15 ms·

New York’s success provides road map for others taking aim at pedestrian deaths

122 points by okket 8y ago

lwansbrough 8y ago
Probably helps to have a paramilitarized police force with an annual budget of $5.6 billion and nearly as many employees as there are active personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces. :)
- VBprogrammer 8y ago
  Your comment got me wondering about the NYPD. Specifically, when I visited New York last March I was struck by the number of police vehicles visible on the street. It felt like there was barely a block which didn't have one or two police cruisers parked on it. I live in London and by comparison it feels rare to see a police vehicle at all. Nevermind just parked along a random street. I guess this was mostly due to timing; it was just after a major snow storm. Comparing the budget and number of officers it's not that different £3.2B and 30000 officers vs $5.6B and 40000 officers.
  - Scipio_Afri 8y ago
    Nice, evidence and fact based opinions!
  - trothamel 8y ago
    I suspect visible presence would be a bit higher for the NYPD, just because NYC has more officers in an area that's half the size of London.
    - VBprogrammer 8y ago
      Ah yes! That would do it. So they have more officers (though not drastically more) and quite a bit smaller area to cover. That probably goes some way to explaining what I observed.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    Some of those are the meter maids. The traffic enforcement cars don't look very different from the patrol units at a quick glance.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  The NYPD is fairly useless when it comes to traffic enforcement other than ticketing cyclists. They'll ignore trucks blocking crosswalks (and endangering pedestrians). Double parking in bus and bike lanes. Tractor-trailers (which are technically illegal to drive through the city at all without a special permit for each delivery, but that's never enforced) blocking both crosswalks and the entire intersection because they didn't wait for the street ahead to have room, and making blind turns where they come within inches of mowing down pedestrians crossing with the light (whom they couldn't see because their cab and hood are too high, which is part of why they're illegal). Heck, police cruisers are some of the worst offenders when it comes to blocking crosswalks; parking on sidewalks (thus forcing pedestrians into the street), and other such obnoxious behavior. And when a driver crushes or kills a pedestrian or cyclist, the NYPD goes out of their way to defend instead of prosecuting the driver. Even when eyewitness accounts and video evidence show the driver at fault. Even when the driver was driving without a license or under the influence.
- Eric_WVGG 8y ago
  No, it doesn’t. The police around here generally ignore traffic violations unless they are specifically conducting a “sting”. I recently was told that this is actually a matter of policy, because someone discovered that cops were using traffic violations as an excuse to disproportionally target minorities, like the old “broken windows” policing days. Honestly, it even makes a bit of sense... traffic is so dense now and violations so frequent that even the minimal effort of enforcement would shut down entire arteries. How do you pull over a bad driver when there’s no space to pull them over? There’s no way out of this mess except for fixing the subway and congestion pricing.
  - dajohnson89 8y ago
    >There’s no way out of this mess except for fixing the subway and congestion pricing. Good luck with that. Politicians have private drivers shuttle them everywhere -- If they took the subway into work, we'd have a much better state of affairs.
  - cozzyd 8y ago
    Easy, automatic enforcement by cameras. No pulling over necessary, fine comes in the mail.
    - Eric_WVGG 8y ago
      Sounds great to me. The other day I was wondering why they don't mount traffic cameras on MTA busses for massive city coverage… but the short version is that traffic laws are determined by the state, not NYC, and the rest of the state is ruled by automobile drivers who don't want to vote themselves into traffic tickets. [edit] btw, I was referring to issues like "blocking the box," double parking, parking in bike lanes, generally unsafe driving. Cameras track speeding, which (I believe) is actually the least of the problems we have around here. Generally traffic is so terrible that speeding is impossible.
      - cozzyd 8y ago
        No reason the cameras couldn't fine all those things. Should be "easy" for today's "AI" to flag these and have a human review.
- CPLX 8y ago
  The NYPD doesn't give a shit about traffic violations, and is very heavily on the side of drivers. This is a longstanding cultural thing, certainly affected by the fact that nearly all NYPD officers themselves commute to work by car.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It’s more about money. If you did the type of heavy traffic enforcement that you see on Long Island or in some upstate places, the overtime and adjudication would cost many millions of dollars. NYPD in my observation tends to focus mostly on keeping things moving.
    - CPLX 8y ago
      That’s definitely not it. Writing traffic tickets would almost certainly be a revenue positive move.
      - Spooky23 8y ago
        Depends on who gets the money. Ticket revenue is split between fine and surcharge. 100% of the surcharge goes to the state. In NYC, the DMV (State) adjudicates traffic matters and presumably shares the revenue. Counties/boroughs probably get a piece of the action too. Meanwhile, NYC via NYPD gets the rage and vitriol from all of the traffic jams and general griping from the tickets. They also need to pay for overtime for testimony -- which NYPD prefers to use to flood public events with cops, etc.
        bogomipz 8y ago
        >"Meanwhile, NYC via NYPD gets the rage and vitriol from all of the traffic jams and general griping from the tickets." You don't need officers to write tickets at all you just put up cameras to pick off the low hanging fruit - speeding, blocking the intersections and blocking the cross walk. The only reason that speeding cameras were taken down was b/c the state failed to reauthorize them in time. >"Depends on who gets the money." It's safe to say that NYC gets that money. Upwards of billion dollars of it anyway: >"The city collected $957 million in fines in fiscal year 2015, an increase of 7.5 percent from the previous year and a 12 percent increase since 2012." "Red light camera revenue, which has been on the decline since 2012, jumped $1 million to $29 million in fiscal year 2015. Meanwhile, bus lane camera revenue increased to $17 million from $12 million the year before and speed camera violations increased to $31 million from $2 million" [1] [1] https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160324/civic-center/new-york-city-collects-record-19-billion-fines-fees/ https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160324/civic-center/new-y...
