A Routine Run In, Except for the Senator in the Passenger Seat

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But for two small details, the run-in between a bicyclist and two men in a car on Monday evening would likely have gone unremarked, just another entry in the annals of asphalt warfare in New York City.

The bicyclist, however, happened to be a transit activist with a cellphone camera and an active Twitter account. And one of the two men in the car was State Senator Martin J. Golden.

So rather than disappearing amid the stream of other social media gripes, the confrontation spawned a semi-viral Twitter post, a bout of amateur sleuthing and a renewed look at Mr. Golden’s record on traffic safety, not only in Albany, where he has voted against the expansion of speed-safety cameras in school zones, but also in New York City, where traffic records suggest a pattern of driving infractions.

In particular, critics highlighted a 2005 incident in which Mr. Golden hit a 74-year-old pedestrian while driving an S.U.V. The woman, Hariklia Zafiropoulos, died several months later. Police ruled the incident an accident and found Mr. Golden not at fault.

Transit activists seized on Monday’s incident as evidence of Mr. Golden’s disregard for traffic reform. Mr. Golden’s political opponents held it up as proof of his unfitness for office. Mr. Golden, one of only two Republican state senators from the city, is up for re-election in 2018.

The confrontation began near the intersection of 15th Street and Third Avenue in Brooklyn, when a car came up from behind upon a cyclist, Brian Howald, as he was riding to a community board meeting in Sunset Park on Monday. Mr. Howald said a man stuck his head out of the passenger window and, waving a placard, told him to pull over.

The man said he was a police officer and threatened to take Mr. Howald into his precinct station house if he did not comply, Mr. Howald said.

Mr. Howald, 30, said he reads about placard abuse as part of his advocacy, so he noticed that the passenger’s placard did not have the New York Police Department seal. He asked the passenger in which precinct he worked.

The man responded with a vulgarity, Mr. Howald recalled, and then rolled up his window.

There followed, by Mr. Howald’s account, a string of events so ridiculous as to be almost comical.

Mr. Howald tried to take photos of the passenger, but the man fended him off, ducking behind a sun visor. The car ran through two red lights and at one point even veered into oncoming traffic in an effort to dodge him, Mr. Howald said.

At one intersection, Mr. Howald said, he asked the passenger his name, to which the man replied, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Only after showing friends the photographs, Mr. Howald said, did he identify the man as Mr. Golden.

Mr. Golden denied that he had identified himself as a police officer. And he blamed Mr. Howald for the confrontation.

“By taking personal responsibility for the policing of traffic, Mr. Howald unnecessarily escalated this situation and created an unsafe environment for all involved including himself,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

“In a review of Mr. Howald’s social media, it is evident that this is not the first time he has aggressively engaged a motorist on a New York City street. I do however hope that it will be his last.”

In an interview with NY1, Mr. Golden said he thought Mr. Howald should “get a life.”

Mr. Howald’s Twitter posts included a photograph of the car’s license plate, inspiring some commenters to look up the vehicle’s previous traffic infractions. City records indicate that the car has collected at least 38 tickets since August 2013, for offenses ranging from parking in bus stops to running red lights.

On just one day, Nov. 16, 2015, the vehicle was cited three times for speeding through a school zone.

John Quaglione, a spokesman for Mr. Golden, said the vehicle is the senator’s personal car.

For years, Mr. Golden has opposed or worked to slow down efforts to expand the number of speed-safety cameras near schools. Currently, the city has cameras in 140 school zones; activists have pushed to at least double that number. But Mr. Golden has said he would like to see more evidence that the cameras were effective.

The city’s Transportation Department announced in September 2015 that the number of daily violations its speed cameras captured had dropped 60 percent between September 2014 and August 2015, indicating that the cameras were a deterrent.

Democrats who have announced their intentions to challenge Mr. Golden for his seat in 2018 seized on the exchange, promising to make transit reform a key pillar of their campaigns.

Ross Barkan, a former reporter for The New York Observer who announced his candidacy in October, called Mr. Golden unfit for office and a disgrace. Andrew Gounardes, a lawyer who ran against Mr. Golden in 2012, called on the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics to investigate whether Mr. Golden impersonated a police officer.

Mr. Howald said he is considering filing a police complaint against Mr. Golden for the alleged impersonation, a felony.

But transit activists also emphasized that Mr. Golden’s behavior, egregious though it was, and well-publicized though this instance might have been, was hardly anomalous, either for the senator or for other drivers in car-heavy Bay Ridge.

Since 2013, 1,829 cyclists and pedestrians have been injured in traffic-related incidents in Mr. Golden’s Senate district, according to data compiled by Transportation Alternatives. Fifty-six motorists, cyclists and pedestrians have died.