Thanks for posting this article. It’s definitely worth discussing.


(For those who aren’t familiar with Central Park, there are paved pedestrian paths throughout the park, but there are also internal automobile roads. The internal roads are marked for automobile traffic, mostly separated by a curb and a slightly lower grade from the rest of the park, and controlled by stop lights. The automobile roads comprise a six-mile loop of one-way road, with some further interior loops formed from this main loop by other road sections.)

I would bet significant money that the leading cause of bike-pedestrian collisions in the park is pedestrians walking out into the road without looking. It’s the worst down by 57, where there are more tourists and the horse carts and all that, but it happens throughout the park, I would say. On weekends in good weather, the pedestrians are completely out of control. (After all, even when roadways are closed to auto traffic, the interior automobile roads are not intended to be shared bike-pedestrian facilities, with pedestrians permitted to walk randomly all over the roads.)


Now, it is true that cyclists won’t stop at the lights, by and large. A lot of bikers won’t even yield to pedestrians when the biker faces a red light and pedestrians are aiming to cross * at the light *. I’ll give the Daily News that. So, maybe cyclists cause a significant number of collisions this way. Nevertheless, there’s no way this behavior is a greater danger than pedestrian negligence.


To put it another way, if pedestrians acted on city streets they way they do in the park, and being hit by cars are lot more than they already are, it would be obvious to everyone at the Daily News that jaywalking was at least a large part of the problem. So, the article is a bit breathless.