NYC cyclists are a bunch of hoodlums

[PamNY]

Interesting study done by sociology and urban planning students at Hunter College.

I was surprised at the gender inequity.

Pam

[Grog]

I'm neither surprised by the results or by the disparity between male and female behaviour. Women, if I remember correctly, tend to be more mindful of rules of all kinds, and less likely to break them. They are also thought to be harder to corrupt (ex: prison guards).

I am really perplexed about what should be done about traffic rules for cohabiting vehicles like bikes and cars. There is obviously a problem, but it's hard for me to think of a simple and reasonable solution.

On a tangentially related note: I really like this blog. http://www.howwedrive.com/ which is full of insight on things like that. I'm sure the study will surface there sooner than later.

[fatbottomedgurl]

Seems to me hoodlums is a strong term. Scofflaw, maybe. A hoodlum snatches a purse as they run the red.

[Eden]

I'm often a bit bothered by studies like this one.... I won't dispute that cyclists do often break traffic laws *but* I highly doubt that it is more often than auto drivers... though perhaps in different ways. So to set aside cyclists and point out how much they break the law without saying well, other road users break the law at such and such a rate too only serves to allow drivers to believe that we are all some kind of horrible punks that *deserve* all the grief they give us and the "lessons" they attempt to teach us......

I don't advocate breaking traffic laws - we all need to follow the same rules to be predictable and stay safe. The big difference is that motor vehicles are so much more dangerous. We generally only endanger ourselves if we do stupid things - when motorists do stupid things other people die. I don't think anyone should ever be allowed to forget that.

[smilingcat]

These kinds of study really bothers me. Okay so lets compare other form of drivers.

Motorcycle drivers (crotch rocket, hogs) most hog riders I've seen have modified the exhaust system for that elusive loud obnoxious noise.
rice burners routinely are going 100MPH on Southern California freeway. They cover a mile in just over 30 seconds or 120MPH.

Car drivers routinely drive at unsafe speed, tail gating, talking on cell phone (hands free only everything else is banned), single occupant car in car pool lane...

Lets get real. Lets see the result of motorcycle riders. Lets see the result of car drivers.

---------------
Oh everyone I know calls them rice burners. didn't know it was racist term. Both my parents are Japanese (me a pure bred) still doesn't give me a license to use a racist term so fixed it to "crotch rocket"

I think it's just as bad.

[OakLeaf]

Yikes Smilingcat, I assume you weren't aware that "rice burner" is a racist term...

(I do hear what you're saying, though, about branding a whole group of people with the very noticeable actions of a few.)

W/R/T NYC riders though, there's another thing going on here. I don't think anyone who's never visited NYC and seen the traffic for h/hself, should say anything at all about NYC traffic. It's a thing unto itself, markedly different from traffic in any other city I've ever seen (including Paris, Milan and Bologna, just to pick three where the rules are very different from, say, Washington DC, Atlanta, south Florida, Chicago or San Francisco). I think every locale has a set of unwritten traffic rules that supersede the written laws (but it's been way too long since I've driven in southern California). "Outsiders" learn these rules at their peril, but more to the point, aren't really qualified to discuss their niceties.

[Biciclista]

this link:

http://washcycle.typepad.com/home/20...th-of-the.html

shows that not just cyclists are breaking laws, but motorists and pedestrians too. And in which percentages.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

NYC driving is traffic pandemonium. You can't turn your head without seeing cabs, trucks, pedestrians, cyclists, and regular cars all blocking lanes, double-parking, jumping/cutting in front of you with no warning, weaving, waiting out red lights in the middle of an intersection, jumping curbs....breaking the traffic laws in every direction. Pedestrians too. you really have to practice defensive biking if you want to stay alive. Being law-abiding doesn't always work well in that situation I'm afraid. You cannot be overly timid, either.
(all this from direct observation and from talking with my brother who uses his bicycle for all his getting around and commuting in Manhattan- he has no car.

[Biciclista]

a quote from that article:

Let's knock that down first.

Many drivers break the law. I would almost be willing to say that every driver breaks the law, but let's stick with many. How?

First of all, they speed.

Driver compliance with speed limits is poor. On average, 7 out of 10 motorists exceeded the posted speed in urban areas. Compliance ranged from 3 to 99 percent. Compliance tended to be worse on low-speed roads, better on roads with prima facie limits, or where the speed limit was based on an engineering study. Better does not mean good compliance; less than 10 percent on [sic] the sites had more than 50-percent obedience with the posted speed

In DC, speed cameras were set up at several locations. They recorded 170 infractions per hour (that's one every 21 seconds for all you poli-sci majors).

