Streetsblog New York City

The Post ran a damning article last weekend on reckless yellow cab drivers. Armed with a radar gun, a reporter clocked cabbies regularly exceeding the city's 30 mph speed limit by as much as 20 mph. An unnamed NYPD commander also said that cab drivers are responsible for over half of all crashes in Midtown.

If only that were the whole story. A 2009 Transportation Alternatives study found that 39 percent of motorists speed through the city, heedless of school zones and other areas with heavy pedestrian traffic.

Another nugget buried in the Post piece:

Cops issued 18.3 million such tickets [for moving violations] in the Big Apple last year, down from 24.3 million in 2008, records show.

Speeding tickets are a small fraction of total moving violations issued in New York. In 2007, NYPD issued around 75,000 speeding tickets, according to TA's report "Executive Order," which also found that a city driver could speed every day and get ticketed only once every 35 years. An anonymous officer quoted by the Post claimed that cops don't generally initiate a traffic stop unless a driver is traveling 15 to 20 mph over the limit.

Speeding is not a victimless crime. TA found that while the number of traffic fatalities caused by speeding rose by 11 percent between 2001 and 2006, the number of summonses issued for speeding dropped 22 percent during the same period. A pedestrian hit by a driver obeying the city's 30 mph speed limit has about a 45 percent chance of dying as a result of the collision. At 40 mph, the likelihood of death jumps to between 70 and 85 percent.

Put another way, being hit by an automobile at 40 mph is like falling off a five-story building. The Post calculated an average speed of 37 mph by cab drivers on Park Avenue at East 84th Street.

Commissioner Ray Kelly has indicated that he is perfectly happy with NYPD's record on traffic enforcement. Contacted by Streetsblog, the Taxi and Limousine Commission gave no indication that the agency is considering measures to slow down speeding cab drivers.

We couldn't help notice that, while police information czar Paul Browne was seemingly chatting up every media outlet in town about his boss coming to the aid of a fallen pedestrian this week, we were adding two letters to our stack of NYPD freedom of information rejections. 

As we announced last week, in most of the pedestrian fatality cases for which we've filed FOIL requests, authorities have reportedly determined the driver was not at fault. Some cases are months old. Yet of the 10 requests submitted so far, NYPD has declined to release any information pertaining to eight deaths. By contrast, within hours the department supplied the press with meticulous details of Wednesday's collision between a cyclist and a pedestrian, a scene Commissioner Ray Kelly happened upon en route to the St. Patrick's Day parade. We can't sum up the double-standard any better than Streetsblog reader BicyclesOnly:

This is blatant manipulation of public information by the NYPD and they've got to be called on it. The media should demand an explanation from Browne right now as to why there is a different policy concerning release of public information on crashes depending upon the identify of the victim.

Of course there was no such demand from reporters, who were content to package Wednesday's incident as a heartwarming slice-of-life feature.

Meanwhile, the City Council may soon try to force NYPD to loosen its grip on crash information for the good of all New Yorkers who don't happen to fall in the presence of our heroic police commissioner.

Over an 11-day span in February, three off-duty NYPD officers were arrested for driving under the influence. One was nabbed as he sat behind the wheel of a double-parked car in Harlem. The other two were involved in serious crashes, one of which ended with the officer's car overturned on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk. It's of little comfort that the resulting injuries -- to four people in all -- were limited to those inside the vehicles, when the casualty count could just as easily have included a totally innocent victim.

Following two incidents late last year in which off-duty cops killed pedestrians, then refused to submit to Breathalyzer tests, Commissioner Ray Kelly worked with city district attorneys to expedite the collection of blood evidence from motorists arrested on suspicion of driving drunk. But as civil service newsweekly The Chief-Leader reported after the deaths of Vionique Valnord and Drana Nikac, Kelly has yet to match the department's zero tolerance drug abuse policy with one that addresses cops who drink and drive.

The paper speculates that Kelly's inaction may stem from drinking as an accepted facet of cop culture, despite the fact that driving drunk can be at least as harmful as the use of illegal drugs:

[W]hile it's legal to drink, it isn't to then drive when under the influence. And those who do so are committing at least as serious a crime as those who use cocaine or heroin; in some cases more so, since the NYPD's one-strike-and-you're-out drug policy makes no distinction between those who abuse them without leaving their homes but come up dirty on a subsequent test and those who are out in the street presenting a potential menace whether behind the wheel or not.

When an off-duty homicide detective killed himself last September by slamming into a garbage truck on the BQE, union reps called for NYPD to change the way it handles detectives' shift assignments in hopes of reducing drinking and driving during off-hours. To our knowledge Kelly himself has taken no action to put a stop to a chronic problem that every day endangers the lives of city police officers and civilians alike. 

Since taking office late last year, the new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Charlie Beck, has taken several steps toward making conditions more tolerable for local cyclists. The most notable to this point is probably the formation of a cycling task force to address issues including traffic laws and bike theft. As reported by Damien Newton of Streetsblog LA, last week Beck fielded questions at a city council committee meeting, during which he referred to cycling as "an admirable form of transportation" and called cyclists "our most vulnerable commuters."

Beck has a lot of work to do. His department has a rich history of shabby cyclist treatment, and there is skepticism that Beck's promises will bring about the culture shift many feel will be necessary before LAPD's relationship with bike riders truly improves.

At least Beck is willing to come to the table. As in Los Angeles, cyclists in New York are routinely ignored and harassed by police, yet there is no sign that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has any qualms with the status quo. Kelly's subordinates freely espouse the department's "move traffic first" mantra, and just don't seem to get it when confronted with questions concerning pedestrian and cyclist safety. Though cyclist fatalities dropped in 2009, pedestrian deaths are up. Too bad New York's top cop puts no stock in data that exposes the rampant, preventable traffic crime that leads to countless deaths and injuries.

It's not too late for Kelly to apply the same rigor to street safety that has brought other crime rates to historic lows. In addition to measuring the rate of traffic crime, he could get behind efforts like "Hayley and Diego's Law." If nothing else, Kelly could engender a lot of goodwill by breaking NYPD's silence when it comes to fatality investigations. Releasing that information would increase public knowledge of why traffic deaths happen, help save lives, and send the signal that he takes bike-ped safety seriously.

In what has become an all-too-familiar scene, NYPD is denying reports that a police chase led to the death of a pedestrian after an incident of petty theft on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Karen Schmeer, 39, was an acclaimed film editor known for her work with documentarian Errol Morris. At approximately 8 p.m. Friday, Schmeer was crossing Broadway at 90th Street when she was struck by the driver of a rented Dodge. She was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Luke's-Roosevelt.

One of the men in the car, 25-year-old David McKie, was arrested after fleeing the vehicle. He was charged with second-degree murder. Two other suspects are still at large. The three were reported to have stolen some over-the-counter allergy medication from a nearby CVS pharmacy. The Daily News reports:

A police source said cops tried to pull over the suspects minutes before the crash, but they lost the car momentarily.

When they caught up with the vehicle, it had already struck Schmeer, as well as several other vehicles.

Witnesses at the scene painted a slightly different picture, saying they saw the car weaving in and out of traffic going north on Broadway with a squad car with lights and sirens blaring in hot pursuit.

According to the NYPD Patrol Guide, "Department policy requires that a vehicle pursuit be terminated whenever the risks to uniformed members of the service and the public outweigh the danger to the community if [the] suspect is not immediately apprehended." The Times' coverage of Schmeer's death takes the chase scenario as a point of fact, but does not indicate that the paper attempted to get an explanation as to why officers would be engaged in a high-speed pursuit on the Upper West Side at dinner time on a Friday.

Of the Times story, an NYPD spokesperson told Streetsblog: "That report is wrong." Read more...

When it comes to the perils of distracted driving, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly seems to get it. The Post reported yesterday that Kelly plans to "urge" the DMV to attach license points to tickets for driving while using a cell phone. The violation currently carries a $130 fine, but comes with no points, regardless of the number of infractions.

At least one elected, long-time distracted driving foe Felix Ortiz, Assembly member from Brooklyn, is also on board. So far it looks as if the effort is getting results.

[T]he DMV confirmed it was already looking into stricter regulations for the entire state.

"It's currently under review," said DMV spokesman Ken Brown. "Clearly, we recognize that distracted driving is a safety issue."

Asked if the DMV was mulling added fines or points, Brown said, "The entire section of the regulation is being reviewed."

This is welcome news, and it would be nice to see Kelly throw his weight behind other enforcement measures, like "Hayley and Diego's Law" and traffic cameras, which would also go a long way toward improving street safety. But so far, he hasn't shown much inclination to take overall reckless driving as seriously as distracted driving.

Last week brought another prime example of Bloomberg administration schizophrenia on urban sustainability. After his flight back from the Copenhagen climate summit, the mayor's first stop was a former auto pound in College Point, Queens, where he met up with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly to break ground on the city's new $750 million police academy.

The facility will be designed to attain a LEED Silver rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. The press release touted its green roofs, rainwater harvesting, and energy-saving building envelopes. Good stuff. But how green can this complex be when it also contains a 3,000-space parking garage?

The current police academy, located on East 20th Street, is a convenient walk from the subway at Union Square or 23rd Street. At the new site, the nearest subway station is more than a mile away. Those 3,000 parking spaces will be a huge enticement for police recruits to drive to the academy, and they'll come at enormous taxpayer expense.

Consider: St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx plans to spend $25.7 million (including $19.8 million in tax-free stimulus bonds) to build a 605-space garage. Assuming the costs at College Point are roughly the same, that works out to more than $125 million upfront for the police academy garage. Then there's all the taxpayer money that will go into keeping this parking deck clean, well-lit, and operating smoothly. The price tag varies, but running a commercial garage costs in the neighborhood of $500 to $800 annually per space, according to the Victoria Transport Policy Institute [PDF]. Let's be conservative with this NYPD garage and go with $300 per space each year. If you're talking about a 3,000-space garage -- and we are -- that's about $1 million to publicly finance driving to the new "state-of-the-art" police academy. Every year, forever.

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In handing down a prison term of 20-to-life for Auvryn Scarlett, the garbage hauler who had stopped taking his epilepsy medication before suffering a seizure behind the wheel and killing two pedestrians last year, Justice Richard Carruthers described the convicted as "a time bomb ready to explode at any moment on the streets of New York." The same could be said of the countless number of motorists roaming the city at any given moment though their licenses have been suspended or revoked due to a history of recklessness. Two such drivers killed three people in separate crashes over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Sheldon Reid had a prior conviction for driving without a license when he struck 40-year-old Sonya Powell, as her fiance watched in horror, on Baychester Avenue in the Wakefield section of the Bronx last Friday. Forty-eight hours earlier, elderly husband and wife Peter and Lillian Sabados were run down by a hit-and-run driver as they walked to Thanksgiving Mass. Their killer, 26-year-old Allmir Lekperic, had a string of at least 29 license suspensions since 2006, according to the Times.

Clearly, Powell and the Sabadoses aren't just victims of individuals, but institutional failure. Even in those relatively rare instances when the system identifies drivers who are a menace, there is no mechanism to stop them from getting right back behind the wheel. Revoking a license is no deterrent. In both cases this weekend, incarceration, or at the very least the impounding of vehicles, could have saved lives.

These crimes also expose a failure of political leadership. Regardless of the toll recidivist illegal drivers continue to exact in death and misery, Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly have shown no apparent interest. As for the City Council, a resolution urging state action was unceremoniously dismissed just days after nine-year-old Ibrihim Ahmed was killed by an unlicensed driver last January, and has not seen action since. A cursory Streetsblog archive search revealed three additional local fatalities at the hands of unlicensed drivers in the interim eleven months, including pedestrians Dorothea Wallace and 9-year-old Joshua Ganzfried.

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The second installment in Streetsblog's series on the potential direction for transportation policy during Michael Bloomberg's third term comes from Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. Don't miss the first entry, by Tri-State Transportation Campaign executive director Kate Slevin.

Mayor Bloomberg has already shown how much his administration can accomplish in just a few years. Since Janette Sadik-Khan's appointment to head the DOT in 2007, the city has striped hundreds of miles of bike lanes, reclaimed acres of street space for pedestrians and improved bus travel for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. "More of the same" is no longer a dirty phrase when it comes to local transportation policy. During the next four years, the mayor needs to accelerate this progress, and introduce a few key innovations to maximize the value New Yorkers get from their new streets.

Whether you're a straphanger, a cyclist, or a driver, every trip begins and ends with a walk. Pedestrians have had it good in recent years: Public plazas are sprouting by the dozen, hundreds of intersections have safer sidewalks and crossings, and the city's blueprint for sustainability, PlaNYC, promises that many more improvements are coming soon. How should New York keep this momentum going?

Well, the release of DOT's Street Design Manual back in July was an especially auspicious development. This groundbreaking playbook contains templates that can transform streets in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. The manual is an engineering document, but it also makes sense as an outreach tool. Community groups concerned about street safety could use the manual as a menu, requesting traffic calming solutions for their neighborhood from DOT. Liberal use of these new designs, applied through a smart community-based process, could pay huge dividends all over the city.

For a fraction of the cost of subway line construction, buses could move millions, if the mayor throws his weight behind BRT.

Our city's new public spaces and calmed streets won't live up to their potential, though, unless New Yorkers know their roadways are safe places to walk and bike. Under Commissioner Ray Kelly, the NYPD has reduced levels of violent crime to record lows. Law enforcement should tackle traffic crime with equal diligence. Zero tolerance for speeding and dangerous driving, more comprehensive reporting and analysis of traffic crashes, and a relentless advertising campaign -- similar to the one the Mayor used to take on smoking -- would tame the Wild West atmosphere on our streets. If Bloomberg and Kelly successfully drive down traffic crime, hundreds of lives could be saved, thousands of injuries prevented, and countless New Yorkers would get out and enjoy their city more.

One sensible way for the NYPD to roll out this approach to traffic enforcement would be to start in areas frequented by children and seniors. Seniors make up 12 percent of New York's population, yet account for 39 percent of pedestrian fatalities. And according to the Department of Health, auto traffic is the leading cause of injury-related death in children ages 1-14. DOT's Safe Routes to School and Safe Routes for Seniors programs have spawned imitators around the country, but our city is no longer the national leader. Other cities are now far ahead of New York when it comes to implementing these street safety programs. Combined with police enforcement, short-term and inexpensive improvements such as leading pedestrian intervals, reductions in signalized crossing speeds, and a citywide slower speed limit in school zones would prioritize pedestrians, save the lives of children and seniors, and get New York City back in the forefront of planning streets for safety.

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After two incidents in two months of off-duty NYPD officers running down and killing pedestrians, then refusing to submit to Breathalyzer tests, police Commissioner Ray Kelly this week convened a panel aimed at expediting the collection of blood evidence from motorists arrested on suspicion of driving drunk.

In September, Andrew Kelly, an officer with Brooklyn's 68th Precinct, was taken into custody when the SUV he was driving struck Vionique Valnord as she attempted to hail a taxi in Flatlands. According to prosecutors, a sergeant at the scene reported that alcoholic beverages were present in the vehicle, and said Kelly smelled of alcohol, had red, watery eyes and slurred speech. Yet when authorities were finally able to secure a warrant and draw a blood sample some seven hours later, Kelly had no alcohol in his system, potentially compromising the criminal case against him.

It took five hours to get a blood sample from Kevin Spellman, the NYPD detective who reportedly stumbled out of his government-leased Chevy Malibu after hitting 67-year-old Bronx grandmother Drana Nikac last week. Even so, officials said Spellman was found to have a blood alcohol level of .21. As with the Andrew Kelly case, the lag time between the arrest and obtaining blood evidence was heavily scrutinized by the media, perhaps putting pressure on Commissioner Kelly to act.

According to Commissioner Kelly, a major task of his panel will be to suss out the procedures used by all five city district attorney's offices in obtaining warrants for blood.

"I feel it is extremely possible to speed up the process and can say the DA offices are very interested in working with the Police Department to do so," says Joseph McCormack, chief of the Vehicular Crimes Bureau of Bronx DA Robert Johnson's office. "There are also some legal changes that would help."

One proposed measure supported by McCormack would remove the state requirement that a doctor be present to supervise blood withdrawals. In 2002, 91-year-old former Olympian Jack Shea was killed in Saranac Lake by a driver who was indicted for vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and DWI. Charges were ultimately dropped after courts ruled blood evidence inadmissible based on the fact that, since there was no doctor on duty at the small clinic where Shea and the driver were taken after the crash, the sample was drawn by an EMT. Appellate judges in the Shea case, according to the bill, "called on the legislature to amend the statute to remedy what they saw as an unnecessary restriction in the law."

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