- astura 8y ago
  Found the person whose never been to New York City. Traffic laws are largely unenforced in New York City.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Uber induced congestion makes jaywalking much safer.
- zeristor 8y ago
  Ubergestion?
Vinnl 8y ago
For those interested in this, I can highly recommend "What Seattle can learn from Dutch street design" [1]. It's a presentation that gives an overview of all sorts of small infrastructural measures, similar to the Queens Boulervard redesign, taken in the Netherlands to prevent traffic deaths. What makes it especially interesting is that e.g. rather than reducing the speed limit, cars are nudged to slow down through using different material for the road, or by simply making the road less wide. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0GA901oGe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0GA901oGe4
- Sharlin 8y ago
  For anyone interested in learning more, these measures are examples of traffic calming [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming
  - HNLogInShit 8y ago
    “Traffic calming” = pandering to NIMBYs who want to create a de facto gated community by stealing from everyone else
- MisterTea 8y ago
  I remember the disaster of an intersection at the juncture of Queens Blvd and the northern terminus of Woodhaven Blvd at Queens Center Mall. There was an average of one accident per day at that intersection with the yearly total closer to 400. I took the bus to school and passed through that intersection on a daily basis. It was so bad that I would cross the streets using the subway station as a tunnel to avoid setting foot in that death trap. I have also witnessed a handful of accidents myself when passing through. They redesigned the traffic pattern and made the street along the mall one way which solved the accident problem. Now the entirety of Queens Blvd is safer.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  The most interesting concept is that of shared spaces- it’s a bit counter intuitive, but if you put cars on the same level (figuratively and literally) as pedestrians, cyclists and other road users you can significantly reduce accident rates. You do this by removing curbs, signage, lane markings etc. This encourages road users to pay attention to the road ahead and slow down, and also makes the whole area a nicer place to be in. The journey time may seem slower to car drivers, but given you eliminate most major accidents the average journey time is probably the same.
insickness 8y ago
Gridlock has gotten far worse in NYC. Cars constantly pull into and block intersections and crosswalks.
- addicted 8y ago
  That doesn’t apply to Queens boulevard that is being discuses in the Article.
  - insickness 8y ago
    It applies to general pedestrian safety in NYC. When cars block the crosswalk you often have to walk dangerously close to cars in the intersection to get around them. It didn't used to be this bad in NYC.
    - Sharlin 8y ago
      Of course it didn’t; there used to be less traffic! And the only solution is to reverse the trend of traffic growth—specifically, to reduce the average footprint of an individual traveler.
    - anthonybsd 8y ago
      It's been this bad in NYC since at least when I moved here (1997).
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      It was way worse. The the 80s NYC of my youth almost every aspect of traffic engineering was worse and more dangerous. You may not have observed cars blocking crosswalks because the crosswalks were missing.
      - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Crosswalks are present at every intersection whether painted or not.
yepItsAllTrue 8y ago
I realize what the article means, but "a roadmap for taking aim at pedestrian deaths" certainly is curious phrasing.
RankingMember 8y ago
Somewhat-related: The US Department of Transportation recently released finalized rules regarding low-speed audible warning sounds for hybrid and battery-electric vehicles to prevent pedestrian injury: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/06/us-dot-finally-finalizes-low-speed-noise-maker-rules-evs/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/06/us-dot-finally-finalize...
- kgermino 8y ago
  I really don’t like that plan. It may not be bad, depending on what the noise is, but unless it’s done well it will be a new, annoying sound that I have to hear all the time. I don’t see the safety benefits either. Cars going less than 20 mph are not particularly dangerous. On top that that, in most situations where you’re going less than 20 it’s the drivers responsibility to watch for pedestrians, not the other way around. (Parking lots, big streets in cities where there’s crosswalks every couple hundred feet, shared spaces where pedestrians and cars are in the same lane). It’s probably more likely to let people drive faster through parking lots (as people hear the car behind them and move over) than create any safety improvements.
  - RankingMember 8y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your argument with regard to responsibility. When I'm laying on the pavement, I don't think I'll care that much whose responsibility it was to avoid the collision. To your last point, why would a car emitting noise result in people speeding through parking lots? Most cars on the road are already emitting noise. This is just bringing hybrid and electric cars into parity with existing vehicles. If you happen to witness a Fisker Karma cruising around at low speed, you'll hear their take on it. I didn't find it too offensive- it sounds like the guitar tone from that Morrissey song "How Soon is Now?".
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Note that you're describing the main operating mode in the last paragraph - this holds true for parking lots as it does for other shared spaces (who should be paying attention is somewhat academic). Over 20 mph, the tires are the main noise source even with gasoline cars (unless you take off the exhaust muffler, which is a bit of a corner case).
