New York City traffic deaths surge in 2019 after years of progress
Traffic deaths have surged in New York City this year, alarming advocates after years of progress under the Vision Zero push to end fatalities.
Families of people killed by cars and advocates rallied at City Hall on Tuesday after police statistics showed a 30% jump in deaths this year.
“I am in mourning,” said Debbie Kahn, whose son Seth was killed by a bus driver in Manhattan while crossing the street with the right of way.
“Why does it have to take young people dying to fix a street?” she said. “We need to treat this like the epidemic and public health crisis it is.”
Nationwide, pedestrian deaths hit a three-decade high last year. But New York, the first major US city to launch Vision Zero in 2014, had been able to buck the trend, reducing deaths of pedestrians, drivers and cyclists to a record low of 200.
That has changed this year, with deaths on pace to rise for the first time since the initiative began. Sixtyfive people have been killed so far in 2019, up from 50 at the same time in 2018, according to New York police department data.
Advocates say Mayor Bill de Blasio and his administration have been too slow to rebuild dangerous streets and too quick to bow to complaints from motorists inconvenienced by changes like protected bike lanes and pedestrian islands.
“There is so much more the mayor has failed to do. So much that he has deliberately chosen not to do,” said Marco Conner of Transportation Alternatives.
A crackdown on delivery cyclists has distracted from from safety measures, Conner said.
“Enough with the mayor heeding the voices of a few … at the expense of the rest of the city,” he said. “When we delay safety measures, people die.”
The city department of transportation says that by its count, which may categorize crashes differently, the increase in deaths this year is 10% – from 58 at the same time in 2018 to 64 in 2019.
“No death on our streets is acceptable and under Vision Zero this administration has brought traffic fatalities to historic lows for five consecutive years with record numbers of ambitious street redesigns across all five boroughs,” said spokesman Brian Zumhagen.
“We are continuing a robust program to redesign hazardous corridors and intersections, changing signal timing to reduce deadly speeding, giving pedestrians exclusive crossing times at more locations, and expanding our bike network.”
Family members laid flowers at City Hall on Tuesday and displayed photos of loved ones, reading off the names of those killed each month this year as they held a banner reading: “Vision Zero is in a state of emergency.”
Last week, a three-year-old boy was killed by a turning candy van in Brooklyn. Police say the driver failed to yield to the child on a crosswalk.
City councilman Mark Treyger said he has been pushing the city to fix the dangerous intersection for years.
“Our hearts are still very broken,” he said. “There are those who continue to say that somehow the child or his family are responsible. It is so preposterous … a three-year-old child with a scooter, up against a multi-ton vehicle in an intersection that the city knew for years was highly dangerous.”