BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Man. I love the news guy. Gentleman, gentleman, come on.

wow. amazing for so many reasons:

-hard to tell, but it really looks like the cabbie started it. he's giving the pedicab a hard time (from behind), the pedicab gives him the fist, then the cabbie pulls up (gets splashed with coffee) and then tries to hit the pedicab. the cabbie should have gotten his butt whipped for striking the pedicab with his vehicle. if i had stumbled upon that, i'd be inclined to help the pedicab dude whip that cabbies tail.

-fifth and broadway & their duking it out in the street. the shots of the letterman show marquis in the background .... solid gold.

-the pedicab throwing the trash can. balls of steel friend and that cabbie so deserved it.

-the pedicab zipping off, wrong way, down a one way street and then taking to the crowded sidewalk for his escape. impressive.

-the pedicab waving as he bolted out of the camera frame and made a turn about a block down.

i don't condone physical altercations but in this case, my god, that cabbie could have crushed the pedicab when he tried ramming him. regardless of what led up to it, there's hardly a situation i can think of that would justify the cabbie trying to ram the pedicab.

Hmmm... I'm not sure I'm so sympathetic to the pedicab driver. This is NYC we're talking about here. If you can't handle a little abuse from another driver, you're in the wrong business. You've got to shrug that stuff off. You want to piss off an 800 pound gorilla (or in this case, a 4000 pound cab) then you do so at your own peril. Getting your feelings hurt doesn't mean you get to throw stuff at someone. I tend to think that the cabbie needed to let it go, too, but I certainly don't see something there that suggests he needs a righteous butt whooping. And you see "balls of steel" throwing the trash can, but I see assinine. Hadn't that dumbass had enough for one day? He was clearly outmatched and did the right thing to hightail it out of town when he had the chance.

Even if the guy on the bike was wrong theres no reason to use your car as a weapon. Ive had some maniac do the same thing to me over a altercation at a red light. It boggles me that people would actually take the chance of killing someone with there car and probably spending a number of years behind bars just to get somewhere a few seconds faster. OH wait, you can get away with that in pittsburgh.

Yeah, but from my point of view, the cabbie had no intention of doing real damage to the pedicab -- after all he could have crushed the guy. Instead, he just cut him off and nudged the bike a little. I would be totally sympathetic if the pedicab driver had not thrown the coffee at the cab. That, in my mind, irreversibly escalated the situation. Without that, I would advocate stomping on the cabbie. But the fact remains that the physical altercation started with the guy on the pedicab. It should have ended with a couple of New Yorkers giving each other the finger and yelling a little. But instead one butthead had to get out of hand, and the other was not man enough to let it go. In the end, no one got hurt and no property was damaged, so it's hard to get excited over any of it, really. Let the kids fight a little. Both can now go home with a great story to tell.

i saw this on bikeforums a day or two ago. in my opinion, the pedicab driver was the one who went over the line, and he kinda got his arse whupped so it all ended up about the way it should have, nobody seriously hurt, etc.

and throwing the trash can just made him look pathetic.

First reaction: don't mess with pedicab drivers!

It was bogus that the pedicab driver threw his coffee at the minivan, but to then use his 4,000 pound motorized weapon to assault him in return is out of line. What the minivan did turned out to be a "nudge" but could easily have crushed the pedicab and its driver. That piece of aggressive driving is the escalation in my view. The cup of coffee doesn't seem to have even hit the minivan, and the minivan driver is already outside the car when the pedicab driver bangs on the window.

Cooler heads should definitely should have prevailed, and I can't justify a street brawl or throwing a trash can like that. But in the absence of the minivan driver ramming the pedicab, I think the situation would have ended with the pedicab making a right turn and the cabbie waiting for the rain to rinse some espresso off his car.

I also think the cab driver turned his cab into a weapon when he veered into the pedicab. Doesn't matter what provoked it, what he intended to do or how much damage it actually caused, you don't have that right.

I also think the cab driver turned his cab into a weapon when he veered into the pedicab. Doesn't matter what provoked it, what he intended to do or how much damage it actually caused, you don't have that right.

Agreed. Like firing a "warning shot" that, oops, just happens to hit someone, nudging someone with a car to teach them a lesson is spectacularly uncool.

i was surprised i watched the whole thing. i couldn't take my eyes off of it.

Warning: Guy not taking his own advice ahead

This "car as a weapon" theme keeps popping up. This is at the heart of my disagreement here. I just don't watch that video clip and see the guy using his car as a weapon. That minivan was no more a weapon than he was when he put his body in the path of the pedicab later in the encounter. Sorry, I just don't get it.

OK, so *now* I'll take my own advice and let it go... Sorry for stirring things up. I'm done.

That minivan was no more a weapon than he was when he put his body in the path of the pedicab later in the encounter. Sorry, I just don't get it.

If one defines "weapon" as something used with intent to do serious harm, then maybe not. If one defines weapon as something used improperly with potential to cause serious harm, then yeah, it's a weapon.

Call it reckless driving, call it improper vehicle operation, call it what you will, but you just don't deliberately nudge people (or buses, or other cars) with a car, without expecting that damage may result. Ever. No excuse. Bad enough when it's a police baton or a bicycle being used to shove someone around; multi-ton vehicles have a lot more mass with which to do harm.

"That minivan was no more a weapon than he was when he put his body in the path of the pedicab later in the encounter. Sorry, I just don't get it"

Cabbie drove his van into pedicab. Cabbie stood in front of pedicab.

Drove into, stood in front of. What is it you don't get here?

watch the video. the cabbie did drive into the pedicab to cut him off. they barely bumped into each other, it's not really use of a car as a weapon, as much as cutting off the lane and blocking the wheel so the pedicab can't take off when the cabbie got out.

i agree, it shouldn't have happened either way, but it just doesn't seem t obe a reason t oget all up in arms and defend the pedicab driver.

Heh...there's an important distinction to be made between defending the pedicab driver, and chastising the cabbie's actions.

It's not an either-or; as far as I'm concerned, they're both jagoffs.

New York's alright, New York's alright

New York's alright if you like saxophones

New York's alright if you wanna get pushed in front of the subway

New York's alright if you like tuberculosis

New York's alright if you like art and jazz

New York's alright if you're a homosexual

New york's alright, New York's alright

New York's alright if you like saxophones

New York's alright if you like drunks in your doorway

New York's alright if you wanna freeze to death

New York's alright if you wanna get mugged or murdered

New York's alright if you like saxophones

New York's alright, New York's alright

New York's alright if you like saxophones

The only bad part about this video is that the pedicabbie was such a bad street brawler. Come on dude, learn how to throw a punch already, absolute pre-requisite for driving anything in NYC.

@spak seriously, the cabbie had him in a choke in like .9 seconds.

Yeah, before I saw it, I thought the brutally physical pedicab lifestyle dude would kick the sedentary cabbie's butt. But after, I thought, the cabbie would not have come out of his cab, had he not been realistically confident of his skills.

Question: did the pedi-cab throw the coffee through the cab's partly open window? If he did, that is a big step above tossing fluids on the fender.

The bottom line is this, though: you want to avoid physical confrontation, if at all possible.

Mick

Oh man that was hysterical... So many jerks in NYC they were probably both at fault... But the pedicab driver could probably use a few Judo lessons!

He had NOTHING when the cabbie had him pinned, without even a solid choke... it didn't look like anything other than weight keeping the pedicab driver down.

Throwing the garbage can and riding away on the sidewalk just made it even funnier.