chaosbutters314 8y ago
I live in a suburb and the biggest problem I see isn't drivers, it is pedestrians. They do not use cross walks. If there is not a cross walk directly outside the shop they are leaving, they just cross the road whenever they feel like it. Pedestrians also just stand and talk in the middle of street. It blows my mind. I have lived around the US and this is a distinctly NY thing. And they also have the weird habit of doing their run...in the middle of the road. Even if there is an empty sidewalk with no crossings, people will just do their run in the road like they're a car. Drivers are also to blame but there would be even fewer if pedestrians were held to some standards of road safety. Police don't even need to give tickets, just scare pedestrians into using common courtesy.
- ecshafer 8y ago
  Why should drivers get the right of way and implicit use of all of the road? Why not people? Cars should be second class citizens to people on the roads, unless they are specifically highways.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - fedups 8y ago
    Drivers are people, my friend
- bdhess 8y ago
  Running on a sidewalk is terribly unpleasant, and has its own dangers. Sidewalks tend to be uneven, among other tripping hazards. And there is limited reaction time to anticipate motorists who speed out of driveways, bowling past the sidewalk but braking before they enter the street.
- jacobush 8y ago
  Maybe that is why it's "legal" to murder someone by car in New York.
- francisofascii 8y ago
bigpeopleareold 8y ago
Cars must stop for pedestrians at crosswalks in Norway. I got very used to this. Occasionally drivers ignore that rule, but in general, it's a very nice thing. However, in Oslo, the only thing that doesn't stop for pedestrians is trams. I don't know why.
- legulere 8y ago
  Crosswalks are not allowed to be on roads with tram lines in Germany.
  - anamexis 8y ago
    That doesn't make sense - how would pedestrians cross roads with tram lines? Here's a crosswalk across a road with a tram line in Berlin. https://goo.gl/maps/G9vfZyoUjr62 https://goo.gl/maps/G9vfZyoUjr62
    - legulere 8y ago
      Ah sorry I meant zebra crossings in particular. The one you sent me seems to be one with traffic lights for the pedestrians. Generally you are allowed to cross ways almost everywhere if you are giving the vehicles on the road precedence. There are a few restrictions: you should use the shortest path, if there are zebra crossings or traffic lights nearby you have to use them, if there is a lot of traffic you should cross at intersections, etc. but there’s not the general concept of jaywalking.
- stingraycharles 8y ago
  > However, in Oslo, the only thing that doesn't stop for pedestrians is trams. I don't know why. Same thing in Amsterdam, although the stopping distance seems fairly short. I think it has mostly to do with minimizing interruptions and being relatively infrequent. And taxis also never stop, but they don’t seem to stop for anything ever.
  - sushibowl 8y ago
EGreg 8y ago
Why not require cars made by a certain date to slow down and stop when they detect or predict a pedestrian crossing? Worst case your car slows down.
bogomipz 8y ago
>"New York's transportation officials and safety advocates say the experience of the largest U.S. city offers a road map for others." This is all very self-congratulatory and likely a PR piece that was put out on the news wire. I imagine that the reduction in fatalities is almost exclusively due to the changes around pedestrian crossings on Queens Blvd. a horrid monstrosity that more closely resembles a highway than any kind of regular street. It is actually rare to see police pulling over cars and issuing traffic tickets in NYC. And if anything as the congestion has worsened drivers have gotten more brazen. Cars regularly block the intersection, run red lights rather than stop, regularly block the cross walk and regularly fail to yield to pedestrians in cross walks. In fact these are the norm. Spend 5 to 10 minutes walking during rush hour you are pretty much guaranteed to observe all of these in the short time frame. NYC is a road map for what a dysfunctional to non-existent traffic policy looks like.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>New York strategically increased enforcement on six traffic violations it identified as being the most likely to kill or injure, including: Speeding. Failing to yield to a pedestrian. Failing to stop on a signal. Improper turns. Cellphone use. Disobeying signs. The 1 and 3, 4 and 6 entries are almost wholly dependent on context and the 2 is sort of a tautology. As a pedestrian (I walk ~2mi in the Boston area daily) I really have no problem with people violating the posted speed limit, running reds that were very recently yellow or taking a right on red where prohibited as long as they travel at somewhat reasonable speeds, don't flagrantly run reds, and ignore signs in a predicable manner. Cars acting in an unpredictable manner and cars with distracted drivers (#5) are what results in them trying to occupy the same physical space as pedestrians (#2). As I see it four of the six things listed don't actually impact the danger to me any more than the inherent difference among drivers. As a pedestrian I'd actually prefer the cops write less tickets because the blue lights distract drivers and throw a wrench into predictable traffic flow. A good chunk of drivers act like a spooked horse when the cops are out hunting and that's not good for my safety, attention paid to the cop who's pulling someone over is attention not paid to not hitting me. If the cops want to post officers on a random street corners with point and shoot cameras and nab people for texting and driving then I can definitely get behind that. Based on my experience and observation I don't think telling them to go hog wild on everything else would be a net positive in terms of safety (that said, I'll take real cops enforcing traffic laws over automated enforcement any day). edit:pun not intended but I'm leaving it because I like it. edit2: Downvoted because people are too lazy to type out why I'm so wrong. Typical Reddit. edit3: Maybe I wasn't clear enough why I'm opposed to prioritizing enforcement of traffic law. As long as traffic is consistent I can deal. When it becomes inconsistent (possibly because people fear strict traffic enforcement) you get more opportunities for pedestrians and drivers conflicting all the time and inconsistent traffic takes the attention of the drivers away from other things, like pedestrians. As a pedestrian I want nothing to do with an intersection where a cop is sitting or an intersection where there's a known cameras because driver's attention is allocated away from possible road hazards (like me) in order to more strictly adhere to the letter of the law. Most of the violations that NYC wants to prioritize pose no threat to me by themselves whereas aggressive enforcement creates more inconsistent traffic which is a danger to me. When someone slams on their brakes for a yellow the drivers who have to change what they're doing in response to that become more dangerous to me. Attention is finite. You can't handle the dev tickets when prod is burning and drivers are no different, aggressive traffic enforcement is another potential distraction to them and a danger to me.
