Traffic Violence Continues: Despite the City’s Increased Efforts to Provide Safety
By Yehudit Garmaise
Walking, bicycling, scooting, and driving in one’s own neighborhood in New York City can be deadly, despite the city’s Vision Zero program that seeks to eliminate traffic violence.
Just last month, more New Yorkers died while merely getting around on city streets than in any month since NYC launched the Vision Zero program in 2014.
In July 11, pedestrians, four bicyclists, and 23 New Yorkers riding in cars were tragically killed in vehicle crashes.
The 38 New Yorkers who were killed in July was a grim number that increased from the 33 who died on city streets in June.
Although those numbers are high, they are, unfortunately, not unusual in NYC.
From Jan. 1 to July 31, a shocking 145 New Yorkers have passed away as a result of car crashes, the city’s Vision Zero website reports.
To better protect New York drivers on the move, Mayor Eric Adams has promised to make changes to 1,000 of the city’s intersections to improve street safety.
One idea to decrease their blind spots was to prevent parking near intersections, which is likely what the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) workers were doing when they were painting new yellow lines on the intersection of 13th Avenue and 53rd Street last Thursday.
BoroPark24 reached out to the DOT and Community Board 12 to inquire about the efforts to redesign intersections in BoroPark, but no comments have yet been made.
Raised crosswalks are another plan in the works to better protect pedestrians, DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez recently told BoroPark 24, although he did not provide details about when and where those raised crosswalks would be built.
Mayor Adams’ influence on state lawmakers to allow speed cameras to operate 24/7, which started on Aug. 1, was another effort to better protect New Yorkers from the increasing number of reckless and speeding drivers who have injured and killed New Yorkers of late.
“The number of traffic fatalities we’ve seen in New York City this summer is disturbing,” Charles Lutvak, a spokesman for Mayor Adams said. “Mayor Adams has made historic investments to make the city’s streets safer.”