Transport. Dept. ready to join probes of accidents
Street safety advocates frustrated that police crash investigations don’t focus on improving streets for cyclists, pedestrians and motorists are cheering a city plan to involve the city Department of Transportation in the probes.
Starting Jan. 1, a city DOT team will respond to every fatal and serious crash, under a law passed by the City Council and signed by Mayor de Blasio in April.
The NYPD will remain in charge of criminal investigations that result from crashes — such as vehicular homicide charges involving drunken or drugged drivers.
But supporters of the changeover hope involving the Transportation Department will make city government more responsive to crash victims, improve street design and counter a police culture they say favors motorists over pedestrians and cyclists.
“At least we will get something. We’re going to have people to really check, really investigate something,” said Martha Valenzuela, whose 14-year-old son, Mario, was killed by a truck driver in September 2019.
Mario was bicycling alongside a Mack dump truck in Long Island City when the truck made an unexpected right turn into his path.
His mom says she hopes the new law will ensure victims’ families won’t go through what she did — getting no information from police for days, then learning much later that the NYPD blamed her boy for the crash, even though the truck driver didn’t signal, veered left and didn’t look before turning right.
“We didn’t get any help from the police — we didn’t get any information from the police, not even from the detective,” she said. “You don’t know what to do, you don’t know where to go.”
The police didn’t even contact her about her son’s death until two days later, when she showed up at an NYPD precinct stationhouse seeking answers, she said.
The new city law sets up a new “crash investigation and analysis unit” within the DOT, which “shall have all powers necessary to investigate serious vehicular crashes or any other crash.”
Those powers will include tasks now assigned to police — including “inspecting crash sites, documenting vehicle and party positions, measuring and collecting data, interviewing witnesses, and conducting collision reconstructions.”
The Transportation Department has been given a $3 million budget to fund 29 staff positions in the unit.
The bill’s authors abandoned plans to have the Transportation Department take over completely as the primary agency investigating fatal crashes. That idea was opposed by the Transportation Department, the NYPD and the
city’s district attorneys.
Instead, the law makes clear that the Transportation Department’s investigations will aim at street design and safety measures.
The NYPD’s collision investigation squad in 2020 investigated 374 crashes, of which 245 were fatal.
That’s expected to continue, the NYPD and the DOT say. Transportation officials say their role in crash investigations will be akin to that of the Department of Buildings, whose inspectors respond to building fires.
With weeks left before the law takes effect, the Transportation Department is working on the finer points of how its crash investigation unit will operate.
“We are working closely with the NYPD to determine the best path forward for implementing this law, with an eye towards ensuring implementation does not interfere with criminal investigations or [district attorney] prosecution in any way,” said DOT spokesman Seth Stein. “We’ll have more to say soon.”
“The NYPD will continue to work closely with the DOT in preparation for Jan. 1,” an NYPD spokesman said of the new law.
Another major change in the bill: The Department of Transportation will take over “primary responsibility” to provide information about each serious crash to the public and the media. Currently, reporters get information about crashes from the Police Department.
Councilman Brad Lander, one of the law’s sponsors, said he’s less worried about what happens when the bill takes effect and more focused on how the accident investigation system can be improved.
“It’s not an issue of what’s happening Jan. 1 vs. Feb. 1 vs. March 1. This is not a gotcha law,” Lander (D-Brooklyn) said.
“This is about a long-term transformation of a system that has not been delivering, and one that needs to because lives are at stake.”
Safe-street advocates hope moving crash probes to the Transportation Department will change city government’s approach to safety issues.
They’ve long argued that the NYPD doesn’t do enough to probe serious crashes, and that police investigators are too quick to blame pedestrians and cyclists and don’t place enough blame on motorists.
“They have had a radically different view of the traffic laws and certainly the right of pedestrians and cyclists to being on the streets than certainly I do,” said lawyer Steve Vaccaro, a longtime traffic safety advocate who represents the Valenzuela family.
“Too often the cop goes far out of the way exaggerating how blameless the driver is,” he said. “It’s not about prosecution — yes or no. It’s about who was at fault and how can we avoid these collisions.”