hindsightbias 8y ago
No mention of bulb outs. New York's streets probably don't have room for bulb outs like they've tried in SF. Most SF streets with bulbs really don't have the pedestrian congestion you see on NYC corners. There, you might see a dozen people standing in the crosswalk waiting for the light change and traffic racing past them. Many pedestrians trying to jump ahead of those standing on the curb. But at least New Yorkers use the crosswalks. Market, Van Ness, Tenderloin, SF multi-lanes jaywalkers Xanadu.
- moogleii 8y ago
  NY has them and seems to be adding more (not fast enough in my opinion), sometimes in conjunction with chicanes. The crosswalks are also relatively massively wide (especially compared to Chicago which seem almost comically narrow).
- mhb 8y ago
  For the non-SF, similarly unenlightened (like me): Bulb out: Curb extensions (also called bulb-outs) extend the sidewalk into the parking lane to narrow the roadway and provide additional pedestrian space at key locations; they can be used at corners and at mid-block. Curb extensions enhance pedestrian safety by increasing pedestrian visibility, shortening crossing distances, slowing turning vehicles, and visually narrowing the roadway. https://www.sfbetterstreets.org/find-project-types/pedestrian-safety-and-traffic-calming/traffic-calming-overview/curb-extensions/ https://www.sfbetterstreets.org/find-project-types/pedestria...
- alexhutcheson 8y ago
  NYC streets have plenty of room for bulb-outs, but it would require reducing the amount of (mostly free) on-street parking, which is a political third rail.
jessriedel 8y ago
The number of pedestrian fatalities fell from 148 to 101. https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-traffic-fatalities-fell-in-2017-by-7-report-says-1521848322 https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-traffic-fatalitie... That's a saving of roughly $500M with the ~$10M/life figure used by government agencies like the EPA and the NHTSA, which works out to ~$60 per NYC citizen. Has anyone tried to estimate the value lost to less efficient traffic flow? Median household income is $50k, so valuing the median person's time at a few times the minimum wage, say $30/hour, suggest that initiative was worth it if it cost the typical person less than 2 hours over the year. This should of course include the bike and pedestrian traffic flow, which has plausibly gotten more efficient considering the type of changes being made.
- ikawe 8y ago
  Keep in mind this isn’t just about pedestrian fatalities - traffic fatalities across all modes decreased. I think sometimes these conversations get framed only as “driver convenience” vs “pedestrian and cyclist lives”. Which, admittedly it sometimes comes down to, but these programs are saving drivers lives too.
  - tomatotomato37 8y ago
    >traffic fatalities across all modes decreased The first couple lines of linked WSJ article says differently, though I don't have a WSJ account so I can't say if this is an actual rise or just the result of a higher driving population
    - ikawe 8y ago
      > overall traffic fatalities down by 27 per cent. The first half of 2018 has seen the fewest traffic-related fatalities in any six-month period ever measured in America's most populated city, officials say. Edit: From the original article, but you’re right, 2017 showed an increase in certain modes, with a decrease overall.
- crazysim 8y ago
  I wonder if they record traffic casualties, not just fatalities. Those cost $$$ too.
subpixel 8y ago
As a New Yorker and a driver, I can tell you I've been gobsmacked by the resistance put up to fight protected bike lanes and speed cameras (which we just lost in bulk as the legislation supporting them was not renewed). Madness.
- fibonachos 8y ago
  As a former Phoenix resident, I completely understand the resistance to speed cameras. They are always touted as a public safety measure, but widely regarded as little more than a revenue machine. In my experience, the trigger speed was always perilously close to the natural flow of traffic which (at least in the places where I have lived) is consistently the speed limit + some amount. The net effect was always a sudden, dramatic slowing of traffic in the camera zone followed by a return to business-as-usual. Edit: I should clarify that these were freeway speed cameras. Maybe they are more effective as a safety device in pedestrian-heavy areas, but I have no experience with the cameras is that context.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    Automation here encourages overreporting and other abuses - it's law enforcement automation, so an alternative would be to hire more officers to apply the law. Automating this work increases the amount of law applied for the same cost.
  - alexhutcheson 8y ago
    The "natural flow of traffic" in Manhattan and other dense parts of the 5 boroughs is dangerously fast, and way over the posted speed limit. I don't think the arguments against freeway speed cameras really hold up in this context.
  - Flowsion 8y ago
    In South Korea, this is taken to an extreme. Every freeway speed camera is indicated on the default Maps app. It beeps (shorter and louder as the camera gets closer) and then stops. So everyone just slows down as their maps beep and speed up again once they pass the camera. But, I think this is accepted practice and my suspicion is that a lot of these cameras aren't even real. Just by having them placed along the freeway every x metres, they force cars to constantly slow down.
cascom 8y ago
Alternate theory: increased traffic congestion leads to lower speeds resulting in fewer pedestrian deaths

