Deleted

[sbb]

You know the old saying - anything illegal that results in a fine...

...is actually legal, for a fee.

[GothamMike]

On 4/24/2022 at 1:27 PM, Dosingpsychedelics said:

Not the right attitude.

[Begodecrashtestdummy]

6 hours ago, GothamMike said:

Not the right attitude.

We can agree to disagree 🤣🤣🤣👌🏻

[PLEASE_DELETE]

Deleted.

Edited March 17 by PLEASE_DELETE

[VikB]

On 4/25/2022 at 7:03 PM, GothamMike said:

Not the right attitude.

Don't worry he's not going to say that to a cop. Everyone is a tough guy in their mom's basement hopped up on Mountain Dew hammering at their keyboard. 

[GothamMike]

6 hours ago, VikB said:

Don't worry he's not going to say that to a cop. Everyone is a tough guy in their mom's basement hopped up on Mountain Dew hammering at their keyboard. 

Hey ma! The Meatloaf!

[alcatraz]

Do police really influence laws? Lawmakers in my mind are bureaucrats. Maybe I'm wrong... hmm.

[alcatraz]

We only care about the laws that affect us. Imagine police having to enforce all kinds of stuff they disagree with. If our frustration is 3/10 then theirs must be like 9/10 . Just a guess...

[GothamMike]

9 hours ago, alcatraz said:

Do police really influence laws? Lawmakers in my mind are bureaucrats. Maybe I'm wrong... hmm.

Yes, Police unions can be influential in the state capitol and city council. 

Laws are written by Legislators, Bureaucrats can interpret the laws, especially when public safety is involved.

NYC had a E-Scooter death behind Lincoln Center. 

NYC/NYS/USA needs to better separate Pedestrians from all other personal mobility (EUCs, Bikes, Skooters, Skates, Skateboards).

I was on a bike trail yesterday, and families were walking 5 abreast, letting children draw with chalk on the bike path and acted like it was a "park" and not a "Bike trail/bike path"

Police are very reluctant to issue tickets to pedestrians, how often are they the victims of their own jaywalking?

 

[LanghamP]

17 minutes ago, GothamMike said:

Yes, Police unions can be influential in the state capitol and city council. 

Laws are written by Legislators, Bureaucrats can interpret the laws, especially when public safety is involved.

NYC had a E-Scooter death behind Lincoln Center. 

NYC/NYS/USA needs to better separate Pedestrians from all other personal mobility (EUCs, Bikes, Skooters, Skates, Skateboards).

I was on a bike trail yesterday, and families were walking 5 abreast, letting children draw with chalk on the bike path and acted like it was a "park" and not a "Bike trail/bike path"

Police are very reluctant to issue tickets to pedestrians, how often are they the victims of their own jaywalking?

 

Jaywalking laws are modern examples of black codes.

[GothamMike]

1 hour ago, LanghamP said:

Jaywalking laws are modern examples of black codes.

In dense urban environments, peds can get killed by cars. Too many peds think the bike lanes are there for them to walk on. Cars and delivery people treat bike lanes like a parking spot.

Few days ago, I saw a Yalie walk across the street to a double-parked car in New Haven. He did not even bother to look either way.

North of NYC, the Bronx River parkway is closed to cars on Sundays, peds feel like they can wander aimlessly all over the highway, even while a great hiking trail is nearby.

Cops hate to give peds any tickets, they are hard to enforce and fines won't give you points on your Driver 's License.

[LanghamP]

8 hours ago, GothamMike said:

In dense urban environments, peds can get killed by cars. Too many peds think the bike lanes are there for them to walk on. Cars and delivery people treat bike lanes like a parking spot.

Few days ago, I saw a Yalie walk across the street to a double-parked car in New Haven. He did not even bother to look either way.

North of NYC, the Bronx River parkway is closed to cars on Sundays, peds feel like they can wander aimlessly all over the highway, even while a great hiking trail is nearby.

Cops hate to give peds any tickets, they are hard to enforce and fines won't give you points on your Driver 's License.

