Streetsblog New York City

The crashes that killed two pedestrians since Wednesday morning follow a string of incidents last week that resulted in the deaths of five vulnerable street users. In all, seven pedestrians and one cyclist are known to have died in New York City traffic since February 7. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, meanwhile, couldn’t be troubled to attend the City Council hearing last week examining NYPD traffic enforcement and crash investigations.

On Wednesday at around 8:15 a.m., 22-year-old Meilan Jin was hit by the driver of a city bus making a right turn at Northern Boulevard and Union Street in Flushing. The driver kept going. According to Transportation Alternatives’ Crashstat, 101 pedestrians and cyclists were injured and one pedestrian was killed at Northern and Union between 1995 and 2009.

At 1:15 this morning, Willie Gonzalez, 25, was walking south on St. Nicholas Avenue at 125th Street in Manhattan when he was hit by a westbound city bus driver. The Times reports that no charges were filed in either case.

Also this month:

• February 14: Jean Jeanniot, 71, was hit by two drivers on Flatbush Avenue near East 26th Street while on the way to meet his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day. One driver fled the scene. No charges were reported against the second driver.
• February 13: An unnamed 67-year-old woman was hit at Fulton and Crescent streets in Cypress Hills. “No criminality was suspected.“
• February 12: Luis Rosado, 75, was killed by a hit-and-run driver at Broadway and West 138th Street, one block from his home.
• February 12: Cyclist Ronald Tillman, 29, was killed by a hit-and-run driver on Howard Avenue in the Grymes Hill area of Staten Island.
• February 11: Dawn Affoumani, 42, was killed by a hit-and-run driver as she crossed the intersection of White Plains Road and Story Avenue in the Soundview section of the Bronx.
• February 7: Lizardo Aldana, 89, was struck in the crosswalk at 21st Avenue near 31st Street in Astoria. The driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and DWI.

Sadly, with approximately 160 pedestrian and cyclists deaths per year, a spate of fatalities like this is not unusual. They can be expected to continue as long as Ray Kelly’s NYPD and city district attorneys keep letting drivers off the hook for deadly crashes that don’t involve alcohol (it’s pretty clear that leaving the scene does not actually qualify as a slam-dunk offense).

Even though traffic crashes have killed more than 3,700 people in NYC over the last decade, NYPD told the City Council last week that the department doesn’t have the resources to beef up traffic enforcement and crash investigations. But apparently police do have the resources to conduct a wide-ranging surveillance operation of Muslim communities in Newark, and they also have the resources to more than double the number of stop-and-frisks since 2004.

With police and prosecutors refusing to do their jobs as the traffic death toll mounts, action by the council can come none too soon.

A lot of notable statistics surfaced at Wednesday’s City Council hearing on NYPD traffic enforcement. Many of them paint a picture of a department that devotes relatively little effort to combating traffic crime, while failing to distinguish vehicles that weigh a couple-dozen pounds from those weighing several tons. Here’s a rundown:

• There were 39,953 city traffic crashes involving injury in 2011, and 241 traffic fatalities. The Accident Investigation Squad, with its 19 detectives, worked 304 crashes last year. AIS issued 46 summonses and made 12 arrests.
• NYPD issued a million traffic summonses in 2011, including 76,493 for speeding. Also included in that number were 13,743 moving violations and 34,813 criminal court summonses given to cyclists. By contrast, police handed out 14,962 moving violations to truck drivers, and 10,415 criminal court summonses. Judging by those numbers, it must be cyclists doing all the killing.
• In his opening remarks, James Vacca cited Department of Health data showing traffic to be the leading cause of injury-related death for kids. Brad Lander wondered how, despite poor-mouthing when it comes to “the number one killer of kids in the city,” NYPD has managed to beef up initiatives like stop and frisk.
• According to an analysis of NYPD and DOT data by the Clinton Hell’s Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety (CHEKPEDS), 1,251 pedestrians were injured or killed in December 2011, and NYPD reports show that 89 percent of crashes that month were caused by careless or illegal driving. Yet in all of 2011, citations under VTL 1146 were made in less than one percent of crashes caused by careless or illegal driving in which a pedestrian was injured or killed.