122 points by okket 8y ago

Probably helps to have a paramilitarized police force with an annual budget of $5.6 billion and nearly as many employees as there are active personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces. :)

VBprogrammer 8y ago
Your comment got me wondering about the NYPD. Specifically, when I visited New York last March I was struck by the number of police vehicles visible on the street. It felt like there was barely a block which didn't have one or two police cruisers parked on it. I live in London and by comparison it feels rare to see a police vehicle at all. Nevermind just parked along a random street. I guess this was mostly due to timing; it was just after a major snow storm. Comparing the budget and number of officers it's not that different £3.2B and 30000 officers vs $5.6B and 40000 officers.
- Scipio_Afri 8y ago
  Nice, evidence and fact based opinions!
- trothamel 8y ago
  I suspect visible presence would be a bit higher for the NYPD, just because NYC has more officers in an area that's half the size of London.
  - VBprogrammer 8y ago
    Ah yes! That would do it. So they have more officers (though not drastically more) and quite a bit smaller area to cover. That probably goes some way to explaining what I observed.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Some of those are the meter maids. The traffic enforcement cars don't look very different from the patrol units at a quick glance.
cimmanom 8y ago
The NYPD is fairly useless when it comes to traffic enforcement other than ticketing cyclists. They'll ignore trucks blocking crosswalks (and endangering pedestrians). Double parking in bus and bike lanes. Tractor-trailers (which are technically illegal to drive through the city at all without a special permit for each delivery, but that's never enforced) blocking both crosswalks and the entire intersection because they didn't wait for the street ahead to have room, and making blind turns where they come within inches of mowing down pedestrians crossing with the light (whom they couldn't see because their cab and hood are too high, which is part of why they're illegal). Heck, police cruisers are some of the worst offenders when it comes to blocking crosswalks; parking on sidewalks (thus forcing pedestrians into the street), and other such obnoxious behavior. And when a driver crushes or kills a pedestrian or cyclist, the NYPD goes out of their way to defend instead of prosecuting the driver. Even when eyewitness accounts and video evidence show the driver at fault. Even when the driver was driving without a license or under the influence.
Eric_WVGG 8y ago
No, it doesn’t. The police around here generally ignore traffic violations unless they are specifically conducting a “sting”. I recently was told that this is actually a matter of policy, because someone discovered that cops were using traffic violations as an excuse to disproportionally target minorities, like the old “broken windows” policing days. Honestly, it even makes a bit of sense... traffic is so dense now and violations so frequent that even the minimal effort of enforcement would shut down entire arteries. How do you pull over a bad driver when there’s no space to pull them over? There’s no way out of this mess except for fixing the subway and congestion pricing.
- dajohnson89 8y ago
  >There’s no way out of this mess except for fixing the subway and congestion pricing. Good luck with that. Politicians have private drivers shuttle them everywhere -- If they took the subway into work, we'd have a much better state of affairs.
- cozzyd 8y ago
  Easy, automatic enforcement by cameras. No pulling over necessary, fine comes in the mail.
  - Eric_WVGG 8y ago
    Sounds great to me. The other day I was wondering why they don't mount traffic cameras on MTA busses for massive city coverage… but the short version is that traffic laws are determined by the state, not NYC, and the rest of the state is ruled by automobile drivers who don't want to vote themselves into traffic tickets. [edit] btw, I was referring to issues like "blocking the box," double parking, parking in bike lanes, generally unsafe driving. Cameras track speeding, which (I believe) is actually the least of the problems we have around here. Generally traffic is so terrible that speeding is impossible.
    - cozzyd 8y ago
      No reason the cameras couldn't fine all those things. Should be "easy" for today's "AI" to flag these and have a human review.
CPLX 8y ago
The NYPD doesn't give a shit about traffic violations, and is very heavily on the side of drivers. This is a longstanding cultural thing, certainly affected by the fact that nearly all NYPD officers themselves commute to work by car.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It’s more about money. If you did the type of heavy traffic enforcement that you see on Long Island or in some upstate places, the overtime and adjudication would cost many millions of dollars. NYPD in my observation tends to focus mostly on keeping things moving.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    That’s definitely not it. Writing traffic tickets would almost certainly be a revenue positive move.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Depends on who gets the money. Ticket revenue is split between fine and surcharge. 100% of the surcharge goes to the state. In NYC, the DMV (State) adjudicates traffic matters and presumably shares the revenue. Counties/boroughs probably get a piece of the action too. Meanwhile, NYC via NYPD gets the rage and vitriol from all of the traffic jams and general griping from the tickets. They also need to pay for overtime for testimony -- which NYPD prefers to use to flood public events with cops, etc.
      - bogomipz 8y ago
        >"Meanwhile, NYC via NYPD gets the rage and vitriol from all of the traffic jams and general griping from the tickets." You don't need officers to write tickets at all you just put up cameras to pick off the low hanging fruit - speeding, blocking the intersections and blocking the cross walk. The only reason that speeding cameras were taken down was b/c the state failed to reauthorize them in time. >"Depends on who gets the money." It's safe to say that NYC gets that money. Upwards of billion dollars of it anyway: >"The city collected $957 million in fines in fiscal year 2015, an increase of 7.5 percent from the previous year and a 12 percent increase since 2012." "Red light camera revenue, which has been on the decline since 2012, jumped $1 million to $29 million in fiscal year 2015. Meanwhile, bus lane camera revenue increased to $17 million from $12 million the year before and speed camera violations increased to $31 million from $2 million" [1] [1] https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160324/civic-center/new-york-city-collects-record-19-billion-fines-fees/ https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160324/civic-center/new-y...
astura 8y ago
Found the person whose never been to New York City. Traffic laws are largely unenforced in New York City.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Uber induced congestion makes jaywalking much safer.

zeristor 8y ago
Ubergestion?

