New York City cyclists can't escape the ticketing blitz in New Jersey: the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police handed out at least 33 summonses to cyclists on Route 9W yesterday. “I’ve been racing 34 years. This is my first ticket,” a Queens resident and ticketed cyclist told The Record.
The paper says that cops were out on the popular biking route for four hours, ticketing cyclists for "speeding, not wearing a helmet, or biking through a red light." It's unclear what sort of helmet citation the police handed out, as it's legal for cyclists over the age of 17 to ride without one. Sound familiar?
“The [bicycle] details are to enforce violations of the rules and create awareness,” police chief Michael Coppola said, adding that his officers have clocked cyclists going as fast as 48 mph downhill.
Two weeks ago a 55-year-old cyclist from Queens was killed in the Alpine Hill area after falling from her bike. Authorities say speed may have been a factor in the crash.
The cyclists' complaints mirror the objections raised here in the five boroughs: plenty of cyclists break the law, but so do motorists, whose machines are far more dangerous. “I think the cycling community has to get better at being responsible,” a Manhattanite biking the route told the paper. “But they should enforce the [motor vehicle] speed limit, too.”
The police chief said that only 1% of the 20,000 tickets his agency hands out each year go to cyclists, and that he plans on buying bikes for a new bicycle unit he's opening in 2014: “I think it would make the biking community think we’re more on the same level."