New York City, like all US cities, originally had wider sidewalks until they were halved for car storage.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2016/07/01/the-new-york-of-2016-needs-the-wide-generous-sidewalks-of-1906/

NYC's doorways have always struck visitors oddly because of how closely they dump you to the edge of the sidewalk as well as they seem to take an undue amount of space. And NYC streets, perhaps more than any other street I've seen in the US, are curved and cambered as such an extreme angle as the original camber of the streets were kept.

Hence, pedestrians walking on the bike lane are exactly where they belong, except they aren't anymore as they've been constrained onto the sidewalk portion that's not really the sidewalk portion (perhaps foyers and verges?).

Here's NYC in the 1920's. You can just start to see drivers taking over the streets...but not quite yet.

and here's NYC again in 1945. 

 

You can see how in the space of just twenty years most of the sidewalks have now been halved (NYC, along with most US cities, wouldn't entirely make downtown one-way until about 1955...not coincidently when the Nation Highway Act came along). Note there's neither stop lights nor stop signs; people are still negotiating street spaces between pedestrians and drivers and they're STILL probably faster than today's stop light tyranny. One gets the impression that drivers were still pedestrians and so they accorded pedestrians the right to use the streets.

Still, NYC is the 2nd best city for pedestrians. Most US cities and towns look like this.

 

[GothamMike]

The Indians were in Manhattan first, give it back!

[Penelope91]

On 4/17/2022 at 10:40 AM, Rikachu said:

if you claim a disability and ride slow, then its technically a wheelchair

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/130-A

New York Consolidated Laws, Vehicle and Traffic Law - VAT § 130-a. Wheelchair

"An electrically driven mobility assistance device means any wheeled,
electrically powered device designed to enable a person with a
disability to move from place to place."

ADA 
https://www.ada.gov/opdmd.htm
Credible Assurance

"If the person does not have this documentation, but states verbally that the OPDMD is being used because of a mobility disability, that also must be accepted as credible assurance, unless the person is observed doing something that contradicts the assurance. For example, if a person is observed running and jumping, that may be evidence that contradicts the person's assertion of a mobility disability."

What is a disability?
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/cms_011495.aspx
"An individual with a disability is defined in the act as someone who has "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of such an impairment; or is regarded as having such an impairment.""

Do I actually need to register a mobility scooter like this? The problem is that I bought it from another man and he didn't have any documents.

[Scubadragonsan]

In the state of California, we can exercise ADA Title 3 which allows someone with medical disability to ride wheels that are banned in certain places. Authorities can only take the riders' words at face value and can't question the nature of their disabilities. I exercise this law on Angel Island. When I first step foot on the island, the ranger said "Sorry, this wheel is banned here." I told him I am exercising ADA Title 3. He let me go, but also told "you can only ride from point A to point B. And you can't ride it for fun????"

[GothamMike]

https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/7/7/23199149/nycha-ban-e-bikes-delivery-workers-fires

There was a lethal fire in NYC Housing Authority building.  A young girl died, a woman, and 3 dogs.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/04/victims-identified-in-nyc-fire-that-killed-5-year-old-girl-woman/

https://nypost.com/2022/08/07/mayor-adams-must-act-on-e-bikes-before-nyc-sees-a-mass-casualty-fire/

If NYCHA bans PEVs, other building owners will as well.

 

Solutions? Secure fireproof storage for PEVs. Enforce the laws so people don't need to store PEVs in their apartments.

Edited August 16, 2022 by GothamMike

[johninbaltimore]

On 8/6/2021 at 11:38 AM, houseofjob said:

Indeed, some of the mopeds seized were no doubt owned by delivery people who now have lost their livelihood. Certainly, if the illegal moped rider was doing something reckless — like speeding, running red lights or driving on the already narrow Queensboro Bridge bike path — let’s have enforcement. But it’s a bad idea to default to a regime that puts cops in charge of taming streets that many people believe have become a Wild West due to an explosion of new devices, a boom in new users of said devices, state law that hasn’t kept up with the reality that delivery workers need these devices

 

When I testified to the legislature here about minimum wage laws, I pointed out that people who can't get enough money to pay rent and feed their kids have a few options, including robbery, prostitution (which I've since decided shouldn't be illegal, but being forced into this by necessity is akin to being a victim of sexual assault), selling drugs, etc., which escalates into violent crimes like mugging or gang turf wars over drug markets.

