 1123 in claiming that Lefevre should not have attempted to pass the truck on the right. But Section 1123 expressly allows passing on the right when there is enough unobstructed room in the roadway for two lanes of traffic.

“Having viewed the video recording of the crash, it is clear that there was room not only for a lane of motor vehicle traffic (the one the truck was in) and a lane of bicycle traffic to pass safely on the right, but there was in fact enough room for two lanes of motor vehicles, which is more than Section 1123 requires in order for a cyclist to pass a motor vehicle legally and safely on the right.”

Vaccaro’s letter says that despite repeated entreaties, NYPD withheld information on how to make the videos work for nearly a month, while refusing to allow Vaccaro to view the original files. Vaccaro was informed of the technical requirements in the wake of widespread media coverage surrounding the testimony of Erika Lefevre, Mathieu’s mother, at the February City Council hearing on NYPD traffic enforcement.

Not only was the video cited by Sheehan as proof that Degianni was unaware of the collision and should not be charged for leaving the scene, it served as NYPD’s basis for blaming Lefevre.

“The truck driver violated the law not only in failing to signal his turn, but in failing to make the turn as close as practicable to the right-hand curb, as he was required to do under VTL Section 1160(a),” says Vaccaro. “The truck driver appears to have been on top of the double yellow median on Morgan Avenue prior to making the right turn onto Meserole. For this reason, there was ample room for Lefevre to attempt to pass the truck on the right pursuant to Section 1123. Lefevre would have been prohibited from crossing the double-yellow median to pass the truck on the left, and since the driver didn’t signal or in any other way indicate he was about to turn, Lefevre is completely blameless for this crash.”

Last week Brooklyn City Council Member Steve Levin went out to Atlantic Avenue and clocked 88 percent of drivers breaking the speed limit. Atlantic is one of the deadliest streets in Brooklyn, recently tying for the borough’s top spot in the annual Tri-State Transportation Campaign ranking of the region’s most dangerous roads. And yet, as Peter Kaufman pointed out on Ink Lake yesterday, the 84th Precinct, which includes the western segment of Atlantic, issued zero speeding tickets in January.

Aftermath of a crash on Atlantic Avenue in 2007. Photo: Montag007/Flickr via Gothamist

Levin is sending the results of his radar gun survey to Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. He might also want to pass on the cover story in the latest issue of the FBI National Academy Associates magazine – “The Future of Speeding Enforcement.” Author Max Santiago, former deputy commissioner with the California Highway Patrol, notes that automated speed enforcement (ASE) could prevent tens of thousands of traffic deaths and save billions in economic costs in the United States every year.

He describes a system that law enforcement tech-heads and street safety advocates can both get behind, and it sounds tailor-made for speedways like Atlantic Avenue where law-abiders are few and far between:

The key element in any future ASE system is likely to be a LIDAR (light detection and ranging) speed detection system. Such systems transmit coherent infrared light pulses, measure the time of flight for the pulses reflected by moving vehicles, then calculate and display the speed of the target. Unlike radar, which uses a wide microwave beam, the LIDAR beam is narrow and focused, which permits officers to single out any vehicle and immediately determine its speed.

In an automated speed enforcement system, LIDAR could be combined with multi-pulse radar used in military weapons to track multiple moving targets. This combination could quickly and accurately detect all speeding vehicles on a given roadway. Data from navigation systems with embedded GPS information and vehicle diagnostic technology could also be wirelessly mined and collected to establish a vehicle’s speed.

Read more…

Here’s another shot of the NYPD bike corps in glorious action. Our tipster says this driver was nabbed after running a red on Ninth Avenue near 34th Street.

As the saying goes, twice is coincidence, three times is a trend. A Streetfilms t-shirt to the next reader who sends in a pic of pedal-powered NYPD traffic enforcement.

Last week we reported how the botched NYPD investigation into the death of Brooklyn cyclist Stefanos Tsigrimanis was initially compromised due to a department policy that keeps the Accident Investigation Squad from working cases unless the victim is believed likely to die. When an emergency room doctor told police that Tsigrimanis was not fatally injured, AIS called off its investigation, and did not return to the scene for 46 days.

Clara Heyworth. Photo via Gothamist

Like Rasha Shamoon, Tsigrimanis was found culpable based on the word of the driver who killed him. His case also resembles that of Clara Heyworth, a pedestrian fatally struck by a driver who stands to benefit from NYPD’s slipshod crash investigation protocols, including the “likely to die” rule.

At approximately 1:50 a.m. on Sunday, July 10, 2011, Heyworth, a 28-year-old who worked as marketing director for the publishing house Verso Books, was hit as she crossed Vanderbilt Avenue in Fort Greene. She died from her injuries the following day.

