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Police starting crackdown on Prospect Park cyclists

prospect park cyclist
This fella ain’t too popular at the moment. via Flickr user Ahmed ElHusseiny

After a pedestrian in Central Park was killed by a cyclist using the area as his own personal velodrome, people started suggesting that cyclists going really really fast in Central Park wan’t the best idea. Unsurprisingly, that suggestion is being made for Prospect Park cyclists too. Instead of civilians doing the suggesting by shaking their fists at you, the NYPD is going to be the ones doing it, by stepping up enforcement in the park, according to Park Slope Stoop’s report from the latest meeting at the 78th Precinct.

According to the Stoop’s notes from the precinct meeting, starting on Saturday, October 4, police in Prospect Park will be setting up two moveable stop signs in the park, and when cyclists stop at them, they’ll be educated and reminded about rules involving stopping at stop signs and red lights in the park, yielding to pedestrians and sticking to the 25 miles-per-hour speed limit. If a cyclist blows past the stop sign, Captain Frank DiGiacomo said the cyclist will be pulled over and then their “education” will really begin. Nah, they’ll just get a talking to. This time.

In the future, DiGiacomo said he wouldn’t rule out stepping up enforcement to actually giving out tickets and tracking speeds with a radar gun, but said that immediate enforcement without education would just “piss off a bunch of people.” Which is reasonable. More reasonable than another meeting attendees’ idea of randomly placing road cones in the bike lane to slow people down. Anyway, watch out if you’re cycling in the park, and don’t go thirty fucking miles-per-hour maybe.

6 Comments

  1. Eugene Boronow

    “…by a cyclist using the area as his own personal velodrome” ????!
    Right from the first sentence, exaggerating and blaming (via a projection). Your bias is clear.

  2. Eugene Boronow

    A moveable stop sign aimed at only one target group? Does anyone else see how oppressive that is?
    For instance, how about black people?

  3. al fair

    and every time someone’s killed by a car they don’t even make arrests.

    I mean, I hate assjole cyclists as much as anyone. I just maybe hate the inconsistency of the NYPD more.

    • LimestoneKid

      al fair’s comment X100.

      If only every pedestrian or cyclist killed by a car or truck was met with the same uproar as the unfortunate death of Ms. Tarlov.

  4. gene99

    To paraphrase a recent quote from a cyclist which I generally agree with: ‘The minute I start obeying the traffic laws is the minute I put my life in danger.’ I.e., stopping at portable stop signs or traffic lights when there is no danger to others, is moronic, and often a risk to cyclists.

    There are sensible solutions out there, but polemics and the cops (who wouldn’t recognize a good idea about cycling if it ran them over in a crosswalk) will inevitably get in the way.

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