If you wonder whether bikes must follow the same traffic rules as cars, the answer is yes. And the New York Police Department has been doing a crackdown to drive home the point. An unnamed source told the New York Post that police have issued 14,000 tickets to biker riders this year, up 50 percent from the same period last year.
The most common citation is running a red light. Another common one is riding on the sidewalk. Apparently, some cyclists see the crackdown as oppressive, and they've complained about the harsh treatment to the blog Transportation Nation.
One person argued that cyclists should be allowed to do an “Idaho stop,” in which a bike can roll through a stop sign or a stop light if there are no pedestrians in the crosswalk. I have no idea what the State of Idaho has to do with that.
So bikers in San Diego… beware! This trend may move west. Check out Transportation Nation’s interactive map to see who’s getting stopped, and for what, in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
