NY Bike Lane Crashes

Casey Neistat smashes blocked NY bike lanes

Mr Neistat and his brother Van are creators of The Neistat Brothers, an HBO programme

A New York City filmmaker and cyclist has launched a painful online crusade to push authorities to ticket motorists who park in bike lanes.

In May, a policeman gave Casey Neistat a $50 (£31) fine for riding in a traffic lane, dismissing his plea that the bike lane was dangerously blocked.

To prove his point, Mr Neistat created a video in which he is shown crashing into a series of bike lane obstacles.

The video has become a YouTube hit, garnering almost a million views.

In the video, Mr Neistat crashes into a taxi, a traffic cone, construction kit and finally, a police car - none of which he had placed there for the video shoot.

"Everything we found, I crashed into," Mr Neistat told the local CBS television affiliate. "I refused to leave the bike lane."

He said the falls were not as painful as they looked because skateboarding experience taught him to fall safely.

New York City has dramatically expanded its network of bike lanes in recent years, but cyclists have complained the lanes are disregarded by delivery trucks and police, who use them as an extra parking lane, and by pedestrians, who use them to escape congested pavement.