Dershowitz v. #BikeNYC

I don’t want to give too much oxygen to Alan Dershowitz’ opinion piece in the Daily News in which he laments the law-breaking “culture of cycling in NYC.” Much of it is well-worn, bikelash-era material that has been easily swatted down countless times before. After I read it, my first reaction was that it felt as if it had been written in 2010 but had just dusted off after sitting in an editor’s inbox for six years.

But Dershowitz does take on a more modern development: Intro 1072, otherwise known as the LPI Bill. Here’s his take on it:

There’s also a City Council bill that would allow cyclists to ignore the stop lights for vehicles that under law they’re supposed to obey — and instead let them go through lights at more than 1,000 intersections with a “leading pedestrian interval,” when the walk signal comes first. Bad, bad idea.

Some rebuttals:

The bill would not “allow cyclists to ignore the stop lights for vehicles that under law they’re supposed to obey.” The very nature of changing the law means that the law will no longer requires people to obey those lights; they’ll have to obey different lights. (Dershowitz might have meant that current law requires people on bikes to obey “stop lights for vehicles,” but any lawyer knows that imprecise language can sink an argument very quickly.) The LPI bill is not a license for cyclists to blow through intersections. It’s a safety measure meant to give people on bikes a head start so they are not at risk of being hit by turning cars and trucks.

Dershowitz claims that allowing cyclists to go on LPIs is a “bad, bad idea” but has no evidence to support his claim. In reality, it’s a good, good idea that people are already using to stay safe.

I understand and am sensitive to the almost instinctive reaction among some New Yorkers that this bill will put pedestrians at risk of being hit by cyclists. But consider the video above. When the walk signal goes on, the people on bikes travel in a parallel direction as the people on foot. No cyclists turn, so there’s no conflict with pedestrians. It doesn’t seem bad at all.

Dershowitz goes on to do a sort of twisted version of “This isn’t Amsterdam,” in which he points to European bike riders’ lawfulness without answering his own question about what makes European bike riders obey the law:

People who love to ride bikes in New York often hold up Europe as a model. Well, my experience in Europe has been different. Bike riders — and there are many more of them in most European cities — seem to be more respectful of red lights. What are Europeans doing that we aren’t?

So what are Europeans doing that we aren’t? Among other things, they’re allowing people on bikes to get head starts on motor vehicles. Jump to 16 seconds in this video — via Copenhagenize — and you’ll see some examples of advance signals for bicyclists in action:

At the end of his opinion piece, Dershowitz encourages readers to “Put on your thinking caps and try to come up with some realistic, constructive solutions to this problem.” Bike advocates have done that. And one of the things we came up with is the LPI bill.