Pff. This is nothing. Back in my day, we didn’t even have the bike lanes (although he only seems to use the one coming off the bridge).
Seriously, though, as reckless and dangerous as this seems, there are a few things to keep in mind:
The other traffic he’s riding with is basically at a standstill.
He’s probably never exceeding the speed limit.
A rider has a far wider field of view than a camera and their situational awareness extends down cross-streets, parking lanes and crosswalks (you look under the fender/through the windshield of cars/trucks parked at lights to monitor the crosswalks).
There are actually very few dangers that will cross his path or vice-versa (ie. pedestrians are slow and other than startling them occasionally, he doesn’t even come close to them).
He’s also observing the unwritten rules of this riding:
Never ride against traffic (ie don’t go down a one way the wrong way)
Never ride on sidewalks or anywhere you are riding with or against foot traffic (like the west side Greenway)
Avoid certain streets/avenues. Madison is a nightmare in midtown and all of the east side busses converge there. The street is lumpy and busses aggressively pull out of the pickup lanes into traffic. The scariest situation I was ever in was on Madison when I was nearly pinched between two of them.
I imagine the job is a lot harder now with Uber/Lyft. You could always rely on someone getting out of a cab in traffic without looking and those bright yellow cars really help alert you.
ETA: I agree this guy is riding pretty recklessly and there are numerous times he should just stop or slow down and wait or take the longer route like he does when he swerved around the incoming truck to get behind it. Especially around the pedestrians. There are hundreds of people who do this every day without incident.
I mean this literally. I have experienced these blessings myself.
Last year I consecrated my cheap seven-speed bike to Hermes and asked for his aid and I suddenly found the traffic just parting for me. And found myself riding a lot faster and a lot riskier without ever making a conscious decision. I have pulled back on this because traffic here is nowhere near as slow and gridlocked as it is in NYC, there’s a lot more opportunities to get wiped out by a passing car, but I still have times when I am just in sync with the traffic and the lights and everything just gets the fuck out of my way.
Having been run down by more than one of these guys on the streets and sidewalks of NYC no thank you.
Also once in a building lobby.
This is always the excuse. What about car? Cyclists have to endanger others because cars. Twelve thousand buts about a car will kill you a bike won’t.
In the large amount of time I spent as a pedestrian in major cities. I had regular, sometimes daily close calls with cyclists and bike messengers. I can count on one hand the number of close calls I had with cars and cabs. None the less the times either actually hit me (0 for the cars, so god damn many with the bike messengers).
That doesn’t stop existing because but cars.
Cause two things can be bad. And there are more factors involved than just bikes vs cars.
But it is still ILLEGAL and DANGEROUS!!! So they are experts at breaking the law and doing dangerous things that are not only a danger to themselves but a danger to others
No judgement reserved. They are arseholes.
A cyclist who knocked over and killed a 44-year-old woman in east London last year has been cleared of her manslaughter.
But Charlie Alliston, 20, was found guilty of causing bodily harm by “wanton or furious driving”.
Alliston was riding a fixed gear bike with no front brakes when he hit mum-of-two Kim Briggs as she was crossing the road in her lunch break.
She suffered serious head injuries and died a week later in hospital.
This guy was riding a fixie, too. It wa established that the pedestrian may not have been looking, so may have shared some blame - but people have a right to expect cyclists have brakes and can stop or slow.
This is a big issue. Anyone riding on a sidewalk, even for a second should be shot.
My first time driving a car in NYC I actually hit a cyclist. I was turning left onto a narrow one-way in the East Village and he came screaming down off of the sidewalk right into me. Ok, I didn’t actually hit him as I braked in time, but he had to brake hard enough to throw himself and his heavy-ass bike lock chain up on my hood. He even tried to stink-eye me, so I made it very clear who the asshole was.
ETA: This only pertains to cities or areas with high pedestrian traffic. Per my below post, riding on the road, especially for children, is far more dangerous in rural areas.
This style of riding is both illegal and dangerous, but the messengers who do it are experts in managing disregarding the risk that arises.
People like this depend on everyone around them following the rules and being careful, so they don’t have to. They are selfish pricks who pretend other people’s safety and fear is just an externalized cost they don’t have to consider.
I’ll make you a deal: if anyone ever posts a video of themselves checking their email while driving to illustrate how cool they were for doing it, I’ll immediately condemn it.
The person upthread that was hit is not a fluke. Love the people all you want, but the riders themselves are abused by poor regulation on the courier industry, and they pass that forward by injuring pedestrians. About 1/4 of bike couriers interviewed in 2017 self-reported that they had missed work due to a ‘work-related injury’ in the previous year. You cannot get them to self-report how many other people they have caused injury to.
It is not safe to walk into a crosswalk without checking for bike couriers in my NYC neighborhood. This is not the way things should be. At the very least, our tourists and children are slow to get the memo.
I believe they are not as effective at stopping and that, at speed, emergency stopping tactics are riskier for the fixie rider than the rider with proper brakes. Which may be why they prefer not to try it.
I’ve had quite a few cyclists give me dirty looks for not yielding to them while they are barrelling down a sidewalk, while they had a dedicated bike line literally next to them and the street traffic was either low or empty. Get bent. When i rode bikes regularly i always made sure to be extra courteous and careful to pedestrians and it annoys me when i see people ride bikes like entitled toddlers.
Yes, that and there’s a certain mentality (in my experience) with fixie riders that precludes them thinking they should have to stop. It can be very cultish. I always felt I was being judged by keeping all of my gears and one brake.
Ok, I was definitely being judged. They are a snide bunch.
Man what a loaded post. So it’s ok to be a shitty person because other people do worse things is what you’re saying right? Yeah people who drive cars recklessly are pieces of shit but that doesn’t justify cyclists driving in a way that endangers others.
In small towns like mine, I will only let my children ride on the sidewalk as we live on a 35 mph highway, but they are expected to get off of their bikes and move them off the sidewalk for pedestrians. In a city this is inexcusable.
At timestamp 1:11 - 1:17 this guy intimidates the white sedan into braking so that he can pass him by blocking the drivers side mirror intentionally. This is hostile behavior, and not “riding the wave”. Fuck you Cooper Ray.
Children generally aren’t moving quickly, or erraticly enough to be a danger to others.
And even though riding on the sidewalk is illegal where I’m at (as well as every major city I’ve lived in) this is explicitly the safety advice given out by municipalities for small children on bikes. With the added detail that you should be moving opposite the flow of foot traffic so everyone can see each other coming.
This guy is typical of the kind of asshole I see on the streets everyday in NoVaDCMd.
Riders in cities like Helsinki or Amsterdam where biking is a way of life with popular adherence to civilized rules and etiquette of the road seem to behave quite well in comparison.
