On Friday evening, at 5:17 according to the Post, Brooklyn resident and inter-borough cyclist Reynaldo Morales collided with visiting Salt Lake City 7-year-old Porter Nielsen (pictured, horizontal) on the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Brooklyn side, causing the child to be placed in a neck brace and carried dramatically to an ambulance and from there driven to Bellevue Hospital. The Brooklyn Bridge on a Friday evening, of course, is pitch black and packed with pedestrians and bike commuters—both Morales and the Nielsens were in their respective lanes when the physics-defying crash occurred—so this type of incident isn’t especially surprising, and frankly it’s amazing that it doesn’t happen more often.
Maybe if it did the city would finally give cyclists a lane on bridges’ car decks instead of ghettoizing us to being a perpetual nuisance to pedestrians. The borough’s president and biggest bike-hater has yet to release his inevitable statement on this potent local-vs-tourist scenario. All parties concerned behaved amicably, Nielsen’s injuries aren’t serious and no charges were filed against Morales.
(photo: Chad Rachman/NYPost)