They all know better than to argue with me.

If there's a problem with the law, the obvious solution is to go change the law.  That it's not being enforced doesn't help:  if the cop doesn't like you, they can magically make you a criminal by enforcing a law everybody's long decided is stupid and so stopped enforcing long ago.  The Supreme Court used this as their primary argument in a case striking down an anti-homosexuality law that the State argued didn't violate the 14th amendment because "it hasn't been enforced in 50 years."

There are distinct benefits to pursuing legislation to address EUCs, as well.

Take all of these Lime/Byrd/etc. scooters on the streets.  Dangerous devices.  The wheels are often 7 inches or smaller.  You hit a 1 inch drop, you go face forward over the handlebars.  A 10 inch minimum front wheel size would raise safety, although I'm not personally able to determine what the minimum wheel size should be; but if these companies are going to scatter these things all over the City and encourage people to ride them, determining this and setting a minimum in law would shape the products put out by manufacturers who want scooter share businesses as their customers.

My InMotion V8S has body lighting, headlights, and a nice sized wheel that can handle the not-great streets here, as evidenced by everybody else riding these things in similar terrain. A bright rear light might be nice.  Solidifying in law that no, you can't ride around on a slick all-black one wheel vehicle with no lights (reflectors are all but useless) might annoy people who want a slick all-black one-wheel vehicle with no lights, but it's not unreasonable, and it allows the DOT to establish standards based on assessments of visibility instead of consumers seeing that the EUC has a light and assuming it must be visible to drivers at dusk when it's a little dim LED tail light angled down toward the road instead of up toward the driver behind you.  I think in Maryland we're also covered by the laws requiring stuff that moves this fast to be in the road and not on the sidewalk, and requiring cars to give a full meter of space when passing, and the new vehicular manslaughter law from 2008.

By the by, do you know how the 2008 vehicular manslaughter law got passed?  That bill had failed in the legislature before.

Half the cyclists in Maryland bicycled down to Annapolis all at the same time.

It passed.  Immediately.  Cyclists were dying and they weren't going to sit around waiting to get run over by a driver who could just shrug and say they didn't see the cyclist when they were speeding through a stop sign around a blind turn (which, yes, was a perfectly valid excuse at the time for why you're not responsible at all for killing the cyclist).

That law also applies if you hit someone riding an illegal vehicle while doing anything a reasonable person would think could increase the likelihood of a fatal incident.  The law says 3 feet, it doesn't say 3 feet if their bicycle, EPMAD, or other thing they're riding on the road looks legal; and besides, you should know passing too close is dangerous regardless of the law.  How's the law in New York handle that?

[johninbaltimore]

On 8/15/2022 at 10:34 PM, GothamMike said:

https://nypost.com/2022/08/07/mayor-adams-must-act-on-e-bikes-before-nyc-sees-a-mass-casualty-fire/

Silly opinion piece.  Like you said, there are solutions to these problems.  If I were advising the Mayor, I'd do research for the precise numbers on battery fires, and bring up that these things were also a concern with cell phones and notebook computers in the past, and always turned out to happen approximately never but be fascinating to the media when they did happen precisely because it's unusual and scary.  There are already strict laws and processes in place to design safety into battery systems; but seatbelts fail, airbags fail, helmets sometimes don't actually hold together in an impact due to a slight manufacturing defect in one out of tens of millions, and batteries sometimes overheat and explode because a thousand unlikely circumstances all line up exactly right.  Building codes reduce the impact of fires as best they can; for large buildings, building codes slow the spread between units; it's hard to set a school or an apartment building on fire.  People have tried, for science—how do you think they decide what goes into the building codes, after all?

