Road deaths down by 26%
TRAFFIC FATALITIES dropped by 26% this winter after the city launched a campaign to reduce the seasonal swell in evening crashes, officials announced Thursday.
There were 66 traffic fatalities from Nov. 1 to March 7, compared with 89 over the same period last year, according to the Transportation Department.
“We are very pleased with the results,” Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said at a press conference in lower Manhattan. “These are not just numbers. They represent fellow New Yorkers.”
The “Dusk and Darkness” campaign also involved beefed-up enforcement by the NYPD.
Cops wrote 19,056 violations for failure to yield, a 17.1% rise over the prior year, and 57,430 violations for speeding, an 11.4% increase.
All told, police this winter wrote 243,943 violations for Vision Zero-related offenses, just over a 10% increase from the previous year, according to NYPD Transportation Chief Thomas Chan.
The earlier onset of darkness in the fall and winter is directly tied to a spike in traffic fatalities and injuries.
On Thursday, city officials also warned that the concern shifts from night to morning as the days grow longer with the arrival of daylight saving time on Sunday.
That’s in part due to darker mornings and sleepy drivers, Trottenberg said.
As a result, the Transportation Department plans to launch a social media campaign next week warning drivers to be extra careful, especially in the morning.
“What we know about the spring is that just one lost hour of sleep, combined with newly dark mornings, make for a new reality,” Mayor de Blasio said in a statement. “Next week, the mornings will be darker, so drivers need to be alert and make allowances for themselves as well as for their fellow commuters walking to work and for kids making their way to school.”
The campaign is part of Vision Zero, the mayor’s ambitious street safety initiative, which aims to reduce to zero the number of preventable traffic deaths in the city by 2024.