In Case You Need a Reminder: This is How Drivers Treat Bike Lanes

A typical Friday night on the bike lane on Plaza Street West in Brooklyn. There are lots of drivers frustrated that they can’t go faster — and, frequently, drivers who commandeer the bike lane because, well, they can.

The latest example popped up on Reddit — and shows again how painted bike lanes are, essentially, meaningless stripes that drivers drive over or park on (warning: inappropriate language below).

“She was driving through bike lane to dodge traffic,” our tipster told us. “[She] could have run over cyclists easily as she had loud music in her car and [was] completely unworried about law she was breaking.”

To its credit, the Department of Transportation does not label the two-way lane on Plaza Street West as a “protected” bike lane, but it is a crucial portion of the route many cyclists take from Prospect Park West’s two-way protected lane to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

The ease with which drivers can seize cyclists’ space is hardly limited to this spot. Drivers encroach on the DOT’s “protected” bike lane on Second Avenue so frequently that the NYPD has had to put up its own barricades.

Streetsblog ran the North Carolina license plates on the car in question. It has three tickets — two for running red lights.