More revealing snapshots from the hearing after the jump.

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This morning’s City Council hearing on traffic crash investigations is already having an impact. Public Safety Committee Chair Peter Vallone, Jr. and Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca announced today that they will introduce a resolution in support of Albany legislation to make it clear that the police can enforce the state’s careless driving law.

Right now, the NYPD isn’t enforcing that law, which was named after toddlers Hayley Ng and Diego Martinez, killed in a 2009 crash in which a delivery van left unattended and in gear jumped a Chinatown curb.

Under current police protocol, only the citywide Accident Investigation Squad, a special unit called when someone is killed in a traffic crash or likely to die, employs Hayley and Diego’s Law. At today’s hearing, the NYPD said that the department has instructed regular cops not to issue tickets under Hayley and Diego’s Law after judges threw out arrests where the officer didn’t witness the violation directly.

The state legislation, sponsored by State Senator Dan Squadron and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh, would make it explicit that police officers can issue tickets for careless driving without directly witnessing the violation.

“We believe that providing law enforcement with this additional tool is one of the surest ways to hold careless drivers accountable for their dangerous behavior,” said Squadron and Kavanagh in a statement given to the Council today. “This new legislation will make our original law more effective by ensuring that officers will issue a violation when careless driving warrants one.”

The Squadron/Kavanagh bill, which was only introduced last week, doesn’t yet have any co-sponsors in Albany. If the City Council passes a forceful resolution in support of the legislation, however, that could prove a good kickstart to the bill.

We’ll have more on today’s hearing later today.

The City Council is holding a first-of-its-kind hearing on NYPD crash investigations today, a joint effort of the transportation and public safety committees. Based on the early reports via Twitter, it sounds like council members are holding NYPD’s feet to the fire for failing to investigate serious crashes and letting motorists off the hook for the harm they cause.

Streetsblog’s Brad Aaron will be filing a full report on the hearing later on. In the meantime, here are two pieces of testimony Streetsblog received in advance of the hearing, from Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White and from Steve Vaccaro, the attorney for the family of slain cyclist Mathieu Lefevre. The two statements give a sense of what street safety advocates are hoping to see come out of the hearing.

From White:

Good morning, Chair Vacca, Chair Vallone and Members of the City Council Transportation and Public Safety Committees. Thank you for convening this very important hearing.

The New York City Police Department is among the most sophisticated law enforcement operations in the country. It’s the sixth largest standing army in the world, it has officers stationed in scores of foreign nations and it can shoot down small aircraft. The question for us today is if its officers can do more to keep New Yorkers safe on our own streets and deter drivers from killing hundreds and injuring thousands of innocent people every year?

Today’s hearing is certainly timely. In a short amount of time, the Council has exposed profound and systemic flaws in the New York City Police Department’s efforts to prevent crashes and in their crash investigation practices. Even though these deficiencies are rooted in the Police Department’s policies, simple amendments to Departmental policy won’t resolve them. We need a deliberate, thorough response; we need a Task Force charged with making recommendations and the power to implement them.

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In 2010, State Senator Dan Squadron and Assembly Member Brian Kavanagh stood on the corner of Essex and Delancey Streets to tell motorists: “Careless driving is unacceptable.” Said Kavanagh, “You can suffer serious consequences.”

A year later, however, the new enforcement tool the two legislators were touting, Hayley and Diego’s Law, had gone almost entirely unenforced. Intended to offer law enforcement an intermediate option between simple moving violations and serious criminal charges, the law hasn’t proved as useful as hoped.

Now, Squadron and Kavanagh are back with an amendment to Hayley and Diego’s Law intended to help police and prosecutors put it to use.

