As you can see, the driver speeds away while Sam is left lying in the street. Unable to move for a few seconds, he says a few people walking shouted to see if he was okay and that one person suggested he call the police, but that no one in a car stopped. He called 911 and a fire truck was there within minutes. Then two police officers showed up to hear his story, and an ambulance crew patched up the scrapes on his arms.

In filling out their ‘Accident’ Report Sam says one officer asked him immediately, “Did you run a red light? Were you in the bike lane?” (despite the fact that there is no bike lane at this location) and “Are you sure it happened here?” presumably assuming Sam must have been at fault. It took several days for the police department to assign a detective to Sam’s case and in the meantime, he did his own detective work, collecting the video footage above.

Luckily, the bike survived and Sam was able to ride the rest of the way to his office. At the moment, he’s working with the police department to try and identify the perpetrator, but he’s skeptical they’ll be able to catch him without a license plate—something CCTV footage doesn’t show.

Let’s pause for a minute and consider a different version of this scenario: What if Sam had been driving to work and was cut off by another driver, whom he exchanged some words with? Then 20 blocks later, the same person pulled up next to Sam, stuck a gun out the window and shot him? If gunshots rang out during the morning commute in lower Manhattan, you can be sure that the police would have been on the scene in seconds—and they would not have asked Sam “Did you run a red light?” Car drivers and pedestrians in the area would be rushing to take cover, to assess the danger, and hopefully to help Sam escape safely. There would probably have been an immediate search for the shooter and he would be treated as an active threat.