I'd then detour into the safety of e-bikes and EUCs, and tell him to shift into concerns about the safety of riders—including children—and the laws to protect them when they're on the road.  Laws about visibility and speed, about riding on the sidewalk (this is dangerous, don't do it, make it a full road vehicle), about driver behavior around these vehicles.  This gets the conversation away from "WHAT IF THESE CATCH FIRE?!" to "how are these going to affect our lives, and how do we minimize the safety concerns as these vehicles gain in popularity and usage across the city?"  People's concern here isn't building fires; it's safety.

Generally, the length for a brief of this nature is under 2 pages; the Mayor doesn't need a 300-page thesis.

[GothamMike]

2 hours ago, johninbaltimore said:

Silly opinion piece.  Like you said, there are solutions to these problems.  If I were advising the Mayor, I'd do research for the precise numbers on battery fires, and bring up that these things were also a concern with cell phones and notebook computers in the past, and always turned out to happen approximately never but be fascinating to the media when they did happen precisely because it's unusual and scary.  There are already strict laws and processes in place to design safety into battery systems; but seatbelts fail, airbags fail, helmets sometimes don't actually hold together in an impact due to a slight manufacturing defect in one out of tens of millions, and batteries sometimes overheat and explode because a thousand unlikely circumstances all line up exactly right.  Building codes reduce the impact of fires as best they can; for large buildings, building codes slow the spread between units; it's hard to set a school or an apartment building on fire.  People have tried, for science—how do you think they decide what goes into the building codes, after all?

I'd then detour into the safety of e-bikes and EUCs, and tell him to shift into concerns about the safety of riders—including children—and the laws to protect them when they're on the road.  Laws about visibility and speed, about riding on the sidewalk (this is dangerous, don't do it, make it a full road vehicle), about driver behavior around these vehicles.  This gets the conversation away from "WHAT IF THESE CATCH FIRE?!" to "how are these going to affect our lives, and how do we minimize the safety concerns as these vehicles gain in popularity and usage across the city?"  People's concern here isn't building fires; it's safety.

Generally, the length for a brief of this nature is under 2 pages; the Mayor doesn't need a 300-page thesis.

NYC takes building fires very seriously, look at Grenville tower tragedy in the UK. NYC would never allow a flammable exterior like that. 
there’s a reason large battery packs are forbidden on airplanes. 
Lobbying your city’s representatives is better than whining, or just simply ignoring the law. 

[Paul A]

E-Scooter Batteries Blamed In Deadly New York Apartment Fire

NBC News

7.17M subscribers

Aug 5, 2022

 

A 5-year-old girl and 36-year-old woman were killed in the high-rise apartment fire sparked by a lithium ion battery.

WNBC's Erica Byfield reports.

 

[Paul A]

Nineteen killed including nine children in New York City apartment fire

The Telegraph

3.19M subscribers

Jan 10, 2022

 

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/01/09/new-york-city-apartment-block-fire-leaves-19-dead-including/

9 January 2022

Fire in New York City apartment block leaves 19 dead, including nine children

At least 200 firefighters rushed to the blaze in a 19-storey block of flats in the Bronx.

Firefighters found victims on every floor of the building.

 

[Paul A]

Wild Video Shows Children Climbing Down Pipe to Escape Burning Apartment

NBC New York

483K subscribers

Dec 18, 2021

 

 

 

https://people.com/human-interest/2-teenagers-slide-down-pipe-to-escape-apartment-fire-in-manhattan-as-onlookers-shout-hold-on/

December 18, 2021

 

In a statement provided to PEOPLE, FDNY Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro ........

He addressed the source of the fire and said, "Our Fire Marshals have determined once again that this fire was caused by lithium-ion batteries from an e-bike."

 

According to Nigro, there were at least seven e-bikes in the apartment when the fire sparked.

 

"The intensity of this fire was such that it blew the windows out and actually blew a wall down within the apartment on top of the bed in which these teenagers were sleeping," he said.

Nigro described the fires being caused by lithium-ion batteries as an "alarming trend."

He said, "This year we have had 93 fires, more than 70 injuries and now four deaths with another person clinging to life."

When the batteries are "damaged" or "overcharged," Nigro said, they "explode violently."

He added that the batteries should not be charged overnight, where anyone is sleeping, or by an exit door.