Bikers

DANGEROUS BIKE RIDERS RUN WILD WITH IMPUNITY IN NYC

May 23, 2009 --
One Saturday afternoon in the fall of 2007, I lay picking pebbles and asphalt from my epidermis on the jogging path in front of the U.S.S. Intrepid. The top layer of skin on my entire right side, from wrist to foot, looked like it'd been removed by a sushi chef. My right foot was useless (and still hurts as I write this). The bicyclist who had just hit me at approximately the speed of a proton accelerator stood over me screaming that I had gotten in his way. The guy was encased in body armor from head to toe. If he'd had a mohawk and an Australian accent he could have been one of the bad guys in "The Road Warrior." I was in his way in the same sense that a nail is in the way of a hammer.
My editor Mackenzie Dawson, who was sent flying into the middle of an Upper West Side street by a biker going the wrong way a couple of weeks ago, will be on crutches for three months. Post photographer Lizzy Sullivan broke a rib and needed months of treatment after she was mowed down by a delivery biker. Our features writer Reed Tucker was crossing Broadway and Bleecker with the light when he was knocked down and scraped up by a bike messenger trying to slalom through a thick crowd of pedestrians. How many people in your office have similar stories?
Imagine if cab drivers behaved like bicyclists - with total disregard for red lights, the direction of traffic, and the presence of 8.3 million other people. The matter would be looked into. The occasional arrest might even be made. Yet the bike Blitzkrieg rolls unchecked. A Hunter College study this week found 37% of bikers didn't stop at a red light and 13% were going the wrong way - and that's just during the few seconds it took for the bikers to pass stationary observers. What would the numbers be like if someone actually followed bikers around?
Bikers fall into three categories:
* Messengers of Mayhem. These are young, aggressively fit men, often clad in futuristic outfits complete with face-obscuring visors that make them look like Boba Fett. They're professional bike messengers who primarily operate in Midtown during business hours. They won't stop or even slow down for red lights or for pedestrian-heavy intersections, so to warn you they're coming they've developed terrifying bird call-like whistles that make them the pterodactyls in the prehistoric fight for survival that is life in Manhattan. When you hear the whistle, though, you don't know if you're supposed to stop or keep going on a predictable trajectory. Cops watch them barrel through red lights while discussing the relative merits of French roast vs. house blend.
* Szechuan Psychos. Working for tips and of questionable immigration status, they serve in the mechanized infantry of General Tso's army. Rusted rides and dumpling physiques generally prevent these wonton warriors from building up much speed - but they prowl residential neighborhoods at night. You'll never see the one that gets you. Nor will you be able to sue him for all he's worth, unless you don't mind being paid in moo shu pork.
* Lance-a-Louts. You can tell by their high-performance bikes, their high-performance yellow-spandex racing jerseys, the high-performance dorkiness of their wee caps with precious little upturned visors: These weekenders think they're l'il Lance Armstrongs as they pedal furiously down your street on the way to the park.
And what is making the fast so furious? Here's a guess. The urologist Dr. Irwin Goldstein once said, "There are only two kinds of male cyclists - those who are impotent and those who will be impotent." Even bike seats designed to be friendly to man-parts were linked to impotence in a 2005 Journal of Sexual Science study. Guys, we know why you love your bikes. All those gleaming titanium shafts.
Question for the Bloomberg administration, which, in the interest of "going green," is encouraging the use of bikes: Are your cops, who squeezed out the squeegee men and once gave a guy in the Bronx a ticket for sitting on a milk crate, so mindful of the "broken windows theory" of cracking down on small offenses that they've forgotten about scofflaws who are actually dangerous? How about some renewed emphasis on the broken bones theory?
Kyle.Smith@nypost.com

Isn't it time that bicyclists, that is adults, have visible bicycle licenses and insurance? If you can be arrested for DUI while riding a bike, meaning it's a vehicle in the eyes of the law, why not treat them as such.