the west side bike path; cars as weapons
Nov. 5th, 2017 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2AmUKhu:
umruik:
a thing that’s not being said about yesterday’s attack in manhattan:
this isn’t the first time folks have been killed or injured by cars on the west side bike path and footpath. there’s a whole string of ghostbike memorials there, where cars and trucks have killed cyclists. injuries, and folks killed on foot, don’t have such obvious markers. the ones that i remember details about have all been exactly like yesterday: a car or truck turns off the west side highway, or out of one of the driveways that cross the paths, and drives down the path, hitting people.
but despite that, the city government has done nothing to make it harder for cars and trucks to get onto the path. in the last 16 years, they’ve put hundreds of antiterrorist flowerpots in the middle of sidewalks across the city - which has never seen an outdoor carbomb attack (ok, fine, there was the horsecart bomb on wall street… in 1920) - making the blocks around dozens of government buildings and businesses far less accessible to chair and scooter users. but on the west side path? at some driveways there are floppy plastic sticks. they might stop a kid on a plastic tricycle, but probably not. mostly there’s nothing.
if the deblasio or bloomberg administrations had put even a bare minimum of effort into protecting cyclists’ lives, the attack yesterday could not have happened. one bollard on each side of each driveway and curbcut would’ve prevented this - and however many other deaths and injuries have been and will be caused by cars and trucks in this known danger zone.
but no. deblasio has used his “vision zero” pedestrian safety slogan as a reason to hire hundreds of new cops, who’re deployed to do vehicular stop & frisk in gentrifying workingclass black and latinx neighborhoods like mine (take a look at fulton & nostrand the last week of any month - but do it on foot if you don’t want a ticket). and the nypd uses bike safety as part of its ‘quality of life’ attack on those same communities: there are almost no cyclists ticketed in white neighborhoods like park slope; many in black neighborhoods like east new york; and even more along the front lines of gentrification in places like crown heights and bedstuy.
no surprises here. new yorkers’ lives don’t matter to the city government, whether it’s held by a plutocrat like bloomberg or a real estate industry puppet ‘progressive’ like deblasio. they won’t keep us safe from reckless drivers, drunk offduty cops behind the wheel (like the one who hit my ex on an east village sidewalk), or folks deliberately trying to hurt people. all they’ll do is use our real lack of safety to justify expanding the same old white supremacist police apparatus that is a military force occupying our neighborhoods’ streets and schools, and a spy force infiltrating our neighborhoods’ mosques and community organizations.
umruik:
a thing that’s not being said about yesterday’s attack in manhattan:
this isn’t the first time folks have been killed or injured by cars on the west side bike path and footpath. there’s a whole string of ghostbike memorials there, where cars and trucks have killed cyclists. injuries, and folks killed on foot, don’t have such obvious markers. the ones that i remember details about have all been exactly like yesterday: a car or truck turns off the west side highway, or out of one of the driveways that cross the paths, and drives down the path, hitting people.
but despite that, the city government has done nothing to make it harder for cars and trucks to get onto the path. in the last 16 years, they’ve put hundreds of antiterrorist flowerpots in the middle of sidewalks across the city - which has never seen an outdoor carbomb attack (ok, fine, there was the horsecart bomb on wall street… in 1920) - making the blocks around dozens of government buildings and businesses far less accessible to chair and scooter users. but on the west side path? at some driveways there are floppy plastic sticks. they might stop a kid on a plastic tricycle, but probably not. mostly there’s nothing.
if the deblasio or bloomberg administrations had put even a bare minimum of effort into protecting cyclists’ lives, the attack yesterday could not have happened. one bollard on each side of each driveway and curbcut would’ve prevented this - and however many other deaths and injuries have been and will be caused by cars and trucks in this known danger zone.
but no. deblasio has used his “vision zero” pedestrian safety slogan as a reason to hire hundreds of new cops, who’re deployed to do vehicular stop & frisk in gentrifying workingclass black and latinx neighborhoods like mine (take a look at fulton & nostrand the last week of any month - but do it on foot if you don’t want a ticket). and the nypd uses bike safety as part of its ‘quality of life’ attack on those same communities: there are almost no cyclists ticketed in white neighborhoods like park slope; many in black neighborhoods like east new york; and even more along the front lines of gentrification in places like crown heights and bedstuy.
no surprises here. new yorkers’ lives don’t matter to the city government, whether it’s held by a plutocrat like bloomberg or a real estate industry puppet ‘progressive’ like deblasio. they won’t keep us safe from reckless drivers, drunk offduty cops behind the wheel (like the one who hit my ex on an east village sidewalk), or folks deliberately trying to hurt people. all they’ll do is use our real lack of safety to justify expanding the same old white supremacist police apparatus that is a military force occupying our neighborhoods’ streets and schools, and a spy force infiltrating our neighborhoods’ mosques and community organizations.