Vinnl 8y ago

For those interested in this, I can highly recommend "What Seattle can learn from Dutch street design" [1]. It's a presentation that gives an overview of all sorts of small infrastructural measures, similar to the Queens Boulervard redesign, taken in the Netherlands to prevent traffic deaths. What makes it especially interesting is that e.g. rather than reducing the speed limit, cars are nudged to slow down through using different material for the road, or by simply making the road less wide. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0GA901oGe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0GA901oGe4

Sharlin 8y ago
For anyone interested in learning more, these measures are examples of traffic calming [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming
- HNLogInShit 8y ago
  “Traffic calming” = pandering to NIMBYs who want to create a de facto gated community by stealing from everyone else
MisterTea 8y ago
I remember the disaster of an intersection at the juncture of Queens Blvd and the northern terminus of Woodhaven Blvd at Queens Center Mall. There was an average of one accident per day at that intersection with the yearly total closer to 400. I took the bus to school and passed through that intersection on a daily basis. It was so bad that I would cross the streets using the subway station as a tunnel to avoid setting foot in that death trap. I have also witnessed a handful of accidents myself when passing through. They redesigned the traffic pattern and made the street along the mall one way which solved the accident problem. Now the entirety of Queens Blvd is safer.
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
The most interesting concept is that of shared spaces- it’s a bit counter intuitive, but if you put cars on the same level (figuratively and literally) as pedestrians, cyclists and other road users you can significantly reduce accident rates. You do this by removing curbs, signage, lane markings etc. This encourages road users to pay attention to the road ahead and slow down, and also makes the whole area a nicer place to be in. The journey time may seem slower to car drivers, but given you eliminate most major accidents the average journey time is probably the same.

insickness 8y ago

Gridlock has gotten far worse in NYC. Cars constantly pull into and block intersections and crosswalks.

addicted 8y ago
That doesn’t apply to Queens boulevard that is being discuses in the Article.
- insickness 8y ago
  It applies to general pedestrian safety in NYC. When cars block the crosswalk you often have to walk dangerously close to cars in the intersection to get around them. It didn't used to be this bad in NYC.
  - Sharlin 8y ago
    Of course it didn’t; there used to be less traffic! And the only solution is to reverse the trend of traffic growth—specifically, to reduce the average footprint of an individual traveler.
  - anthonybsd 8y ago
    It's been this bad in NYC since at least when I moved here (1997).
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It was way worse. The the 80s NYC of my youth almost every aspect of traffic engineering was worse and more dangerous. You may not have observed cars blocking crosswalks because the crosswalks were missing.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      Crosswalks are present at every intersection whether painted or not.

yepItsAllTrue 8y ago

I realize what the article means, but "a roadmap for taking aim at pedestrian deaths" certainly is curious phrasing.

RankingMember 8y ago

Somewhat-related: The US Department of Transportation recently released finalized rules regarding low-speed audible warning sounds for hybrid and battery-electric vehicles to prevent pedestrian injury: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/06/us-dot-finally-finalizes-low-speed-noise-maker-rules-evs/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/06/us-dot-finally-finalize...

kgermino 8y ago
I really don’t like that plan. It may not be bad, depending on what the noise is, but unless it’s done well it will be a new, annoying sound that I have to hear all the time. I don’t see the safety benefits either. Cars going less than 20 mph are not particularly dangerous. On top that that, in most situations where you’re going less than 20 it’s the drivers responsibility to watch for pedestrians, not the other way around. (Parking lots, big streets in cities where there’s crosswalks every couple hundred feet, shared spaces where pedestrians and cars are in the same lane). It’s probably more likely to let people drive faster through parking lots (as people hear the car behind them and move over) than create any safety improvements.
- RankingMember 8y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your argument with regard to responsibility. When I'm laying on the pavement, I don't think I'll care that much whose responsibility it was to avoid the collision. To your last point, why would a car emitting noise result in people speeding through parking lots? Most cars on the road are already emitting noise. This is just bringing hybrid and electric cars into parity with existing vehicles. If you happen to witness a Fisker Karma cruising around at low speed, you'll hear their take on it. I didn't find it too offensive- it sounds like the guitar tone from that Morrissey song "How Soon is Now?".
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  Note that you're describing the main operating mode in the last paragraph - this holds true for parking lots as it does for other shared spaces (who should be paying attention is somewhat academic). Over 20 mph, the tires are the main noise source even with gasoline cars (unless you take off the exhaust muffler, which is a bit of a corner case).

