Topic for a Friday: What’s with all these asshole drivers?!

Here at Streetsblog, we bike around a lot. And we’re of course noticing (and reporting on!) the increase in the number of cars that are choking our roadways and our lungs. Early in the pandemic, you’ll recall, we could see drivers speeding, and we were able to document it, thanks to speed camera data.

But we’re now having problems explaining the increasing aggression of those drivers. We’re out there; we’ve seen it. But we’ve also seen many many tweets from, and had many stoop conversations with, Friends of Streetsblog attesting to punish passes, intimidating revving, horn-honking and middle-finger saluting from drivers that we just have to stop and ask for help in trying to quantify what’s going on.

Brooklyn’s streets are swamped with cars, Horns, the middle finger salute and truly reckless driving cars . All these over caffeinated folks need to get back on subways and buses and oh yes, Congestion Pricing now, please

— Michael Powell (@powellAtlantic) October 6, 2021

Just watched two men physically fight over a double parked car. The guy blocked in said "I'm a cop." The double parker said "I have a badge too." Cop 1 started filming. Cop 2 hit cop 1 and knocked his phone to the ground. Cop 1 took a hammer out of his car.

— Armenoush (@armenoush_nyc) October 28, 2021

A wonderful morning trying to #bikeNYC to my doctor’s appt. Started by getting cutoff by a huge delivery truck while I had the walk sign, which nearly hit me and made me fall off my bike. Then I got punish passed by a taxi. I passed it seconds later after it got stuck in traffic.

— Clay Anderson (@Clay_Anders) October 27, 2021

Just got a vicious punish pass by a @Jeep driver; only his parking lights on, was behind a double parked car & came zooming towards me passing just an inch away as I had stopped & froze ready for impact. This is #streetviolence ignored by @NYPDShea @VisionZeroNYC

— C. GAS (@CatGasta) August 27, 2021

Got a story to share? Email us at tips@streetsblog.org. We’ll share them with the mayor.

In other news as we kick off the weekend when kids get lots of candy run over at a much-higher rate than normal:

• Speaking of aggressive drivers, there’s still time to vote in the latest round of our “America’s Most Toxic Car Ads” contest on Streetsblog USA.
• The MTA is getting back in the business of redesigning outdated bus routes. First up, the Bronx. (NYDN)
• Promise made, promise kept: Mayor de Blasio told our own Jesse Coburn the other day that he agreed that alleged harassment of 311 complainants (revealed in several recent Streetsblog stories) should be investigated. Well, the next day, he referred such cases to the city’s Department of Investigation. A department spokeswoman confirmed receipt of the referral but declined to comment further to Streetsblog.
• The Post was obviously impressed by Coburn’s deep investigation into 26 million 311 complaints since 2010, so the Tabloid of Record did its own admittedly paltry version of the story, analyzing apparently fraudulent NYPD responses to 1,240 complaints for the month of September. (It’s a start!)
• Like Streetsblog, Gothamist also wrote about the failure of the OMNY pay system to provide monthly or weekly passes, even though we have the technology.
• Here’s a terribly biased (and unbylined!) story by the Village Sun about a very reasonable and not-very-controversial plan for University Place in Manhattan.
• The City looked at the bike parking problem, especially as it affects transit-bound cyclists.
• The new city vaccine rates are out! The new city vaccine rates are out! And speaking of which, Sanitation workers (67 percent vaxxed!) are apparently in a work slowdown to protest the city’s mandatory vaccine efforts (NYDN, Gothamist) and cops (74 percent vaxxed!) are having a retirement fair for officers who don’t want the life- (and neighbor-) saving jab (NYDN). Some precincts have nearly half the cops unvaccinated, which raises the question of what the “protect” in “protect and serve” means. (NYDN)

Your city worker vaccination rates by agency pic.twitter.com/S8BkUVbikS

— Courtney Gross (@courtneycgross) October 28, 2021

• Watch out for the Halloween parade in the Village on Sunday. (NYDN)
• Finally, the Post loves to make fun of Mayor de Blasio, but the paper called Leonard Nimoy’s “Star Trek” character “Dr. Spock,” when, in fact, he is Mr. Spock.