Phillip Kalantzis-CopeNewly released data of crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists reveals that Bowery and East Houston Street was the city’s most accident-prone intersection for bicyclists from 1995 to 2009.
During that time span, there were 41 accidents at the intersection, according to the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, which has compiled new data from the New York State Department of Transportation in an interactive map called Crashstat.
Transportation Alternatives said the new statistics pointed to the need for further reforms that would make the city more pedestrian-and-cyclist-friendly.
“As long as the default response to a motor vehicle crash is that it’s an accident, the behavior that’s killing and injuring people will continue,” wrote the group’s director, Paul Steely White, in a press release.
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New timers have been installed at intersections of Delancey Street, Bowery Boogie reports. The countdown clocks, stretching from Kenmare to Clinton Streets, come two weeks after a cyclist was run over by a truck at Chrystie Street, reinforcing Delancey Street’s dangerous reputation.
Jim Kiernan 
Jim Kiernan Images of last year’s ride.Among some hardcore cyclists, wearing a helmet is considered a little square. For this Sunday’s nude bike ride, wearing anything at all might seem a bit prudish.
Like modern-day Lady Godivas, local bikers will strip down and pedal around town as part of New York City’s third annual World Naked Bike Ride.
“It really is about environmental consciousness, first and foremost,” said Paul Nocera, one of the ride’s organizers.
Biking in the buff promotes cycling as a safe and fun mode of transportation while offering a visual demonstration of the vulnerability of cyclists, both in terms of bike safety and larger environmental concerns, he said.
The event began in 2004 with two nude cycling groups protesting dependence on oil but the message has evolved to include support of the struggles in the Arab World, solidarity with the people of Japan and protest against vehicular dominance, police harassment and nuclear energy, according to the group’s Facebook page.
But photographs from previous events show the ride isn’t all serious political action. Participants are encouraged to ride as “bare as you dare” and to decorate themselves with brightly colored body paint.
Only one person was ticketed last year for blocking traffic and no one received citations for nudity, Mr. Nocera said.
Participants will meet in the East River Park at Delancey Street at 4 p.m. when the full route will be disclosed. The ride concludes with an afterparty at Time’s Up, an environmental organization in Brooklyn.
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Mario RamirezThe bicycle is such a decorous, ingenious, quiet machine, it’s a shame it has become a politicized one as well. But when you see somebody on a bike with a placard attached to it which reads A QUIET PROTEST AGAINST OIL, you know Politicization has arrived. (On First Avenue, in this case.)
Beautiful and ingenious as the bicycle may be, the human body is even more beautiful and ingenious, at least until the age of 60, and especially below the age of 30. And let’s not forget one important thing. As a pedestrian, I also fall into the category of partaking in A QUIET PROTEST AGAINST OIL, unless I’m in a cab. I just don’t have a sign, or a T-shirt, with which to make this fact plain. But I’m going to get one. It’s going to be a quiet protest against other, equally quiet protests.
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