With our broken subway system and high volume of cabs, ubers, etc; it is clear that New York is a driving city - but not a parking city.
New York is a dense city. Bicycles: 1. Don't pollute the air the that 8 million people breathe. 2. Take up a fraction of the space of a car. 3. Are faster than cars for most trips people make.
Don't toss out the entire idea of a bicycle because a few cyclist ride like idiots. Drivers sometimes behave this way, too. And when they do, lives often end.
Cycling has several benefits, but I believe the current situation makes it a hard sell. I don't believe cars will organically leave the road as more people turn to bicycles, and I don't believe cyclists can coexist with the current volume of vehicles. Proposed initiatives to limit this number, such as Bloomberg toll for driving through Manhattan, seem totalitarian.
Cars are dangerous, but when I cross the street I am pretty certain the driver will be following basic laws: such as driving the correct way on a one-way street or stopping at a red light. The same can not be said for cyclists, in fact I witness them and their motorized bicycle cohorts breaking these laws every single day.
Every time I took a cab to an important meeting in manhattan, I regretted the decision. Whereas I've taken the subway to hundreds of meetings/appointments and really only gotten delayed impactfully a handful of times.
No doubt that things have declined significantly in the past year, but I do think that saying NYC is a "driving city" is overstating.
I’d say that’s pretty good regard for human life.
OTOH, cars kill a pedestrian almost daily in the city. Funny you don’t complain about them.
Also this is despite bike lanes being adjacent to the sidewalk and actually protecting pedestrians from the actually dangerous cars by providing a buffer (pedestrian deaths on avenues which installed bike lanes, such as 2nd and 8th dropped after installation, and in comparison to avenues that did not.)
EVERY major metropolitan area is experiencing fixed street capacity and a growing population. You cannot add more roads, more cars, more trains (at least in the short term) to move all these people: cycling and walking are the best ways to move in a dense area and we should be doing everything we can to promote the infrastructure and lifestyles for both of these activities.
Getting rid of this toxic ideology would be a pretty good start.
This is one of those NYC stereotypes that turns out to be entirely true and it's an awful aspect of living here. This is mainly a problem in Midtown, but it's bad enough there as to be one of the worst things about the city.
I'll meet your anecdata with the data that cyclists aren't the ones killing people. The folks doing the killing are frequently your beloved cab drivers (and charter buses).