“Hayley and Diego’s Law made it clear that a driver’s license is not a license for carelessness,” said Squadron. “But we now must provide law enforcement with additional tools to effectively crack down on careless driving.”

Based on conversations with district attorneys and police officers, the law’s sponsors and Transportation Alternatives found a police protocol they believe to be a key obstacle to bringing charges of careless driving. “Unless a cop witnesses a violation, they cannot write the ticket,” said T.A. general counsel Juan Martinez.

Squadron and Kavanagh’s new law would make it explicit that police can make arrests under Hayley and Diego’s Law without having directly witnessed a violation, assuming officers have reasonable cause to make the arrest.

Said Kavanagh, “Now with the benefit of our experience of how the law is working in the field, we’ve worked with law enforcement and safety advocates and identified a way to make it far more effective at holding careless drivers accountable for their dangerous behavior and making our streets safer.”

The current problem, said Martinez, is the intermediate status of Hayley and Diego’s Law. Though it’s intended to be more serious than a traffic violation, legally it’s lumped in with other moving violations, which is how police have treated it so far. “Nobody wants the police to be out there writing tickets for ordinary traffic violations they didn’t see,” said Martinez, citing red-light running as an example.

Hayley and Diego’s Law only applies to crashes that injure a pedestrian or cyclist, not careless driving in general. “There are often several witnesses who want to say, ‘This is what I saw happen,’” said Martinez. “It’s a different kind of violation.”

Next Wednesday, February 15, is the date for Council Member Peter Vallone’s hearing on traffic safety.

Responding to some 2,500 letters collected by Transportation Alternatives following the hit-and-run death of Brooklyn cyclist Mathieu Lefevre, Vallone announced that his public safety committee would address NYPD traffic enforcement. The hearing will be co-chaired by transportation committee chair James Vacca.

“It’s encouraging that the two chairs are treating this as a public safety concern, and are taking a long look and showing leadership,” says Juan Martinez, general counsel for TA.

In addition to crash prevention, Vallone and Vacca are expected to delve into how NYPD conducts crash investigations, an issue that is making headlines thanks to the Lefevre family’s pursuit of information from the department about the crash that killed their son. Says Martinez, “They have serious questions about the line — that in New York if you want to kill, do it with a car — whether that’s actually true.”

Anyone who wants to testify at next week’s hearing may send an e-mail to Martinez by the evening of Monday the 13th, with the subject line “Feb. 15.”

Many of Albany’s biggest transportation issues this year — the bloated and transit-free Tappan Zee, the unfunded MTA capital plan — will be decided by Governor Cuomo. But transportation advocates also have a slate of bills they hope to see make it through the legislature. Last year, the complete streets bill passed after a few prior attempts. Here’s what’s on the table for 2012.

Transit Lockboxes

Last year, lockbox legislation sponsored by Assembly Member James Brennan and Senator Marty Golden passed the legislature unanimously, only to have Governor Cuomo “eviscerate” the bill by amendment. The sponsors have vowed to try for the original language again.

The politics of the lockbox could be different this year if downstate legislators team up with their colleagues upstate. Buffalo Republican Mark Grisanti has introduced his own lockbox meant to protect dedicated funds for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority. He is amenable to working with those hoping to protect the MTA. “If we can get the upstate folks talking about a lockbox bill in the same breath as the MTA, then maybe that sends a louder message to the governor,” said Nadine Lemmon, Albany legislative advocate for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

Speed Cameras

Assembly Member Deborah Glick’s legislation to allow speed enforcement using automated cameras hasn’t gone anywhere in the past, but advocates have declared it a top priority for this year. “It’s speed cams all the time when it comes to Albany,” said Juan Martinez, general counsel for Transportation Alternatives.

