Closest to the people
Last Monday in Manhattan, a 21-year-old NYU pre-med student was fatally struck, apparently by a drunk driver. In the Bronx Wednesday, a 16-year-old girl walking to school was hit and killed by a delivery truck driver. In Queens Friday night, a 38-year-old woman crossing the street was killed by a turning driver. In Brooklyn Friday, a 55-year-old e-bike rider was run over by a car and killed. After this awful cacophony of shattered glass and crushed steel and broken lives, traffic carnage is running 13% ahead of last year’s total of 273, the highest annual toll since Mayor de Blasio rolled out his Vision Zero plan in 2014.
No single, simple step will make streets safe. As Mayor Adams seems to understand, we need an all-of-the-above approach: intelligent intersection redesigns, better signals for drivers and pedestrians, effective public education and more. But if the nation’s largest city must continue to beg Albany to install more red-light and speed cameras and use existing ones to their full potential, as well as to lower speed limits on its own roads, it’s utterly hopeless.
Chronic speed demons and red-light-runners often go on to take innocent lives. The man charged with killing NYU’s Raife Milligan had run up four speed-camera violations in a five-month period. The car that killed 3-month-old Apolline Mong-Guillemin last September had been caught speeding 35 times running red lights five times in the nine months before the crash.
Yet to this day, state law forces the city’s speed cameras, which are tied to school zones, be turned off overnight and weekends. It allows red-light cameras at only 150 intersections, a tiny fraction of the city’s 13,000-plus crossings with traffic lights. Idiotically, the fine for an infraction is $50 whether it’s number one or number 20. Why no escalating fines for repeat offenders?
Friday, Gov. Hochul, reiterating wise words from last fall, said of red-light cameras, “I think cities should worry about that stuff.” Absolutely right, Madam Governor. Now please get lawmakers to let New York City protect its people. And step on it.