The NYPD’s Right-of-Way Regulations for Bike Lanes
Below, please find the definitive right-of-way regulations for New York City’s bike lanes. Any lower-ranked item must yield to any higher-ranked item.
1. Marked NYPD vehicles
2. Unmarked NYPD vehicles
3. Vehicles with a Thin Blue Line flag bumper sticker
4. A dumpster with the Punisher logo on it
5. Film crews for Blue Bloods
6. Vehicles whose owner’s cousin used to work for the city (any city is fine)
7. Amazon delivery trucks
8. Pedestrians walking against traffic
9. Any double-parked motorized vehicle
10. Regular film crews
11. Any motorized vehicle whose driver “just needs to check something”
12. Tourists waiting to cross the street who might not realize they are standing in the bike lane
13. Abandoned vehicles
14. Pizza Rat
15. Revelers and merrymakers
16. Bearded men screaming, “The End is near!”
17. Currently on-fire vehicles
18. Calzone Mouse
19. Street preachers
20. Men begging their beautiful fiancées to take them back, because they’ve changed, they swear it this time, they’re not going back to that life, only legitimate business from now on—on their mother’s grave!
21. Persons dressed as Santa Claus (during Santacon)
22. Chip and/or Joanna Gaines
23. Clean-shaven men screaming, “The End is near!”
24. Spaghetti Opossum
25. People who ask you for donations
26. The ghost of Ed Koch
27. Street acrobats
28. Members of the Bowery Boys
29. Prosciutto Capybara
30. Tourists who are doing the “‘Ey, I’m walkin’ here!” bit on their first trip to the Big Apple
31. Persons dressed as Santa Claus (during ordinary time)
32. Balloon animal artists who say, “And something for the beautiful lady?”
33. Student film crews
34. Members of the FiDi Fancy Lads
35. Scamps
36. Hooligans
37. People who ask you for the time
38. The ghost of John Purroy Mitchel, New York’s famous “Boy Mayor”
39. Ruffians
40. Members of the TriBeCa Association of Licensed Real Estate Brokers, the city’s most vicious street gang
41. Street urchins
42. Sea urchins
43. Improv performers
44. Street magicians
45. People who ask you for the time as a side-door way of getting your guard down to then ask you for donations
46. Mimes
47. Street actuaries
48. A Depression-era tramp pulling out both pockets to indicate that he doesn’t have any money
49. Empty space
50. Cyclists