Police in my part of the city are looking for a driver that ran down a 76-year-old man on a bicycle and drove away. The man is in the hospital and there is video of the car believed to be involved.
I would love to say I’m surprised but I’m not [insert typical joke about Asian drivers here—the stereotype is generally true but other ethnic groups are much worse]. Driving is terrible here because people get away with driving like savages in New York and the police rarely do anything about it. A woman was killed by a hit-and-run driver in downtown Flushing a few years ago. A three-year-old was run down and killed not far away and the driver was barely given a slap on the wrist.
While the quality of driving in Flushing is awful I’ve found driving to be worse in other parts of the city. I noticed it is extremely bad in uptown Manhattan where I once lived and saw an incident that I think sums up driving in New York and the police’s lack of response to it perfectly.
I saw a cab driver make a left turn onto Broadway and he not only ran a red light, he didn’t have room to merge with drivers that had just made the light, so he was started driving on the wrong side of the road towards a police car! That’s right, the cab driver was playing chicken with a patrol car of New York’s Finest and essentially won since the police didn’t seem to notice or care. Think about it – you can run a red light and drive on the wrong side of the road in front of cops here and they won’t do anything.
It’s good that the police are at least drawing the line at hit-and-run attacks on elderly cyclists, but they likely could have prevented this if they took vehicle infractions seriously.
When my truck was vandalized late last year, I reported it to the police. Three officers showed up to tell me that there was nothing they can do since a sticker on a window was not considered vandalism for some reason. I was pretty sure that if I had stuck a sticker on the window of their car in full view of them that I’d quickly find myself riding in the back of their car. But I didn’t want to waste time arguing with them when I had to get to work getting the sticker off of my car (and I did it perfectly with no residue left—take that asshole sticker vandal; I haven’t forgotten about you).
I was pulled over once by the police while driving in Flushing. It was because I made a left turn at an intersection where turns were no longer allowed. The city has created a lot of these no-turning zones and it makes driving more difficult all over the city. I didn’t plow over any pedestrians or run a red light. I’ve seen charter busses make real illegal left turns against traffic and running red lights and not be pulled over at all. To their credit, the police did not ticket me when they pulled me over, but told me not to commit that infraction again.
I hope the police catch the animal that ran down an old man on his bicycle. I hope they throw the book at him (or her) and they never drive in New York again. I’m going to continue to be one of the last civilized drivers on the streets of our city. Being right is its own reward, sometimes its only reward.
