The "Bike Snob" show on WBAI radio was good today. The guest host was bike lawyer Steven Vaccaro, who talked about bike crash litigation, particularly in New York City:
- criminal & civil legal cases
- cases not involving fatalities are poorly investigated by police
- consequently, victims often can get justice only through civil cases
- "observed violation rule": police will only charge a traffic violation if they witnessed it
- consequently, cops set "ticket traps" so they can meet their ticket quota by observing the most frequent (and least dangerous) violations, e.g. cyclists running red lights, or throttle ebikes
- police feel their job is not to make the streets safer, but to write the tickets they're told to write
- certain laws are not enforced by police & judges
Audio here:
https://www.wbai.org/archive/program/episode/?id=4594