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Bike Law 101
For more than 20 years, lawyers Steve Vaccaro and Adam White have been representing New York City cyclists and pedestrians in court — defending New Yorkers’ right of way and right to safe passage. Reclaim asked the Law Offices of Vaccaro and White to answer a few common questions about cycling and the law in New York City.
I got a bike summons. Should I fight it?
Assuming you committed the violation, it was written up correctly, and you have the money, you should pay the ticket. If it is a violation you commit often, consider it payment for a year’s worth of violations. But make sure that you don’t pay the $88 motorist-only surcharge on the fine! All bike tickets (except for tickets for running red lights) should be $50. For equipment violations, like a bell or bike light, you may avoid having to pay by fixing the violation, asking your local precinct to certify in writing that your bike is properly equipped within 24 hours, and then bringing that documentation to court. If you didn’t commit the violation, can’t pay the fine, or any information on the ticket is incorrect, plead not guilty. Then give us a call at (212) 577–3040 for five minutes of free legal advice. Call us again a week or so before the hearing, which will take place a year or more in the future, and we’ll spend a few more minutes talking you through what happens next.
I got into a crash. What should I do next?
Getting the license plate of the vehicle and identifying information about the driver is critical. Unless you need to go to the hospital for immediate medical attention, stay at the scene until the police arrive. At the very least, wait 15 minutes before deciding that your injuries do not require treatment and a police report. While you wait, take photos of the entire scene — not just close-ups of a damaged bike or a dented fender. You are looking to record how the crash occurred, which can be determined from the respective positioning of the vehicles within the scene as a whole. If the driver flees before you get the plate, you must wait for police. You will lose valuable health insurance and other rights as a hit-and-run crash victim if you don’t stay at the scene until police arrive. Most importantly, remember that if you come upon another person’s crash, be helpful. Stop, take photos of the license plate and the scene, and counsel the crash victim to wait for police. Of course, in some circumstances, a crash victim has good reasons to not wait at the scene for police, in which case they should photograph both the license plate of the vehicle and the driver’s face. If they seek legal advice promptly, that may be evidence enough for the victim to get all of the benefits to which they are entitled.
Do New York laws really protect cyclists?
Protected bike lanes and greenways, to the extent that the law can keep motorized vehicles out of them, are a form of legal protection that can prevent harm, but that’s about it. The default rule is that if you want to be protected, you need armor. Otherwise, the law is there to provide remedies to the unarmored after they have been harmed. After a crash, for any person injured, there should be a minimum of $50,000 in medical and lost earnings coverage, and $25,000 in compensation for past and future pain, suffering, and disability, but there are many pitfalls placed in the way of crash victims. You can lose coverage and compensation if you don’t gather the necessary information, don’t stay at the scene, don’t open your mail, or delay in seeking compensation, to name a few. In a general sense, these laws, which require drivers to compensate for the harm they cause, protect cyclists and pedestrians by disincentivizing harmful driving. But it only takes one driver disregarding those disincentives to cause massive harm. A pedestrian or cyclist’s best protection is vigilance, not the law. Always have an escape route planned when you are near moving traffic!
What are my basic rights on the road as a cyclist? What are my responsibilities?
Cyclists have the same rights and responsibilities as drivers with three types of exceptions: rules that apply only to bicyclists, like the requirement to use bike lanes if safe and available; rules that apply only to motor vehicles, like the requirement to not be intoxicated or use your cell phone while driving; and rules that cannot apply to cyclists by their nature, like the requirement to wear a seatbelt. Cyclists now have the right to use leading pedestrian intervals (the headstart given to pedestrians with a walk signal that appears before motorists traveling in the same direction get a green light) and can proceed into the intersection on the walk signal, as long as they yield right of way to pedestrians.
Why are drivers often not sent to jail for killing someone with their car?
Our criminal justice system traditionally focuses on crimes of intent, but allowing motor vehicles to roam dense urban streets full of cyclists and pedestrians guarantees unintended deaths in numbers that outstrip intentional killings. Classifying traffic deaths as “accidents” is just a way of shifting the costs of traffic violence away from drivers and onto their victims. It is little consolation to the loved ones of these victims that the driver did not intend to kill. From a legal perspective, we have laws that could impose serious consequences on drivers who kill, if only they were applied in a straightforward manner. But virtually every area of US law is warped by an exception made for cars, and this is so consistent, running through almost all areas of the law, that it has become invisible to most lawyers and judges. The civil and criminal justice systems refuse to treat harm done with a car in the same manner as harm done with another dangerous instrument, because the people who operate those systems are largely blinded by a windshield perspective as drivers themselves. But change is possible. Fifty years ago, fatal drunk driving crashes were treated like other crashes are today, and rarely resulted in any criminal charges. Crash victims changed that paradigm by enacting laws that imposed criminal liability without the requirement to show intent, as long as the driver was intoxicated to a certain level. At the Law Offices of Vaccaro and White, we are helping to develop new laws that criminalize sober harmful driving. Hopefully we will not have to wait 50 years this time!
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