A few days after the NYPD announced its New Year’s resolution to start enforcing traffic laws for cyclists, Central Park’s dozens of widely ignored traffic lights emerged as the initiative’s focus. The resulting disputes have highlighted the inherent problems of expecting cyclists to obey traffic laws designed for drivers, especially on a road where there are virtually no cars.
To illustrate the absurdity of the NYPD’s cherry-picking ticketing policy, bike blogger I Cho took to the Central Park loop, with its 46 traffic lights over six miles, on his blog Chasing Wheels. He stopped to respect the red lights, filming other cyclists zipping past, and pedestrians jaywalking, in the below-embedded video, which is eerily Beckettian.
(Streetsblog, Photo by Mario Ramon/Flickr)