I live in Chicago and along our lakefront runs the "bike path" for about maybe 25 miles north to south.  It's always been called the bike path, but people have to have a place to walk also, so it's always been considered "the lakefront path".  Every distinct group thinks they own it...25 mph bikers, joggers, kids on bikes, families with strollers, toddlers running away from parents returning from a day at the beach.  I've, over the course or 20+ years here as an adult, been a party to each of these distinct groups.  What we NEED is clarification of the rules.  Signage, public service information, patrol people keeping people civil,etc.  For as many accidents as there are, there are an equal amount of verbal altercations and possibly equal amounts fisticuffs!  Communication and respect for others...common courtesy...but, alas, I realize...it's too much to ask.

I pay attention and NEVER jaywalk, and basically I'm appalled by the small number of people who pay attention (pedestrians, cars, and bikes). I will say though that this is a ridiculous law suit, and I'm F****** tired of biker's not stopping at the red light. It's like 1 out of every 40 I see actually stops. I've been hit by a bike and it sucks. Pedestrian should have paid attention definitely, but biker gets little sympathy from me. I'll cry when they start stopping at red lights like the rest of us.

Pedestrians have the right of way so the lawsuit is frivolous. People don't need the NY Post to "stoke anti-cycling rage", bikers are doing that on their own as they put people in comas with impunity. And this says it all about the biker:

"The athlete claims she suffered “great physical pain and mental anguish”
after the crash, was unable to work, and was left with “painful and
permanent” injuries — even though finished in second at an Oct. 1
triathlon in Montauk, LI."

Given the sparse details in the report, we don't know about the nature of the injuries, but there are injuries that don't interfere that much with triathlon performance. And by the way, she didn't finish the triathlon second; she finished second in her relatively small age group of fifteen people, or 26th out of 101 women overall. Still an excellent performance if you ask me, but doesn't sound quite as dramatic.

But the real question is not who suffered the worse injuries, but who was at fault.

People need the NY to stoke anti-cycling rage, because grave cyclist-pedestrian crashes are relatively rare, and get a disproportionate amount of publicity due to the "dog bites man" way in which news publishing works. I'm not saying it's right to put someone in coma with impunity, but according to your logic people should be much more outraged about the hundreds of motorists who *kill* people in the city with impunity every year. Yet most people consider those hundreds of deaths "normal".

Oh MARGARET! Talk about chutzpah! Has she never heard of biking defensively?

She might have had a defense if she was blindsided by a pedestrian...but she saw her.

This is what you call a first-world problem.

"Yeah, or like a cyclist being struck and killed by a vehicle, and the driver not getting charged with a crime."

and WTF does this incident and egregious lawsuit have to do with vehicles, Christopher? oh yeah, absolutely nothing -- except to dissemble a cyclist's victim blaming.

The personal injury attorney calls the lawsuit "disgraceful." She then makes a comparison to a pedestrian being hit by a vehicle and the driver demanding recompense. Equally "disgraceful" is the rate at which cyclists are killed by drivers with impunity in this city.

The Post can muster outrage for this lawsuit to stoke anti-cycling rage, but they can't spare any for the people whose deaths are routinely and sadly written off as the cost of biking in New York City. 

Nothing you've written softens your bullshit, wannabe jaded, utterly cruel attitude towards the pedestrian - the actual victim here.  Fuck you.

It gives him an excuse to link to 3 more gothamist articles...

Not only is she ignorantly litigious, she's a shitty writer:

http://makehistory.national911...

I don't think the word "debris" is fancy at all.

Sometimes pedestrians do not look where they are going in New York, especially in the age of PDAs. Why should the driver/bike rider be automatically held responsible?

I once had to physically grab a girl who walked right into the high speed traffic coming out of the Met Life building and pull her back. Some people are just scatterbrains or preoccupied.

I Agree with LtWorf though, the shattered elbow should be punishment enough. This may very well be a pre-emptive lawsuit though.

PDAs?  Wasn't the age of PDAs back in the late 90s?

No, we still use PDAs we just call them different things like smartphones and tablets now. PDA is an umbrella term for any device with mobile apps.

"Today, almost all PDAs are smartphones. Over 150 million smartphones are sold each year, while "stand-alone" PDAs without phone functionality sell only about 3 million units per year."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

I think everyone knows that. I was getting at the fact that "PDA" is a dated term.

She was probably distracted trying to figure out why she had a Palm Pilot in 2011

You wouldn't walk across an Avenue without looking, so don't do the same in Central Park Drive or in any bike lane. If you walk out into a road without looking, can you really expect not get hit or that its someone elses responsibility? I understand CPD is kind of a mess and people are running in the bike lanes and riding in the ped lane and everyone is going all which ways, but its up to YOU to be responsible for your actions. 

It's amazing how many people just aren't aware or dont pay attention to their surroundings and trajectories, cyclists included. Accidents do happen without anyone really being at fault, but if you're in a road or bike lane, just be aware of all types of traffic and don't make any drastic moves without looking first.

It really is that easy.

Yeah, your personal survival is up to you, but letting a lawsuit like this go through essentially requires everyone to carry liability insurance at all times. Frankly, that's ridiculous.

It's simple - who had the light? Whoever had the light, has the right of way. And if the biker had the light, I'd all for his lawsuit.

And if they were in the middle of the street and not at an intersection? Than the pedestrian was jaywalking. Sue away!

Let's be efficient about this, and just run over all the personal injury lawyers.