The Amish are required to have lights during the daytime also.

NYC has never been interested in making parking efficient. The parking meter rates are ridiculously cheap, with many streets not charging anything for parking (or even having time limits). And yes, giving away valuable parking makes driving much more complicated -- but apparently the Governor was in a diner and overheard some voters from NJ complaining about increased costs....

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/10321/Diana-s-life-could-have-been-saved-says-doctor https://print.ispub.com/api/0/ispub-article/12892

Scoop-n-run vs Stay-n-play has been a long-running debate, with conflicting data and studies.

No, there are major differences. The classic example was Princess Diana, who spent the last hour of her life mere yards outside a hospital with an emergency room that could have probably saved her life. French protocol, as you say, is the "stabilize" the patient before moving, whereas in the US the EMS would have done a scoop-and-run.

This particular street is wider because it once had trolley tracks running down the middle, before the Key System was ripped out in 1958 by General Motors.

The space will be used for a parking lot (originally was supposed to have a cycletrack, but that was deleted as well).

The project cost is $25 million. There will be long-term pavement maintenance costs that comes with the wider highway, not to mention the giant parking lot that is going in. There will be lost property tax revenue, and more death/injury. So it is highly doubtful the refurb costs of the buildings on that block would have been remotely close to all that.

For those interested in this topic, there are better sources of info than a NJB youtube video. In my experience, NJB is more interested in clicks than accuracy, and this video is no exception.

In particular, the complaints about oversized firetrucks is a bit overblown because any halfway competent bike planner can work around that when designing bike facilities. When cities say they can't do a bike project because of FD concerns, it usually means they just don't want to do an otherwise popular project, and are using flimsy FD excuses as a convenient way to kill a project.

In Europe, they treat patients at the scene, whereas the US extracts the patient and transports to nearest hospital (and stabilize inside the ambulance). These approaches require very different types of equipment and manpower.

"You go in, find Putin, bring him out in 24 hours, and you're a free man."

"24 hours, huh?"

"You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad. You know how to get in quiet. You're all I got."

Vote blue no matter who!

While many car manufacturers provide this feature, it is not required. See 49 CFR 571.108 (Table I-a—Required Lamps and Reflective Devices).

actually high-vis gear is mandatory in all motor vehicles

Wait, what? All this time I've been breaking the law by riding in cars without my high-vis vest?