Rally at One Police Plaza – Wednesday at Noon

If you bike in New York City or simply cross the street on foot every day, I believe there’s no more important place for you to be than at One Police Plaza Wednesday, October 26 at noon.

Mathieu Lefevre’s parents will join Transportation Alternatives and Neighbors Allied for Good Growth outside Commissioner Kelly’s 1 Police Plaza office tomorrow at 12 pm to call for his police force to enforce the traffic laws and commit to zero tolerance of dangerous driving.

I know of no other area in life where one can be involved in another human being’s death and not have one’s role in that tragedy not face immeasurable scrutiny by the authorities.  A school bus driver who leaves a child on a bus accidentally after his shift is over will lose his job, face child endangerment charges, and leave his school district vulnerable to a costly lawsuit, even if the child is physically unharmed.  “I didn’t know he was there,” would be no defense.  But a truck driver who runs over a cyclist and makes the same claim is free to get behind the wheel immediately without so much as a point on his license.  Call me crazy, but not killing another person should be the minimum standard by which one gets to retain the privilege of driving.

Right now, no one can know exactly what happened last week.  But that’s exactly the point.  An organization that treated cyclists as human beings — each one someone’s son or daughter — would not act the way the NYPD does when another death occurs, conducting a spurious investigation and calling it a day so soon.  As Lefevre’s ex-wife said in a statement, “Almost all of the information we have is what we have read in the newspaper.  The fact that we have not been properly informed adds insult to injury.  The family is trying to cope with this tragedy, but it seems nearly impossible given the lack of information. We can’t bear the fact that other families have likely been given the same treatment and other families are bound to be treated this way if nothing changes.”

Please come if you can make it.

I Don’t Get It, Mathieu Lefevre