Monday Outrage

With the April Fools shenanigans I missed this news from New York City: Rodney Seymour was doored by a truck driver while cycling home from work. When Seymour insisted on an accident report from the responding NYPD officer, the policeman got upset and issued Seymour two traffic tickets — one for riding without a bell and another for lacking side wheel reflectors — before apologizing to the truck driver for the inconvenience and letting him go without a ticket.

The city’s pro-bike policies will have trouble gaining momentum if invalid and trivial infractions, like riding without reflectors or a bell, get stricter enforcement from NYPD than potentially deadly actions like dooring.

Seymour’s lawyer is correct that New York’s vehicle code on bicycle equipment only specifies wheel reflectors on new bicycles:

1236 (d) Every new bicycle shall be equipped with reflective tires or, alternately a reflex reflector mounted on the spokes of each wheel, said tires and reflectors to be of types approved by the commissioner.

Read more at Streetsblog. H/T to Austin on Two Wheels.

2 Comments

  1. The article also mentions his bike was stolen while he went to the hospital.

    I bet we could raise the funds to get this guy a new set of wheels…

  2. It seems to me that when a police officer does this sort of “I'm giving you a ticket for wasting my time” thing, they should be suspended without pay. I can't think of a more “I'm not here to serve” action than this.

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