Casey Neistat's Bike Lanes Video and the $50 Ticket Behind It

In June 2011 the New York filmmaker Casey Neistat was stopped by a police officer and handed a $50 ticket for riding his bicycle outside a marked bike lane. He tried to explain that cyclists often have to swerve out of the lane because it is blocked. The officer was not persuaded, so Neistat answered the only way a filmmaker would: with a short video.

The result, simply called Bike Lanes, shows him riding around Manhattan and refusing to leave the painted lane no matter what stands in it. Instead of steering around obstacles, he rides straight into them and tumbles over. In about three minutes it makes a point that a long argument at the roadside could not: a lane only protects cyclists when it is actually clear.

Watch the Bike Lanes video

Neistat posted the film on his YouTube channel on 7 June 2011. It opens with his account of the stop and the ticket, then turns into a deadpan piece of slapstick. Every time something blocks the lane, from parked vehicles to construction gear, he keeps going and crashes, picks himself up and carries on.

The humour comes from obedience taken to an extreme. He is not breaking the rule he was fined under; he is following it so literally that the absurdity becomes impossible to miss. The last thing he rides into, as the film is widely remembered, is a parked police car, which gives the joke its final twist.

What the New York rule actually said

The ticket was based on a city traffic rule, cited as section 4-12(p) of the Rules of the City of New York. In 2011 it told cyclists to use a bike lane or path where one was provided. Streetsblog, which covered the video two days after it appeared, pointed out that the same rule listed exceptions.

Riders were allowed to leave the lane when preparing to turn, and when it was reasonably necessary to avoid hazards: fixed or moving objects, motor vehicles, other bicycles, pedestrians, pushcarts, animals or surface hazards. In other words, the rule already admitted the very problem Neistat was illustrating. His film simply showed how often those exceptions apply on a normal day in Manhattan.

The details of the roadside conversation come from Neistat's own telling, and we only have his side of it. What the rule says, though, is a matter of record, and it makes the video more than a rant: it is a visual footnote to a regulation.

Why the film spread so fast

The clip went viral almost at once. Streetsblog noted that the Today show covered it before the cycling site could even post it. New York Magazine nicknamed Neistat the city's "Bike-Lane Vigilante", and Time later placed the film eighth in its list of the top ten creative videos of 2011.

Part of the appeal is that it needs no explanation. Viewers anywhere in the world recognise the scene: a lane painted on the road, a delivery van parked across it, and a cyclist forced to choose between the rule and common sense. The film also avoids preaching. Neistat never lectures the audience; he lets the falls do the talking.

There is a craft lesson here too. The video is short, has a single idea, and repeats it with small variations until the pattern becomes funny. That structure, a clear premise escalated to a punchline, is one Neistat would use again and again.

Who is Casey Neistat?

Born in 1981, Neistat was already an established filmmaker in 2011. HBO had bought an eight-episode autobiographical series from him and his brother, The Neistat Brothers, which premiered in 2010. He later became one of YouTube's best-known daily vloggers.

In 2015 he co-founded Beme, a video-sharing app, with Matt Hackett. CNN agreed to acquire it in November 2016, reportedly for about US$25 million; the app shut down in January 2017, and Neistat and Hackett announced in January 2018 that they were cutting ties with CNN.

The bike-lane theme never left him. In 2022 he released a video called NYC Bike Lane Bounty that opens with him crashing into an illegally parked van, a deliberate nod to the 2011 film.

The real issue: lanes that are not clear

Behind the comedy is a serious and common complaint. Painted bike lanes share space with everything else on a busy street: double-parked cars, taxis picking up passengers, deliveries, roadworks and rubbish bags. When a lane is blocked, a cyclist has to merge into traffic, often with little warning to drivers behind. That is exactly the moment when riders are most exposed.

This is why many cycling advocates argue for physically separated lanes and for enforcement aimed at vehicles that block them, rather than at riders who leave them for safety. Cities have answered in different ways. New York, for example, has since passed a local law banning vending carts and stands from bicycle lanes.

A few practical points for anyone who rides in a city:

Learn your local rule. Many cities require cyclists to use a lane where one exists, but most allow exceptions for turning and for hazards. The wording matters if you are ever stopped.
Signal and look before leaving a lane. Moving around an obstacle is legal in many places, but it still means merging with traffic.
If you are ticketed and believe an exception applied, a photo of the obstruction and a note of the time and place can help if you contest it.
Do not copy the stunt. Neistat's falls were planned and filmed for effect; real collisions with vehicles and barriers cause serious injuries.

Common misunderstandings

"Cyclists must never leave the bike lane." Not as a rule of thumb. Rules like New York's 2011 version expressly allowed riders to leave the lane to turn or avoid hazards.

"The video was just an angry rant." It is closer to a demonstration. The film shows, scene by scene, the situations the rule's exceptions describe.

"A painted lane is the same as a protected lane." Paint marks a space; it does not keep vehicles out of it. Neistat's video is, in effect, a three-minute case for the difference.

More than a decade later, the film still works because the problem it shows has not gone away. Anyone who has ridden past a delivery truck parked squarely in the lane will understand the joke, and the point behind it.

Sources: Casey Neistat on YouTube (original video); Wikipedia: Casey Neistat; Streetsblog NYC: Casey Neistat explains RCNY § 4-12(p); NYC Local Law 53 of 2024 (vending in bicycle lanes).

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