We Can Get There; Now We Need To Cross

Sometimes I'm thankful for small things.

No, this post won't be about cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels, although those things are quite nice.  Instead, I'm going to show you something that, I hope, will make one of my rides a bit safer and more pleasant.

I frequently cycle the promenade by the World's Fair Marina, which rims Flushing Bay to the north and east of LaGuardia Airport for about a mile and a quarter.  Until recently, the lane ended rather abruptly at an especially apocalyptic-looking yard that seemed to serve mainly as a parking lot for New York City Department of Transportation trucks.  There, the lane turned into a dirt path that looked--and, when you rode on it, felt--like the Ho Chi Minh trail if it had been on the moon. That is, if you were lucky.  If you weren't, you had to dodge whatever parts the trucks dropped or a hose some cement-mixing company left behind.

Well, the dirt path has been cleaned up, and a concrete sidewalk built on it.  That has improved access to the Northern Boulevard Bridge, which you must cross if you want to continue into Eastern Queens.  But, as nice as the sidewalk/lane extension is, it still has one problem:  It leaves you at an entrance ramp for the Grand Central Parkway.  

Sometimes there isn't much traffic, but at other times, especially on game days (It's near Citi Field), it can be all but impossible to cross.   The worst part, though, is that the point at which you cross is at the end of a curve in the ramp.  So, while you may  not see any cars or trucks coming, they could come zooming from the other side of the turn.

I don't know whether the Department of Transportation plans to install signs or a signal at the crossing--or, for that matter, how much good such things would actually do.  From what I've seen, not many cyclists or pedestrians have been using the bridge.  However, I can't help but to think that it has had to do with the perilous crossing, the until-now-poor condition of the access lane and the narrowness of the bike/pedestrian lane on the bridge.  

Well, at least one part of the trip has improved.  Perhaps there is hope for the rest.

 

What If They Had Critical Mass Back Then?

In its early years,  Saturday Night Live  episodes included a bit called "What If" History.  Perhaps the most famous episode was "What If Eleanor Roosevelt Could Fly?"

Now, here's something the SNL writers never considered:  What If Critical Mass Had Existed In 1949? 

I don't know how the world would be a different place.  But I would imagine that their rides might have looked something like this:

From SF Gate Photo Archives

  These cyclists were rolling along Market Street, where it met Fulton Street, in San Francisco on 7 April 1949.  This intersection no longer exists:  the UN Plaza now stands in its place and, as a result, Fulton no longer meets Market.

The first Critical Mass ride commenced in San Francisco, not far from where this photo was taken, in 1992.  I wonder whether that ride included any of the cyclists in the photo.

A Crash By Any Other Name

This happened at a bicycle race in Matamoros, Mexico on 1 June 2008. One cyclist was killed.  Ironically, "Matamoros" means "Kill Moors" in Spanish.  (From VeloWorld)

A few years ago, a man used his SUV to run over five people on Long Island after getting into a fight with one of them.  He fled the scene of the accident.

Tell me:  What's wrong with the above passage?

It's in the last word:  accident.  The last time I checked my Oxford English Dictionary, none of the definitions of the word "accident" included intention, volition or causality.  Perhaps I should look again, just in case my memory is getting fuzzy.

Yet no less than the New York Times--and, presumably, the Nassau County Police Department-- used that word to characterize the incident.

Now, you might say that my perceptions are colored (clouded?) by being a writer and English instructor. Still, I contend that words are powerful, and the ones that are chosen shape the way people perceive whatever is being described.  And people's responses, or lack of them, are a result of their perceptions.

The Long Island man's use of his SUV as a weapon of mass destruction certainly wasn't the first--and probably won't be the last--time such an incident is referred to as an "accident."  It's also not the only kind of non-random collision that has been, or will be, so misnamed.

About two years before the Long Island incident, rapper Foxy Brown is said to have hit two cyclists on West Houston Street in Manhattan.  She originally claimed that her former friend, Ayesha Quattara, was at the wheel, but the testimony of the cyclists who were hit--and Quattara--indicated that the rapper (who is said to be losing her hearing) was the real culprit.  Quattara and the cyclists also said that Brown yelled, "Get out of my way, you dumb white faggots!"

That incident was also listed as an accident (and her friends claimed that she is neither a racist nor a homophobe).  Now, she probably didn't intend to run them down.  However, Brown herself admitted she was agitated as she was racing from one Louis Vuitton store to another before it closed.  So the incident can't be called an "accident" that "happened."

Calling such incidents "accidents", by implication, lessens the culpability of the drivers involved.  It also, I think, causes detectives and others charged with investigating such incidents to think that they are simply terrible fates that could not have been avoided.  I can't help but to believe that anyone who thinks that way will take their investigations less seriously and, perhaps, to be less diligent in them.  

On the other hand, if such incidents were classified as (attempted) homicides or negligence, the cops would be right on them.  Even classifying what Foxy Brown or her friend did as a hate crime would have gotten it more attention than it got as an "accident".