The bill has support not only from transportation advocacy groups, but the New York City DOT and public health organizations. “There is a good coalition that’s gotten around it,” said Lemmon. That said, the bill still doesn’t have a Senate sponsor, an indication of how much work is left to be done.

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The City Council is again looking to placate scofflaw drivers. This time, Council Member David Greenfield of Brooklyn wants to limit cases in which the city can tow vehicles belonging to drivers who have racked up hundreds of dollars in unpaid parking fines. DNAinfo has the story:

“Any driver who has been towed knows that a trip to the impound lot can be one of the most frustrating experiences in New York City,” Greenfield said.

Under the new legislation, instead of towing, vehicles would be locked with devices called “boots,” which prevent drivers from moving until they call in and pay their outstanding fines, plus a $50 processing fee. Once paid, drivers receive a code that allows them to unlock the boot and drive away, as long as they return the boot.

Cars left booted for 72 hours could be towed under the bill, as could cars parked in tow zones, bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants or driveways.

Greenfield said the bill comes after numerous complaints from residents who accused the city of unfairly targeting them to make cash.

Drivers whose cars are towed under the current system have to schlep to an impound lot and then pay $185 in towing and $20 in storage a day, in addition to tickets, Greenfield said.

“This bill would give drivers a chance to pay their debts to the city without wasting an entire day trying to retrieve their vehicle,” he said. “It’s a simple and fair way for the city to enforce its parking laws without excessively punishing drivers.”

Retrieving a car from impound has got to be a frustrating ordeal, which is pretty much the point. Not that the boot itself isn’t a deterrent, but if nothing else this is further evidence of a City Council preoccupied with making life easier for motorists who believe laws should not apply to them.

Of course this is old hat for Greenfield, whose obsession with loosening parking regulations seemingly knows no bounds, and who a year ago went online to rant about the city clearing snow for safer walking and biking. Yet when reckless drivers inflict serious injury and death in his district, Greenfield has nothing to say.

Greenfield’s bill has been referred to the transportation committee, with support from council members including Brad Lander, Tish James, Lew Fidler, Robert Jackson and Ydanis Rodriguez.

The Village Voice reports that Peter Vallone, chair of the City Council’s public safety committee, is planning a hearing on traffic enforcement.

Responding to the Transportation Alternatives probe into how NYPD handles crash investigations, announced after a year that saw reckless motorists face little to no repercussions for taking lives, Vallone said, “They have some legitimate concerns. Clearly, more has to be done.”

Accepting Vallone’s statement at face value — that his committee will indeed focus on pedestrian and cyclist safety, rather than personal gripes — this is welcome news. Here are a few questions we’d like to see the Vallone committee ask the brass at NYPD:

• Is the Accident Investigation Squad dispatched to all cases involving death or serious injury? If not, why not?
• Why must victims’ families resort to the courts to obtain information pertaining to fatal crashes?
• Why isn’t NYPD making use of new state laws intended to hold dangerous drivers accountable for injuring and killing vulnerable street users?
• Does NYPD track rates of traffic violations, the same way it tracks other crime? If not, why not? If so, where is the data?

With mainstream media outlets picking up the story of Mathieu Lefevre’s family suing to get information from NYPD, and papers including the Voice questioning how so many deaths and injuries can go unpunished, might the council finally be ready to address the shortcomings of the city’s traffic justice system? We’ll see if Peter Vallone will pick up the slack for his colleague James Vacca.

Last month we noted that Ray Kelly’s NYPD made a highly visible show of bike enforcement in Prospect Park in response to a pair of crashes where cyclists injured pedestrians. Normally, police don’t react so decisively to locations with high crash rates, but in Prospect Park, the 78th quickly handed out more tickets to cyclists at one spot than they do to speeding motorists in the whole precinct in an average month.

If only NYPD targeted the most dangerous intersections with similar vigor. Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson and Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton went out to Canal and Lafayette, which saw 13 crashes in the month of August alone, to see how traffic is being policed. Here’s what they found.