Mayor Adams Installs Technology in City Service Vehicles to so they Can't Speed

By Yehudit Garmaise

Fifty of NYC’s 30,000 public service vehicles hit the roads on August 11 with retrofitted technology, called Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), which prevents drivers from exceeding posted speed limits.

Mayor Adams, who has many times pointed out the correlation between fast, aggressive driving and the high number of injuries and fatalities on the streets, said that he wants the city’s service vehicles to set an example for the general public on how to drive safely.

“Once installed, drivers who attempt to exceed the posted speed limit are thwarted by the technology, and the car will automatically decelerate,” said Dawn Pinnock, the commissioner of the Department of Citywide Services.

If the 50 cars equipped with ISA successfully control the drivers’ speeds, the mayor said he wants the technology on “every vehicle we are using in our city’s fleet.”

“We can put a stop to speeding and make our fleet vehicles safer for pedestrians, motorists, and cyclists,” Commissioner Pinnock said. This has potential to save lives and restrict fleet operators from disregarding the rules.

Mayor Adams, who said he was “impressed with the technology of the cars,” said that, “they will ensure that speeding is impossible in city vehicles.

Other measures the mayor has taken to provide safer streets, he said, were to, “get Albany to put into place 24/7 speed cameras, increasing police enforcement of traffic laws, and going after illegal dirt bikes.”

The mayor also invested $900 million to redesign 1,000 citywide intersections to make them safer for pedestrians.