The streets are as mean as ever — likely because the enforcement has never been less — despite Mayor Bill de Blasio claiming traffic safety as one of his top priorities over two terms.
Deaths on city streets soared last year as 275 people — including 123 pedestrians — were killed in crashes, all while the NYPD’s enforcement of traffic laws meant to protect lives plummeted, City Hall revealed in a report published late Friday.
It’s a 30-percent jump from the 211 traffic-related fatalities reported during the same 12-month period in 2020 and most deaths on city streets since 2014 when 285 people died.
The dramatic uptick in deaths and decline in enforcement come seven years into de Blasio’s signature “Vision Zero” initiative, which slashed speed limits around the city and proclaimed New York’s goal of no traffic-related deaths on city streets.
But that rhetoric has not been matched by action, pedestrian and cycling advocates have repeatedly charged, saying the City Hall’s plans for buses and bikes fall woefully short of achieving those goals.
“Mayor de Blasio promised to make streets less deadly and it’s a real failure of leadership that during his final year in office we’re significantly backsliding on progress,” said Cory Epstein, the spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, which back expanding the city’s bike lane network and tightening regulations on drivers.
“If the all levels of the de Blasio administration are not doing their jobs to crack down on reckless drivers, the result will be more deaths on the streets.”
Transportation officials and pedestrian and cycling activists have been sounding the alarm about a dramatic increase in speeding and reckless driving on city streets for months, complaints affirmed in the massive 524-page Mayoral Management Report.
However, the report also reveals that as the deadly driving skyrocketed, the number of summonses issued by cops dropped an astonishing 57 percent from pre-pandemic levels.
The NYPD reported writing just 298,377 violations of driving laws between July 1, 2020 and June 31, 2021, the twelve month span covered by the report.
That’s just a fraction of the 696,012 summons cops handed out over the same time period in 2019, when the Big Apple clocked just 218 traffic-related deaths.
Data from the DOT shows that every category of traffic-related death jumped during the 2021 reporting period from the year before:
- 123 pedestrians died, up from 107;
- 25 cyclists died, up from 22;
- 52 motorcyclists died, up from 31.
The report also reveals that cops arrested just 13 drivers for striking pedestrians who — under city law — had the right-of-way with their cars, despite logging 1,979 such collisions.
Transit advocates have used the massive decline in enforcement to again press state lawmakers in Albany to allow city officials to run the red light and speed cameras 24-hours a day. Currently, they can only operate on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The de Blasio administration is backing the push as its enforcement of traffic laws has come under renewed scrutiny After a three-month old was tragically killed in Brooklyn in a hit-and-run by a driver whose car had been ticketed 160 times.
Hizzoner’s Mayoral Management Report also lays bare the COVID-era stallout of key transportation projects designed to make streets safer and slow drivers down.
The DOT set a goal of putting another 250 road humps to slow down drivers on city streets over the 12-month period, but installed only 104.
Meanwhile, the city’s bike lane rollout slowed down dramatically as officials only added another 65 miles — the lowest rate in at least the last five years.
But there was some good news. Nearly half of the mileage, 29.2, was separated from street traffic, which is the largest amount of protected bike lanes added to city streets in recent years.
The day before City Hall dumped the report at 4:59 p.m. on a Friday, de Blasio teased some of the statistics his administration wished to highlight to reporters during his Thursday briefing.
When pressed about potential shortcomings yet to be revealed, the mayor offered a blanket defense — the coronavirus pandemic threw everything for a loop.
“I’m not trying to say COVID is the only problem. I’m saying the numbers you’ll see in the report that are not satisfying at all have, in many cases, a basis in the disruption of COVID,” de Blasio said. “It doesn’t mean anything, but we have to keep working with every tool we’ve got to fix it.”
When contacted about the levels of traffic enforcement late Friday, following the report’s release, the NYPD did not respond to requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh and Craig McCarthy.
