The Department of Transportation will announce initiatives to improve safety along Delancey Street at a special meeting of Community Board 3 tonight. Four people familiar with the project told DNAinfo that the changes will include wider sidewalks, different signal timing, and improved traffic patterns. "We're going to see significant safety improvements on Delancey Street in months, not years," State Senator Daniel Squadron said. "This is a quick and dramatic proposal." more ›

A cyclist is seriously injured today after colliding with a barrier on Varick Street near the Holland Tunnel. DNAinfo reports that the unidentified man was headed south on Varick Street around 2:30 p.m. when he tried to make a right turn onto Dominick Street. But there was a divider in the middle of the street that the cyclist either didn't see or underestimated, and he went down hard on the pavement. more ›

A tipster spotted this "for sale" post (see below) on Craigslist, from someone claiming to have removed over two dozen white bikes that were locked up around town. The ad, which offers 30 of the bikes for $3,200, does not explicitly acknowledge that these bikes are memorials to cyclists killed in accidents. So it seems whoever posted it is pretending to be astonishingly oblivious—most of the memorials have a small plaque with the name of the biker who was killed, so it's hard to imagine anyone not understanding their purpose. On the other hand, the ad could be some sort of trolling fake Craigslist post meant to outrage the cyclist community. Either way, it's pretty despicable. more ›

Two months ago the Parks Department installed some orange barrels on West Lake Drive in Prospect Park to try and protect pedestrians from all those "speeding" cyclists. But maybe they need some better signage at the "chute?" Because last weekend there was another accident in the area—the second since the barrels went up. more ›

Fed up with being stonewalled by the NYPD, the family of Mathieu Lefevre—an artist who was killed by a flatbed truck driver while riding his bike in Williamsburg in October—has filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. At the beginning of December, the NYPD rejected the family's request for information under the Freedom of Information Law [FOIL], informing their lawyer that the investigation into Lefevre's death was ongoing, and therefore the NYPD would not share any documents related to said "investigation." You can read the lawsuit in full below. more ›

Awesomely named area man Vincent Ferrari is so fed up with drivers ignoring the stop sign on his street in the East Bronx that he recently sat outside and videotaped the procession of scofflaws. more ›

An attorney representing the family of killed cyclist Mathieu Lefevre has sent a scathing letter to the NYPD's Accident Investigation Squad, blasting the department's handling of the investigation. Lefevre, a Canadian artist living in Brooklyn, was killed in October by a flatbed truck driver who left the scene of the Williamsburg accident. When the NYPD finally tracked him down, he said he didn't know he ran anybody over, and investigators took his word for it. Gothamist has obtained a copy of the letter, sent today to the NYPD Highway Patrol, in which attorney Steve Vaccaro raises serious concerns about detectives handling of the investigation, such as: more ›

Cyclists are used to dealing with hostility from sociopath drivers, but last night a biker turned on one of his own. The FDNY and the NYPD tell us they have no information about the incident, but the NYPD tells NY1 that a cyclist in his 30s was stabbed in his chest and back. The stabbing happened around 7 p.m. on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 49th Street. more ›

The DOT is preparing to extend the protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenue up through East Harlem, adding the lanes and pedestrian refuge islands between 96th Street to 125th Street. Naturally, this is an important opportunity for the tabloids to publish scaremongery stories about bike lanes tearing communities' apart, and so the News has a report today on all the Harlem merchants who "fear soaring asthma rates and losing customers." Alternative headline: Three Misinformed Merchants Worry More About Deliveries Than Safety. more ›

The DOT has released its report on cycling in NYC and determined that the number of people who commute by bicycle has increased 8% over last year. (Read it below) Overall, bike riding has increased 102% compared to 2007 and by 289% compared to 2001, says the DOT, which measures commuter cyclists by counting them at the four East River bridges, the Hudson River Greenway at 50th Street, and the Whitehall ferry terminal. An average of 18,846 cyclists per day was recorded this year, up from 17,491 in 2010. The DOT attributes the increase in large part to Steve Cuozzo the DOT: more ›

A pedestrian who was sued by a cyclist that struck her in Central Park this summer has countersued. According to the lawsuit obtained by the Post, 28-year-old Meghan Rohan alleges that 46-year-old Sabine Von Sengbusch had "total disregard" when she hit Rohan and shattered her elbow. more ›

