4 ms·
Hear, hear! The issue is a total lack of enforcement. One can recognize the older NYC drivers by their refusal to enter an intersection if they cannot be sure
by notyourday 8y ago
Hear, hear!
The issue is a total lack of enforcement. One can recognize the older NYC drivers by their refusal to enter an intersection if they cannot be sure to clear it on green. It is because in the late nineties in Manhattan blocking the box was equivalent of doing 90mph in a 55 zone in front of a state trooper ( the only time one could get away with it if the said state trooper was already busy writing a ticket to someone else ) -- you would get the a $100-$500 dollar ticket and you would get points on the license. Not it barely happens even on the streets with SBS lanes and traffic cops.
Let this sink in. $300 dollar and two points on a license for not clearing the box ( including crosswalks ) in 1996. It was when a spiffy dinner for two in NYC was about $80.
If NYC were to deploy a 1000 cops to write these tickets for a month today there would be no congestion in three months as no one would want to risk thousands of dollars in tickets for the $10 they could make by trying to squeeze the cars into the yellow light -- and the ones that would risk it are sure to lose the cars and licenses quite quick.
- majos 8y agoSo there's a nice pool of ticket revenue that, maybe, a majority of citizens want to see enforced. Anyone have an idea why it's not enforced?
- adamson 8y agoThey do enforce it. My office is on one of the major feeders to the Holland Tunnel (Broome/Watts Street), so it gets extremely congested everyday from 4 to 6. Every light cycle, several cars block the box, and a small team of traffic cops sprints out from their hiding spot around the corner, ready to write tickets. I think it's just a matter of scaling that tactic out to other intersections where traffic comes to a complete stop for twenty seconds at a time, allowing cops to give and explain tickets in the intersection without disrupting the flow of traffic.
- o_____________o 8y agoPlease add honking to that list, it's out of control in lower Manhattan.
- cimmanom 8y agoNot just in lower Manhattan. Also on nice leafy outer-borough side streets.
- astura 8y agoNot just Manhattan, everywhere in the City. I had a car follow me laying on the horn non-stop for two straight blocks in Brooklyn, no exaggeration. I was going less than 45 miles per hour on a narrow residential street with cars parked on both sides, that was completely unacceptable. They eventually illegally passed me when it was clear I wasn't going to drive in a way to leave myself enough reaction time to be able to stop if an obstacle jutted out from between parked cars into the road. That's just one example that sticks out in my head.
- ars 8y agoI drove there once - someone honked at me, so I stopped to see what was wrong. Turns out he wanted me to drive, not stop.