Driver Anthony Webb, 43, was charged with a raft of violations, including operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, operation of a motor vehicle by an unlicensed driver, reckless driving, reckless endangerment, and a top charge of assault. But Heyworth’s husband Jacob Stevens, who witnessed the crash, told Gothamist in February that Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes won’t be following through with criminal charges against Webb.

To begin with, prosecutors told Stevens that Webb’s breath test results are probably not admissible in court because the 88th Precinct had not performed a required calibration of the machine for four years. More important is that AIS did not go to the scene until at least three days after the crash, and only then after Stevens informed the Brooklyn DA’s office that his wife had died. Said Stevens:

Read more…

Submitted by Streetsblog reader Hilda, this was the scene at Eighth Avenue near West 44th Street this morning. Writes Hilda: “And I will note that the cop on the bike HAD TO LEAVE THE BIKE LANE to go around the cab before pulling out his ticket book.”

We can only assume none of his colleagues were watching.

Via Bowery Boogie, two photos of bike-riding NYPD officers writing up two other cyclists for running red lights at the corner of Bowery and Delancey.

The Good: NYPD officers on bikes are not a sight you see every day. Bicycles can help police get around better in heavily congested areas and break down officers’ windshield perspective.

The Bad: The NYPD continues to target cyclists in its traffic enforcement efforts while ignoring more dangerous threats. In 2011, the police handed out almost 50,000 tickets to New York’s cyclists, but just over 25,000 to truck drivers.

The Ugly: Bowery and Delancey, where the cops are handing out these tickets, is one of the area’s most dangerous intersections. Over five years, 82 people were injured in traffic crashes at the intersection, and one year ago last week, a tractor-trailer driver killed a pedestrian at the corner. Here, even more than usual, the police need to be focused on improving safety, not hitting quotas or making a statement. Read more…

Meilan Jin was hit at Northern Boulevard and Union Street by a city bus driver who did not stop. No charges were filed. Image: Google Maps

The crashes that killed two pedestrians since Wednesday morning follow a string of incidents last week that resulted in the deaths of five vulnerable street users. In all, seven pedestrians and one cyclist are known to have died in New York City traffic since February 7. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, meanwhile, couldn’t be troubled to attend the City Council hearing last week examining NYPD traffic enforcement and crash investigations.

On Wednesday at around 8:15 a.m., 22-year-old Meilan Jin was hit by the driver of a city bus making a right turn at Northern Boulevard and Union Street in Flushing. The driver kept going. According to Transportation Alternatives’ Crashstat, 101 pedestrians and cyclists were injured and one pedestrian was killed at Northern and Union between 1995 and 2009.

At 1:15 this morning, Willie Gonzalez, 25, was walking south on St. Nicholas Avenue at 125th Street in Manhattan when he was hit by a westbound city bus driver. The Times reports that no charges were filed in either case.

Also this month:

• February 14: Jean Jeanniot, 71, was hit by two drivers on Flatbush Avenue near East 26th Street while on the way to meet his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day. One driver fled the scene. No charges were reported against the second driver.
• February 13: An unnamed 67-year-old woman was hit at Fulton and Crescent streets in Cypress Hills. “No criminality was suspected.“
• February 12: Luis Rosado, 75, was killed by a hit-and-run driver at Broadway and West 138th Street, one block from his home.
• February 12: Cyclist Ronald Tillman, 29, was killed by a hit-and-run driver on Howard Avenue in the Grymes Hill area of Staten Island.
• February 11: Dawn Affoumani, 42, was killed by a hit-and-run driver as she crossed the intersection of White Plains Road and Story Avenue in the Soundview section of the Bronx.
• February 7: Lizardo Aldana, 89, was struck in the crosswalk at 21st Avenue near 31st Street in Astoria. The driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and DWI.

Sadly, with approximately 160 pedestrian and cyclists deaths per year, a spate of fatalities like this is not unusual. They can be expected to continue as long as Ray Kelly’s NYPD and city district attorneys keep letting drivers off the hook for deadly crashes that don’t involve alcohol (it’s pretty clear that leaving the scene does not actually qualify as a slam-dunk offense).

Even though traffic crashes have killed more than 3,700 people in NYC over the last decade, NYPD told the City Council last week that the department doesn’t have the resources to beef up traffic enforcement and crash investigations. But apparently police do have the resources to conduct a wide-ranging surveillance operation of Muslim communities in Newark, and they also have the resources to more than double the number of stop-and-frisks since 2004.

With police and prosecutors refusing to do their jobs as the traffic death toll mounts, action by the council can come none too soon.