How serious are the police taking their promise to slow down speeding bikers in Prospect Park? So seriously they are following the Daily News' lead and actively try to enforce the speed limit in the park. Still, "We’re not going to be jumping out of trees, ticketing for little things like wearing headphones," an NYPD spokesman told the Brooklyn Paper. more ›

Cyclists; advocates for safer streets; and the parents, family, and friends of deceased cyclists will gather outside NYPD Headquarters at 1 Police Plaza Wednesday morning to demand justice. Brooklyn artist Mathieu Lefevre became the most recent fatality after he was killed by a flatbed truck in Williamsburg last month—although the driver left the scene, the NYPD opted not to press any charges. Lefevre's parents, who are from Canada, learned about this not from the NYPD—which they say blew them off—but from the press, which seems to have an easier time getting answers than a grieving family. more ›

Dogs: They're running amok in Central Park, and cyclists are getting hurt! If you think it's a joke, just talk to 51-year-old Nancy Chilton, who was biking in the park in July 2010 when a dog darted out in front of her. The two species collided, and Chilton was catapulted over the handle bars. She was wearing a helmet, but the accident still hurt her head, and doctors had to remove part of her skull. (She also fractured her pelvis, spine and sustained permanent hearing damage.) "I wouldn't have survived," she tells the Wall Street Journal. It's unclear if the dog made it, but we're guessing it stayed at the scene and was not charged. more ›

If a pedestrian is critically injured by a cyclist while walking in a park, who is at fault? The pedestrian? The cyclist? Or, perhaps, the city? That's the question raised in a new $3 million dollar lawsuit the Post reports was just filed against the city. Actress Dana Jacks says her Prospect Park collision with cyclist David Sonenberg on June 11 left her "with brain trauma and face and skull fractures that kept her hospitalized for 25 days." She's already filed suit against the biker (and he against her) and now she's turned to the city, blaming her situation on its "negligent, careless and reckless" traffic enforcement in the park. more ›

A 55-year-old Brooklyn woman is in a medically-induced coma at Kings County Hospital after she was run down by a racing cyclist in Prospect Park last week, A Walk in the Park reports. The FDNY confirms that Linda Cohen was struck by a speeding bike on November 3rd just before 3 p.m. She had just left the bridle paths and stepped onto West Drive near the Vanderbilt playground when she was struck by a cyclist going south. more ›

Charging a driver who hits a cyclist for anything is disturbingly rare (see here, here)—in New York City a family is lucky if they can even see charges filed for leaving the scene of an accident. Out in Long Island the chances of doing time for running down a rider is a little bit higher, but not much. Take, for instance, Nicole Shellard, a 33-year-old woman who has pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter, second-degree vehicular manslaughter and other charges in the May 2010 death of 45-year-old Kathryn Underdown. Though Shellard admits she was on a mix of prescription pills when she mowed down her victim [paywall], she'll only be serving 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years in prison. more ›

A sad truth for cyclists in New York is that when one is struck dead by a motor vehicle most of the time no charges are filed. Unless, it seems, the victim is the sister-in-law of a famous defense attorney. Though earlier this summer charges against the Postal Service employee who fatally struck cyclist Marilyn Dershowitz were considered unlikely, the Manhattan DA yesterday surprised us all by charging 62-year-old Ian Clement with leaving the scene of an accident. It is a start. more ›

A hit-and-run driver struck two boys riding their bikes last night in Gravesend. Details are still scant, but the NYPD press office confirms that police and EMTs were called to the intersection of Avenue S and East 4th Street last night around 10:30 p.m. There they found two injured 12-year-old boys who had been hit by a car while riding their bikes. more ›

Since September the city has had pedestrian safety managers on each of the East River bridges, an experiment set to end on November 26th when the DOT will review the $80,000-a-month program. But as far as the cyclist-hating Post is concerned, the program is already a total dud. They say that commuters have already decided the program isn't working, while quoting one cyclist, who had, according to their report, one collision. Now, we've been a bit skeptical of this whole thing ourselves, but just to be sure we decided to head over there yesterday to see what some of those glorified crossing guards had to say for themselves. more ›