NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 04: A cyclist rides in Central Park on April 4, 2011 in New York City. Central Park, long a center point to Manhattan`s burgeoning cycling community, has become ground zero of a battle between the New York Police Department (NYPD) and riders as the police have begun issuing tickets to cyclists for both speeding and not stopping at traffic lights. The NYPD has issued 230 tickets to cyclists for over $200 between Jan. 1 and March 15 of this year. The riders are beginning to fight back with a Facebook group and appeals to New York`s Mayor Michael Bloomberg to set traffic lights to “blinking yellow” during off-peak hours. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Photo: Spencer Platt/2011 Getty Images
Based on statistics released in an annual court report, the NYPD is much more likely to issue a ticket to someone riding a bike on a sidewalk than to someone speeding on a surface street. Streets Blog, which noticed the figures, points out that 51,186 of the 71,305 speeding tickets issued in the city in 2012 came from the highway patrol, while 19,119 came from the NYPD, which patrols surface streets. They issued some 28,000 bicycle-on-sidewalk tickets, though the precise number is hard to glean from the report’s bar graph. Since DOT puts speeding as the leading cause of traffic deaths, that’s rather unsettling.