chaosbutters314 8y ago

I live in a suburb and the biggest problem I see isn't drivers, it is pedestrians. They do not use cross walks. If there is not a cross walk directly outside the shop they are leaving, they just cross the road whenever they feel like it. Pedestrians also just stand and talk in the middle of street. It blows my mind. I have lived around the US and this is a distinctly NY thing. And they also have the weird habit of doing their run...in the middle of the road. Even if there is an empty sidewalk with no crossings, people will just do their run in the road like they're a car. Drivers are also to blame but there would be even fewer if pedestrians were held to some standards of road safety. Police don't even need to give tickets, just scare pedestrians into using common courtesy.

ecshafer 8y ago
Why should drivers get the right of way and implicit use of all of the road? Why not people? Cars should be second class citizens to people on the roads, unless they are specifically highways.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fedups 8y ago
  Drivers are people, my friend
bdhess 8y ago
Running on a sidewalk is terribly unpleasant, and has its own dangers. Sidewalks tend to be uneven, among other tripping hazards. And there is limited reaction time to anticipate motorists who speed out of driveways, bowling past the sidewalk but braking before they enter the street.
jacobush 8y ago
Maybe that is why it's "legal" to murder someone by car in New York.
francisofascii 8y ago

bigpeopleareold 8y ago

Cars must stop for pedestrians at crosswalks in Norway. I got very used to this. Occasionally drivers ignore that rule, but in general, it's a very nice thing. However, in Oslo, the only thing that doesn't stop for pedestrians is trams. I don't know why.

legulere 8y ago
Crosswalks are not allowed to be on roads with tram lines in Germany.
- anamexis 8y ago
  That doesn't make sense - how would pedestrians cross roads with tram lines? Here's a crosswalk across a road with a tram line in Berlin. https://goo.gl/maps/G9vfZyoUjr62 https://goo.gl/maps/G9vfZyoUjr62
  - legulere 8y ago
    Ah sorry I meant zebra crossings in particular. The one you sent me seems to be one with traffic lights for the pedestrians. Generally you are allowed to cross ways almost everywhere if you are giving the vehicles on the road precedence. There are a few restrictions: you should use the shortest path, if there are zebra crossings or traffic lights nearby you have to use them, if there is a lot of traffic you should cross at intersections, etc. but there’s not the general concept of jaywalking.
stingraycharles 8y ago
> However, in Oslo, the only thing that doesn't stop for pedestrians is trams. I don't know why. Same thing in Amsterdam, although the stopping distance seems fairly short. I think it has mostly to do with minimizing interruptions and being relatively infrequent. And taxis also never stop, but they don’t seem to stop for anything ever.
- sushibowl 8y ago

EGreg 8y ago

Why not require cars made by a certain date to slow down and stop when they detect or predict a pedestrian crossing? Worst case your car slows down.

bogomipz 8y ago

>"New York's transportation officials and safety advocates say the experience of the largest U.S. city offers a road map for others." This is all very self-congratulatory and likely a PR piece that was put out on the news wire. I imagine that the reduction in fatalities is almost exclusively due to the changes around pedestrian crossings on Queens Blvd. a horrid monstrosity that more closely resembles a highway than any kind of regular street. It is actually rare to see police pulling over cars and issuing traffic tickets in NYC. And if anything as the congestion has worsened drivers have gotten more brazen. Cars regularly block the intersection, run red lights rather than stop, regularly block the cross walk and regularly fail to yield to pedestrians in cross walks. In fact these are the norm. Spend 5 to 10 minutes walking during rush hour you are pretty much guaranteed to observe all of these in the short time frame. NYC is a road map for what a dysfunctional to non-existent traffic policy looks like.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

>New York strategically increased enforcement on six traffic violations it identified as being the most likely to kill or injure, including: Speeding. Failing to yield to a pedestrian. Failing to stop on a signal. Improper turns. Cellphone use. Disobeying signs. The 1 and 3, 4 and 6 entries are almost wholly dependent on context and the 2 is sort of a tautology. As a pedestrian (I walk ~2mi in the Boston area daily) I really have no problem with people violating the posted speed limit, running reds that were very recently yellow or taking a right on red where prohibited as long as they travel at somewhat reasonable speeds, don't flagrantly run reds, and ignore signs in a predicable manner. Cars acting in an unpredictable manner and cars with distracted drivers (#5) are what results in them trying to occupy the same physical space as pedestrians (#2). As I see it four of the six things listed don't actually impact the danger to me any more than the inherent difference among drivers. As a pedestrian I'd actually prefer the cops write less tickets because the blue lights distract drivers and throw a wrench into predictable traffic flow. A good chunk of drivers act like a spooked horse when the cops are out hunting and that's not good for my safety, attention paid to the cop who's pulling someone over is attention not paid to not hitting me. If the cops want to post officers on a random street corners with point and shoot cameras and nab people for texting and driving then I can definitely get behind that. Based on my experience and observation I don't think telling them to go hog wild on everything else would be a net positive in terms of safety (that said, I'll take real cops enforcing traffic laws over automated enforcement any day). edit:pun not intended but I'm leaving it because I like it. edit2: Downvoted because people are too lazy to type out why I'm so wrong. Typical Reddit. edit3: Maybe I wasn't clear enough why I'm opposed to prioritizing enforcement of traffic law. As long as traffic is consistent I can deal. When it becomes inconsistent (possibly because people fear strict traffic enforcement) you get more opportunities for pedestrians and drivers conflicting all the time and inconsistent traffic takes the attention of the drivers away from other things, like pedestrians. As a pedestrian I want nothing to do with an intersection where a cop is sitting or an intersection where there's a known cameras because driver's attention is allocated away from possible road hazards (like me) in order to more strictly adhere to the letter of the law. Most of the violations that NYC wants to prioritize pose no threat to me by themselves whereas aggressive enforcement creates more inconsistent traffic which is a danger to me. When someone slams on their brakes for a yellow the drivers who have to change what they're doing in response to that become more dangerous to me. Attention is finite. You can't handle the dev tickets when prod is burning and drivers are no different, aggressive traffic enforcement is another potential distraction to them and a danger to me.