And they run red lights

From August 1999 through May 2008, the automated red-light enforcement program has, at 49 locations, resulted in 741,780 notices of infraction.

And stop signs

The overall compliance rate for stop signs was 22.8 per 100 vehicles, ranging from 1.4 per 100 for bicycles to 46.2 per 100 for commuter vans. Compliance increased to 53 per 100 vehicles when pedestrians were present in the crosswalk. [WC: Okay, we're both guilty here, but the cars aren't even stopping half the time. More on this below.]

They illegally park

There were 1.67 million parking tickets written last year, up from 1.3 million in 2001, according to statistics provided by the D.C. Department of Public Works (DPW).

They double park and park in the bike lane.


They ignore toll booths

Court records show that among the first cases in Fairfax County last week, five motorists each had fines topping $10,000. A dozen more face penalties higher than $4,000.

They drive drunk and distracted, this being a mere drop in the bucket.

Through October, officers issued 9,484 tickets this year to motorists driving with a cell phone in their hand, according to police statistics.

The number of citations already issued this year is 13 percent more than the 8,358 issued last year. In 2005, police issued 7,523...


so how are the NYC bike hoodlums worse than the hoodlums in the cars?

[7rider]

this link:

http://washcycle.typepad.com/home/20...th-of-the.html

shows that not just cyclists are breaking laws, but motorists and pedestrians too. And in which percentages.

Thanks, Mimi.
I was just going to post to that very piece.

[fatbottomedgurl]

Oak Leaf-

I live in so cal and I really don't think rice burner is a racist term (I work with college students). We're talking about cheap cars (not just Japanese but Euro and American) that 16 year old kids add a loud stereo, a fart-producing muffler, bolt-on spoiler, and a bunch of stickers to make it look fast, which it is not.

Not to be confused with a tuner car, which is generally Japanese and fast enough to curl your hair as it flies down the 405.

But this is a cycling forum...

[PamNY]

so how are the NYC bike hoodlums worse than the hoodlums in the cars?

Gosh, I'd never even entertained the idea that drivers of cars would obey laws, at least not consistently. BTW, the stop sign compliance rate in the article you posted looks good to me.

I posted this because it's interesting on a serious level, and on a non-serious level it's downright comical to attempt to quantify the lawless behavior which characterizes cyclist behavior in Manhattan. The headline alone made me fall down laughing.

I break traffic laws all the time. I'm a careful driver, but my jaywalking skills are second to none, and I commit most of the bike sins (but carefully, and usually on weekends). That's just the way things are.

Pam

[PamNY]

waiting out red lights in the middle of an intersection,

I actually did that last summer. I am such a conservative driver, but it was an awful day -- I was helping clear the third floor walk-up apartment of a friend who had died, it was ninety degrees and humid, and the Gay Pride parade was underway, making traffic horrible. I felt so justified and yet so guilty.

Pam

[PamNY]

Lets get real. Lets see the result of motorcycle riders. Lets see the result of car drivers.

Smilingcat, this should make you happy. Of course, lots of people have a huge emotional investment in believing their city has the worst drivers.

I don't have data about motorcycles, but I have heard city officials quoted as saying they aren't a big factor in pedestrian fatalities. I hate them because of the noise and feel they should be banned from cities (especially mine).

I'm really surprised at the responses to my post. I personally think it's possible to be a very safe cyclist while breaking lots of laws. I do get upset when I see inconsiderate cyclists, especially when children are at risk of being hit, but pointing out that cars also hit children doesn't help, and seems rather childish to me.

I love hearing about what cycling is like in areas where I haven't cycled (which is most of the world). I'm sure it will make me a safer and more skilled cyclist when I travel. I have even copied some of the posts here. I realize most people aren't planning to cycle in Manhattan, but if they were it would be helpful to them to know in advance that bikers (especially commercial ones) aren't going to behave the way you might expect them to.

Pam

[Fala]

"establishing a pecking order, with pedestrians on top, followed by cyclists, followed by motor vehicles"

This makes me laugh - I think the motor vehicles think they are on top, then the pedestrians and us cyclists are on the bottom. I've had pedestrians walk so as to prevent me from cycling down my bike lane and then yell at me telling me it was fault that I had to go around them. Baffling. The BS that you have to put up with as a cyclist (I'm speaking as a commuter here) in NYC is ridiculous. I do believe that there is a very specific order to the traffic here, and one can tell when someone not from here is trying to drive (a car/suv/etc) in the city. On the whole, cabs are pretty good though they break more laws than I think all the cyclists combined and then some.

Yeah, I break traffic laws, I do it so I don't end up getting hurt or run over by someone driving a car and not paying attention, or someone trying to prove that they are bigger and badder than I am on my little teal bike.