Bike Laws Come to Brooklyn
Most cyclists bend traffic laws, and for decades Brooklyn traffic bent for the few bikes on the road, sometimes coaxed by four-letter words and special hand signals. That all began to change in January, when the NYPD announced that a little-known Manhattan-initiated policy to start holding cyclists accountable for obeying traffic laws was expanding to Brooklyn, the symbolic and statistical epicenter of New York’s biking renaissance. Thus far results have been minimal, often accompanied by, cyclists charge, abuses of power by officers. Bike-riders say they have very little incentive to start respecting the laws if the laws won’t respect them.