by Pat Fortunato
An Open Letter to Eric Adams
Dear Mr. Mayor:
I have a quick and easy way to make you a really popular mayor—and a hero to citizens citywide who fear for their lives: Make me the Official Commissioner of Bicycle Safety Enforcement. . .
a.k.a., the Bike Bitch.
You see, your honor, I live on East 22nd Street, and I’m mad as hell about cyclists speeding, going the wrong way, and running red lights down Second Avenue.
I don’t mean to sound cranky (me, cranky?) but after several near misses, which, to be accurate, are near hits, one where I saved the proverbial little old lady standing next to me—even littler and older than my own petite superannuated person—I’m more than ready to do something about bike riders disobeying the rules.
Yes, there are rules. But they aren’t enforced
It’s A Tough Job, But Somebody’s Got to Do It!
But what exactly would the Bike Bitch do? How astute of you to ask.
I would put together a team of dedicated street walkers (perhaps I should rephrase that), whose sacred mission would be to seek out and identify bikers flouting the rules. We’d photograph them with our handy dandy iPhones, get their license numbers, and . . .
. . . wait a minute. Bikers don’t have licenses. Or plates. What they have is the smugness that comes from being green.
Now, I try to be as ecologically aware as the next person. And I get it that bikers are helping the environment by using their legs instead of fossil fuel. But the Bike Bitch must point out that doing the virtuous thing doesn’t give a body the license to do the reckless thing. And there we are, back to the fact that bikes should have license plates.
That way I, the Bike Bitch, and my dedicated posse of Bike Babes, Bike Boys, Bike Bi’s and all manner of Bi-peds would be able to go forth to give out tickets to bikers breaking the law.
Some may disagree. A few years ago, Randy Cohen, then the Ethicist for The New York Times, declared that while it’s illegal to run lights, it’s not unethical “if, and only if, no pedestrian is in the crosswalk and no car is in the intersection. This moral reasoning may not sway the police officer writing me a ticket, but it would pass the test of Kant’s categorical imperative.” Really? That’s the way he rolls?
Cohen’s column enraged me. First of all, I had to look up Kant, Immanuel that is, and check out this categorical imperative thing, which turns out to be something like the Golden Rule only way more complicated. Took forever to figure it out.
But even after exhaustive research (alright, so I just Googled German philosophers), I was unconvinced. Although Randy called himself an ethicist, The Ethicist, actually, and I am a mere pedestrian, I disagree with his Kantian cop out (no pun intended, Mr. Mayor). I say slap him with a ticket! Mr. Cohen may have perfect timing along with his finely tuned sense of right and wrong, but most cyclists, as anyone on Second Avenue can tell you, do not.
Still, Mr. I-Like-Bikes Cohen was right about one thing: There have been relatively few pedestrian fatalities caused by bicycles in NYC. To find out exactly how many, I Googled everything I could think of. Beginning with the straightforward How many deaths in NYC are caused by bicycles, I then tried Bicycle-related fatalities, got whimsical with Bikes Gone Wild, and ended up with Weren’t there anydeaths by bikes at all in this damn city?
Well, the statistics seem to be rather fuzzy and not conclusive. However! There have been a number of reported pedestrian deaths by cyclists in San Francisco, most, I must point out, to citizens of the senior variety. How many of us have to die at the hands (or feet) of a cyclist in our fair city before we pay attention? The Bike Bitch thinks that the acceptable number is zero.
And yes, yes, the Bike Bitch knows that this is, so to speak, a two-way street. Sometimes pedestrians do crazy things and walk into the path of bikes, and sometimes it’s the cyclist who gets hurt. But honestly, you really shouldn’t be taking your life in your hands just to cross the street.
So, Mayor Adams, as a concerned citizen, I am asking you (and I’m not above groveling at a later date), to please do the one thing that will define your mayoralty for all eternity: make me Official Commissioner of Bicycle Safety Enforcement.
You can call me Commish for short. But I’d prefer Bike Bitch.
Your friend,
Pat Fortunato, BB
Pat Fortunato: In a previous life, Pat was an author, editor, and publisher. These days, she’s a member of LP2, an occasional blogger (My Age is Unlisted), and a nervous pedestrian.