For all you bikers in the NYC area, be careful, because cops are getting very strict! A 24-year-old cyclist from Brooklyn was fined $1,555 for going through red lights while riding with his head phones on. Click below for more information.
An avid cyclist says he’s the one being taken for a ride after cops slapped him with a whopping $1,555 in fines for a single traffic stop in Brooklyn last month.
Bushwick artist Daniel Greer, 24, who admittedly went through three red lights while wearing headphones, said he did not at first realize he was being pulled over near Lorimer and Grand Sts. on his bike ride home from his photography assistant gig on Sept. 7.
He was hit with four tickets and pleaded guilty because he thought the fines would be in the $700 to $900 range, he said.
So Greer answered the summonses by mail, checking off “guilty” to the offenses cited during the Williamsburg stop.
But he said he was stunned to get a Sept. 28 notice asking for about one-tenth of his annual income.
The red-light tickets worked out to cost between $190 and $940 because he was considered a repeat offender after running the first one.
“I know what I did was wrong and I understand that’s the penalty, I just think it’s astronomical,” Greer said. “I guess (the amount) just seemed a little excessive to me.”
He had considered fighting the tickets but copped to the traffic violations partly because he was going to be out of town and and was required to respond to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles within 15 days.
Police said Greer earned the multiple tickets he received.
“The individual committed several violations and was cited accordingly,” an NYPD spokeswoman said.
But cycling advocate and attorney Steve Vaccaro said he disagrees with the practice of doling out multiple tickets unless the rider is doing “a lot of very different and distinct things wrong.”
While issuing multiple tickets is allowed, it can be frowned upon by traffic court judges, he said.
Judges sometimes “contest traffic tickets or throw out summonses they consider to be for a single course of action,” Vaccaro said. “They call it double-dipping.”
