No, Seriously, It's Not Safe to Ride in the Bike Lane

Cop = fail. This man = win.

He lost me at "I'm doing the world a favor"

Get off your high horse. Or I guess your penny farthing. Whatever.

it's also unsafe to ride a bike without a helmet...

That had to hurt. At least twice.

I love the Neistat Brothers. I used to watch all their stuff. It's good to see they're still good.

wait, you got a ticket for not obeying the law? amazing!

ya know, sometimes its much safer to drive my car on the median, so, I shouldn't get a ticket for that!

@mikecc - the man in the video never broke the law. Here is the relevant portion of NYC code:

34 RCNY § 4-12(p) Bicycles.
(1) Bicycle riders to use bicycle lanes. Whenever a usable path or lane for bicycles has been provided, bicycle riders shall use such path or lane only except under any of the following situations:
(i) When preparing for a turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.

cont. from prior comment (and please do pretend this is bold allcaps):

(ii) When reasonably necessary to avoid conditions (including but not limited to, fixed or moving objects, motor vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, pushcarts, animals, surface hazards) that make it unsafe to continue within such bicycle path or lane.

I was impressed by his determination after crash #2. I was laughing when he spilled into the truck. And if it wouldn't have caused bodily injury, I almost wish he'd crashed that cop's windshield.

So technically this guy could have gotten out of the ticket by showing up to court and saying the lane was obstructed. But he shouldn't have gotten the ticket in the first place. What about the cars and trucks parked in the bike lane. Isn't there a law against that. When they were giving him a ticket the rider even commented on the DOUBLE PARKED car that was blocking the bike lane. But the cop ignored that infraction. Why because they knew the car driver probably wouldn't bother to pay the ticket and figured the bike rider would.

Pompous people like this guy make me crazy. Ride in the bike lane! Get off and walk the bike around the obstacles. What's so hard to understand about it?

I wish the cop had hauled him in. Bloody green scofflaw!

I actually thought it was more hilarious that no one bothered to come to his aid when he did crash. They all just glanced at him and kept walking.

Awesome! Loved it. Good job.

He never said he was avoiding an obstacle when he got his ticket. I'm guessing he wasn't doing such, and then changed the subject to make this video pertinent and to make it seem his ticket was unjustified. He also lost me at "doing the world a favor".

He should be glad he has bike lanes at all. In this part of country the pompous bikers don't have any, they just decide to block traffic as they feel is their god given right.

Yeah, those pompous bikers in bike lanes. Reducing traffic, and not using fossil fuels, who do they think they are?

Ok seriously, bike riders have the LEGAL right to an entire lane of traffic. And really what vehicle driver is in such a hurry and so tight-a-s-s-ed that they get angry at someone on 25 lbs of metal who might slow them down 5-10 seconds before they can pass? Really? Look, most McDonalds drive throughs are open 24 hours a day now, so don't worry, they will still have your big macs and diet sodas ready for you.

Yes I have a problem with bikers having a LEGAL right to the entire lane. In this suburban area where 55 mph two lane double yellow roads are common on winding streets avoiding them is playing a high stakes video game where losing means someone's death. If I were to drive my CAR at 20 mph and impede traffic on these roads, I would get a ticket, but the bikes have some god awful right to clog everything thing up. Many times you have to break the law by going over the double yellow to get by, or cars have to pull over on the grass to let some poor other automobile pass the flock of moving targets in spandex on the other side. I pity for the drivers who curse you on the road.

Even when the bike lane is clear, around here it's just not safe to ride in the bike lane. I can't count how many times I've almost been hit by cars who turn out in front of me without looking, by cars who put on their turn signals 3 inches from the intersection. By cars who think that the rules of a 2 or 4 way stop don't apply to cyclists: just run them over!

Nothing in the driving test I took said that pedestrians and cyclists are second class citizens; you're not supposed to go running them over. Yet, it seems that many drivers apparently took an entirely different test.

At least on the wonderfully well-kept and underused sidewalks here, I'm safe from those drivers who drift entirely too close to the bike lane.

And there are at least a few drivers out there who have the decency to give cyclists the right of way, even when they aren't required to do so.

oh me oh my.
Well- This guy is probably a 'mostly-obey-the-rules' bicyclist. But there are an awful lot of them around who ignore the law whenever they feel like it. I have been run down on the sidewalk (where else is a pedestrian supposed to walk?) by bikers; I've watched them dart between lanes of traffic to the front of a line of cars stopped at a light; I've watched them ignore the light altogether; they weave and swerve. I don't know. It's a good thing to be more environment conscious. But I've seen a lot of bicyclists who are endangering themselves and a whole lot of other people, too. I don't enjoy sharing the road (or the sidewalk) with them.

In my city the counsel just past a bylaw that requires drivers to grant a minimum of 6 feet clearance for cyclists. The development began a few years ago when the province introduced new e-bike laws which allow people to operate e-bikes without a license or registration, granted the e-bikes do not exceed 32 mph. After one year the complaints from drivers of e-bike users clogging roads became common-place and the counsel had to rethink it's bike laws. Originally they had institute a ban from riding them on the sidewalks, but because we are a Canadian city that sees a lot of cold-weather in the winter, come spring the roads and especially the bike lanes are generally riddled with pot-holes. The sheer danger presented by these pot-holes demands that cyclists and e-bikers stray from the bike-lane quite frequently, hence the need for 6 feet of clearance. I remember taking my e-bike to work one day and just about riding into a hole that was 3 feet in diameter and whose bottom was too deep to see.

Correction: 32 KPH

What type of lame biker allows themselves to get stopped by a cop in a car? Especially in a big city just chock full of alleys the bike can navigate but a car can't. This has staged written all over it.

mikecc: "ya know, sometimes its much safer to drive my car on the median, so, I shouldn't get a ticket for that!"

Shemp: "Ride in the bike lane! Get off and walk the bike around the obstacles. What's so hard to understand about it?"

So when there's an obstacle (say, a broken down car or some construction) in front of you, and a double-yellow line on the road, will you just stay there forever?

No, you won't, and you don't even have to. Just as the rider can leave the bike lane to avoid obstacles.

The video didn't prove his point to me. No reasonable person would have crashed in any of those situations and no cop would ticket you for taking a 2 second detour around an obstacle in the bike lane. If he was simply avoiding an obstacle in the bike lane he could explain that and get out of the fine but I suspect he was just riding in a regular lane.

I also don't understand how he was pulled over, just turn around and ride away.