Bikers Like Me Should Run Red Lights in NYC Sometimes
The city’s crackdown on cyclists is understandable but risks punishing behavior that makes streets safer.
The new normal.
Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg
New York City police have begun cracking down on bicyclists who run red lights and stop signs and commit other traffic violations, with a sharp increase in tickets issued and also a shift to giving offenders criminal citations that require a court appearance.
This is to some extent an understandable reaction to the unsettling new normal of delivery workers and others on electric bikes and scooters zooming down New York streets and bike paths at dangerously high speeds. An overdue reaction, perhaps: Statistics from the NYPD indicate that, as with traffic enforcement in general, bike enforcement activity dipped sharply early in the pandemic and had stayed low until recently.