Here is a great Op-Ed piece from the Drum Major Institutes, Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein about the recent case with killed cyclist Mathieu Lefevre. The author looks at why this tragic fatality was not treated in the same fairness as another accident involving a woman in midtown elevator and how to move forward in treating traffic deaths more seriously.
End the Culture of Accepting Traffic Deaths
by: Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein
In December, a horrific elevator accident killed a young executive named Suzanne Hart in Midtown Manhattan. The city’s response was swift and firm: the Department of Buildings quickly inspected all 650 elevators owned or maintained by the company involved, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office also launched a criminal investigation into the botched maintenance work.It was a horrible incident necessary of a thorough investigation.
Two months earlier, another horrible incident resulted in the death of a young New Yorker. However, the difference between the city’s responses to both incidents is stark and shocking.
In October, Mathieu Lefevre was struck and killed by a truck while commuting home on his bicycle in an industrial part of East Williamsburg. The truck driver left the scene.
The NYPD tracked down the driver that struck Lefevre a few days later, the truck having been found parked a few blocks away. The driver claimed he never felt the collision and was unaware that the incident took place.
No charges were filed against the driver and the NYPD brought the investigation to a close, falsely concluding with the notion that Lefevre had run a red light.
It wasn’t until after being threatened with a lawsuit by the victim’s family that the NYPD released the file of the investigation. This is when certain facts of the incident became known: investigating officers were unable to take pictures of the incident because of a faulty camera (no camera phones, I suppose); and video footage from a private security camera captured the incident, showing that the truck driver struck Leferve while making a right hand turn without signaling. This video proved that Lefevre did not run a red light and makes it difficult to believe that the driver was unaware that the collision took place.
But one especially eerie detail stands out: the NYPD had taken pictures of the victim’s family while attending a rally in support of better enforcement of traffic laws. It was in the file.
Why was the city’s response to these two tragedies so different? There is a general culture that simply accepts traffic deaths as a way of life; this is a culture of acceptance. Traffic deaths are, after all, common. One New Yorker dies roughly every 35 hours in a traffic incident.
Velojoy welcomes new contributor Susan Lindell, director of retail operations and chief “wrench” for Recycle-A-Bicycle in Brooklyn. Susan’s monthly posts will help keep you in the know about the basics of bike maintenance and mechanics.
(photo by: Velojoy)
Find out some great tips for cleaning a bike, especially with grime filled winter on its way.
Freestyle fixed, rodents and getting grimmy on the streets. Bmore Fixed has a new website and presents, BMFXD Druids Path, a highlight reel of riding hard in downtown Baltimore.
Boston’s own daredevil helmet camera master Lucas Brunelle and courier Kevin Porter interviewed about high speeds and world wide travel for a local Boston news program.
And they say it couldn’t be done. A pedal powered talk show. From Urban Velo: “The first episode of the newly coined Pedal Powered Talk Show is live, featuring Daniel Baldwin of all people. The entire studio setup is built into a cargo bike, and everything is pedal powered allowing on-site production no matter how remote the location. Links to episodes 2 and 3 and besides the scenes photos are available at www.pedaltalkshow.com”
While the NYPD have no problem being thorough about ticketing cyclists for minor traffic violations, such as $270.00 for running a red light, they seem unable to but as much time and energy into investigating a cyclists death, caused by a truck driver breaking similar laws.
This became evident recently when the NYPD was outted for lying to a family about their sons death, knowingly omitting evidence the truck driver was at fault. It took a public outcry, protests, a good pro-cyclist lawyer and a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) to finally come clean about the investigation of Mathieu Lefevre killed in October by a truck driver, breaking the law.
Now the Brooklyn DA has opened a review of the case.
Streetsblog has more:
Craig Esswein, chief of the vehicular crimes bureau, told Streetsblog that reviewing deadly traffic crashes is standard procedure. “Any time there’s a fatality the NYPD does their investigation, and we do our own.”
Lefevre’s death at the hands of a hit-and-run truck driver in Williamsburg last October has made headlines, owing to revelations that NYPDwithheld details of the crash from the victim’s family and failed to gather evidence at the scene. Asked about NYPD’s handling of the investigation, Esswein said, “We will be looking into the matter.”