hindsightbias 8y ago

No mention of bulb outs. New York's streets probably don't have room for bulb outs like they've tried in SF. Most SF streets with bulbs really don't have the pedestrian congestion you see on NYC corners. There, you might see a dozen people standing in the crosswalk waiting for the light change and traffic racing past them. Many pedestrians trying to jump ahead of those standing on the curb. But at least New Yorkers use the crosswalks. Market, Van Ness, Tenderloin, SF multi-lanes jaywalkers Xanadu.

moogleii 8y ago
NY has them and seems to be adding more (not fast enough in my opinion), sometimes in conjunction with chicanes. The crosswalks are also relatively massively wide (especially compared to Chicago which seem almost comically narrow).
mhb 8y ago
For the non-SF, similarly unenlightened (like me): Bulb out: Curb extensions (also called bulb-outs) extend the sidewalk into the parking lane to narrow the roadway and provide additional pedestrian space at key locations; they can be used at corners and at mid-block. Curb extensions enhance pedestrian safety by increasing pedestrian visibility, shortening crossing distances, slowing turning vehicles, and visually narrowing the roadway. https://www.sfbetterstreets.org/find-project-types/pedestrian-safety-and-traffic-calming/traffic-calming-overview/curb-extensions/ https://www.sfbetterstreets.org/find-project-types/pedestria...
alexhutcheson 8y ago
NYC streets have plenty of room for bulb-outs, but it would require reducing the amount of (mostly free) on-street parking, which is a political third rail.

jessriedel 8y ago

The number of pedestrian fatalities fell from 148 to 101. https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-traffic-fatalities-fell-in-2017-by-7-report-says-1521848322 https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-traffic-fatalitie... That's a saving of roughly $500M with the ~$10M/life figure used by government agencies like the EPA and the NHTSA, which works out to ~$60 per NYC citizen. Has anyone tried to estimate the value lost to less efficient traffic flow? Median household income is $50k, so valuing the median person's time at a few times the minimum wage, say $30/hour, suggest that initiative was worth it if it cost the typical person less than 2 hours over the year. This should of course include the bike and pedestrian traffic flow, which has plausibly gotten more efficient considering the type of changes being made.

ikawe 8y ago
Keep in mind this isn’t just about pedestrian fatalities - traffic fatalities across all modes decreased. I think sometimes these conversations get framed only as “driver convenience” vs “pedestrian and cyclist lives”. Which, admittedly it sometimes comes down to, but these programs are saving drivers lives too.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  >traffic fatalities across all modes decreased The first couple lines of linked WSJ article says differently, though I don't have a WSJ account so I can't say if this is an actual rise or just the result of a higher driving population
  - ikawe 8y ago
    > overall traffic fatalities down by 27 per cent. The first half of 2018 has seen the fewest traffic-related fatalities in any six-month period ever measured in America's most populated city, officials say. Edit: From the original article, but you’re right, 2017 showed an increase in certain modes, with a decrease overall.
crazysim 8y ago
I wonder if they record traffic casualties, not just fatalities. Those cost $$$ too.

subpixel 8y ago

As a New Yorker and a driver, I can tell you I've been gobsmacked by the resistance put up to fight protected bike lanes and speed cameras (which we just lost in bulk as the legislation supporting them was not renewed). Madness.

fibonachos 8y ago
As a former Phoenix resident, I completely understand the resistance to speed cameras. They are always touted as a public safety measure, but widely regarded as little more than a revenue machine. In my experience, the trigger speed was always perilously close to the natural flow of traffic which (at least in the places where I have lived) is consistently the speed limit + some amount. The net effect was always a sudden, dramatic slowing of traffic in the camera zone followed by a return to business-as-usual. Edit: I should clarify that these were freeway speed cameras. Maybe they are more effective as a safety device in pedestrian-heavy areas, but I have no experience with the cameras is that context.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Automation here encourages overreporting and other abuses - it's law enforcement automation, so an alternative would be to hire more officers to apply the law. Automating this work increases the amount of law applied for the same cost.
- alexhutcheson 8y ago
  The "natural flow of traffic" in Manhattan and other dense parts of the 5 boroughs is dangerously fast, and way over the posted speed limit. I don't think the arguments against freeway speed cameras really hold up in this context.
- Flowsion 8y ago
  In South Korea, this is taken to an extreme. Every freeway speed camera is indicated on the default Maps app. It beeps (shorter and louder as the camera gets closer) and then stops. So everyone just slows down as their maps beep and speed up again once they pass the camera. But, I think this is accepted practice and my suspicion is that a lot of these cameras aren't even real. Just by having them placed along the freeway every x metres, they force cars to constantly slow down.

cascom 8y ago

Alternate theory: increased traffic congestion leads to lower speeds resulting in fewer pedestrian deaths