New York, NY – Record Number of Tickets for Lawbreaking Bicyclists

New York, NY – The NYPD is “sick” of brazen bicyclists — and has started a major campaign to slam the brakes on riders’ out-of-control behavior.

Early this month, the police began a ticket blitz targeting bike scofflaws by handing out a slew of summonses to riders who refused to follow basic traffic-safety laws, sources told The Post.

In just the first two weeks of January in Manhattan, cops handed out nearly 1,000 tickets charging wayward riders with breaking the kind of laws many seem to constantly ignore: going the wrong way, running lights, making illegal turns and riding on the sidewalk.

“Bicyclists should travel like vehicles and must obey the same laws,” said a police source familiar with the crackdown. “The department and the people are sick of it.”

The sources said that bike riders — including messengers and pedicab drivers — had better get used to the hardened approach toward violations.

“It’s from now until forever,” a source said. “There is no set time.”

The NYPD did not have the exact number of bicycle tickets written out in Manhattan over any other two-week period, but sources are sure they broke a record in early January.

“It’s an all-time high,” one high-ranking source said.

In addition to 979 Manhattan tickets, 315 were issued in Brooklyn and 167 were doled out in Queens.

Sources said that lawbreaking by cyclists has become the top quality-of-life complaint in some neighborhoods.

“I think the moral of the story is it’s not just obey the rules of the road, but to utilize the bike lanes and safety first,” a police source said.

Mark Jensen, 20, a waiter in the bike-riding hot spot of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said, “They should abide by the laws that are made for them.

“[The police] should give more summonses, and maybe people will obey the laws more.”

Norman Steisel, of the advocacy group Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes, said he thought there was definitely a need for the crackdown.

“There’s a lot of abusive riders who don’t pay attention to whatever the rules of the road are for bikes,” said Steisel, the city’s former sanitation commissioner.

“They think they have free rein and . . . and they don’t realize the dangers.”

Giancarlo Rodriguez, of Yonkers, said, “They should get tickets when they go through lights and when they turn in the middle of the road. [It] creates a hazard.

“Some cyclists don’t pay attention.”

Not everyone is happy. Jan Gorma, 23 — a Brooklyn waiter and cyclist who admitted, “I run stop signs” — finds the crackdown “annoying.”

“I think it’s a funny group [cyclists] to target,” he said. “We take up such a small portion of the road.”