On going saga of one family trying to get justice, or at least a proper investigation behind the death of their son, Mathieu Lefevre.
From Gothamist:
Family Of Killed Cyclist Mathieu Lefevre Sues NYPD For Withholding Information
Article and Photo by: John Del Signore
On Friday, the NYPD finally released the documents pertaining to the investigation of the death of cyclist Mathieu Lefevre. According to a statement released today by Lefevre’s mother, the files show that the driver of the truck, Leonardo Degianni, made a right turn without signaling, “knocked Mathieu 40 feet, left him for dead, and then dragged his bicycle another 130 feet before depositing it and driving off.” Incredibly, there are no photos of the scene of the incident in the NYPD’s file because “the investigators’ camera was broken.” However, the file does contain “numerous” photos of the Lefevre family and their attorney, prompting Erika Lefevre to write, “Apparently, NYPD cares more about investigating our family’s efforts to get information from it, than about properly investigating Mathieu’s death.”
January 1st 2011 we took a fully loaded bike, bells, basket, lights and chained it to a post on a busy Soho NYC street. Everyday for the next year we took a photo of it and watched it slowly disappear before our eyes. Then, we assembled it into a calendar where every page is the image of one day, perforated at the top for easy ripping. We call this experiment Life-Cycle – a fascinating glimpse of elegant decay.
(Still looks like the bike lasted over 200 days without an issue.)
It’s giveaway time here again. Last time it was a sweet jersey from Sugoi and now I have the pleasure of giving one of my loyal follower a chance to win one of the neatest gadgets to accompany any bike ride. I present a portable speaker from Boombotix.
These little skullys are downright powerful for a such a compact unit, whether you chose to ride with it or not, chances are you’ll easily use this speaker for all your portable needs…gaming for the next Idol star in the shower, lounging at the beach…you get the idea.
The rules are pretty simple and the same as the last contest I did using my favorite social network… twitter.
Here is how to play:
The whole contest will take place through twitter, starting tomorrow. 1/23/12.
Here’s how it works.
Monday (1/23/12)-Wednesday (1/25/12) and Friday (1/27/12) I will tweet a question with the hastag #Bombotixgiveaway. Don’t worry, the answer to these questions will be a one word answer, with all you need to know written somewhere in THIS blog posting. The contest will only take place on twitter.
The first person to tweet all three words, wins the speaker. You must be a follower of both @bikeblognyc and @Boombotix before Friday. Yes, this means you will also need to have a twitter account.
For example, sometime on Monday (tomorrow) I’m going to tweet something like this: #Boombotixgiveaway, Question: Last name of Brooklyn Borough President who hates bikes?
Your answer would be Markowitz, which you keep in a safe place until Friday, (There is no need to tweet the answers unless you feel like it.) Then Wednesday I do the same thing. When Friday rolls around I ask another question and the first person to reply to that last tweet…wins.
You would hit the replay button on the bottom of the tweet with something like this: #Boombotixgiveaway Markowitz, blowhard, obese @bikeblognyc @Boombotix.
Please include both my handle and Boombotix.
Good Luck.
Now here are some facts about Boombotix.
1. We cater toward the active lifestyle – surf , skate and snow culture
2. Our Products are covered by a “No Matter What” one year warranty
3. We are based in the heart of the Mission in San Francisco
4. Our designs are inspired by Japanese vinyl toys
5. Our speakers pair with any mobile device so their is a range of equipment that works with it
6. Boombotix used to be called SkullyBoom
7. Our next product release is the handlebar bike mount so you can mount your speakers onto your bike. That will be releasing at the beginning of next year.
A little about the prize:
This will be the BB1 which is a wired speaker. The speaker includes an easy mountable clip and a mini-mini retractable plug which easily fits into any smart phone, ipod, ipad and most portable devises.
Color and style will be determined by Boombotix’s availability, but I asked for a green one and they complied, so requests can be taken.
Today there will be no posts on this blog in solidarity with many other sites who are taking a stand, such as Boing, Boing, Wikipedia.org and google.com. The reason for this internet black out is in response to the US Senate which is considering legislation that would radically alter this thing we call the internet as we know it forever. The proposed legislation is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and would give extensive powers to corporations to shutdown any site they feel is violating copyright. To learn more, watch this:
