Cone Conundrum & Cyclist-Civilian Collision Conveys Conspiracy Conjecture

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

According to The Brooklyn Paper, there has been yet another cyclist-pedestrian collision, leaving a poor old man with a broken hand. The accident occured on Saturday around 4PM on West Lake Drive near the Vanderbilt Street playground.

Now, before we all jump on here and talk about how bikers suck and everyone hates them, do we want to address the fact that maybe these giant, garbage-can-sized barrels meant to prevent accidents aren’t really doing the job? There’s been talk of them blocking bikers’ visibility of pedestrians (not a good thing when trying not to hit them), and confusing the cyclists who aren’t sure which side of them to be on.

So these confusing barrels have been put up (side note: a hesitant/confused driver does not make for a good driver of anything--bike, car, unicycle, whatever), cops are handing out $270 fines faster than evangelical hobos hand out pamphlets on the subway, yet here we are with another injury. Maybe we need to make things a little clearer as far as biker to cone placement goes, or figure out a new plan altogether to decrease the injury stats around the park.

Also, one weird thing that should be mentioned regarding this particular case is that the stories don’t add up in this most recent collision. According to park officials, the cyclist simply “got distracted” and fell over, injuring only himself, but the 5-0 claim that the biker hit the pedestrian who then had to be taken away in an ambulance. Uh, ‘distracted solo fall’ and ‘collision with old man who gets taken away in ambulance’ is a BIG difference in story line; that wouldn’t even fly on a badly written soap opera. Something is afoot…who’s telling the truth, the park “officials” or the “cops”? Hmm…(strokes invisible beard).