The Not So Savvy Lawyer
NY doesn't send their best
Saul Steinberg's iconic illustration titled "View of the World from 9th Avenue" featured on a 1976 cover of New Yorker Magazine is a satirical commentary on the self-centered perspective often associated with New Yorkers. It depicts Manhattan as the epicenter of the universe, with the rest of the world reduced to a distant, simplified landscape. The illustration pokes fun at the city's insular mindset and parochialism that’s a well known stereotype of those from the Big Apple.
Cycling attracts a similar personality to that of the self-absorbed New York attitude mocked by the Steinberg cover but so does the ideology of irrational hatred and ignornace towards cycling. In the middle, are normal people, many law abiding and caring motorists, along with principled-driven cycling advocates. Also, nearly any video that circulate online framed as “motorists vs bicyclists,” invokes narrow mindedness and simplification of the situation.
The account name Clown World recently posted an eleven second clip showing bicyclists and a motorist on a road on X.
Clown World asks, “who at fault?”
There are over 5,000 replies, many ignoring the obvious fact the engine of the Mercedes could be heard accelerating prior to the collision and that the driver fled the scene. Instead much of the focus was on the bicyclists and the irrational hatred towards their presence on that road. There were too plenty of unfortunate Cluster B(ike) activist takes which help nobody, especially sensible non personality disordered bicyclists.
Among those countless nonsensical replies were those of “The Commercially Savvy Lawyer©,” a NYC based attorney.
The woman behind the account first blabbered:
The road in the video has no shoulder. While difficult to see in the video, the space immediately to the left (from the bicyclists’ and motorist’s view) is a curb.
That aside, someone replied to her indicating that shoulders were not for the use of travel but instead for emergencies. They stated that the actual lanes were intended for travel, including by bicyclists.
She replied:
The Commercially Savvy Lawyer©’s take is not only initially dripping in authoritarian “I’m a bicyclist too” narcissim but she epitomizes the self-centered attitude Steinberg was trying to illustrate in his illustration, "View of the World from 9th Avenue."
It’s clear this woman has not taken any bicycle education course but then again it’s likely the bicyclists in the video have not either. Bicycle education programs from the League of American Bicyclists’ courses, to Cycling Savvy, Street Smarts, Effective Cycling, CANBike, and Bikeability all teach the skill of that’s often called “lane control” or “taking the lane” along with both the safety arguments and legal aspects of the behavior. The vast majority of the public, cyclsits or not, misunderstand the concept.
No lawyer worth his or her salt conflates people with inanimate objects in context of the law. Laws apply to people (e.g. drivers) operating inanimate objects (bicycles, cars, trucks, buses) in specific areas (lanes, roads, roadways, highways, shoulders).
The legal profession lives and dies on definitions.
Then, there’s her citation of a special New York City only law that pertains to one-way stretets greater than or equal to a specific width. If the UK license plate isn’t obvious enough, the beginning of the video shows a motor vehicle moving in the opposite direction along with a turn lane towards the center of the road and the end of the video shows traffic signal heads facing the opposite direction.
How did someone with this caliber of thinking even make it into law school or pass the Bar exam?