Top cop Bill Bratton has promised to crack down on drivers who have turned New York City’s roadways into boulevards of death.
Bratton and de Blasio met at one of the city’s most notoriously dangerous intersections at Northern Boulevard and 61st Street in Woodside — where 8-year-old Noshat Nahian was killed in the crosswalk on his way to school in December — to announce plans to prevent deadly collisions.
“A lost life is a lost life, whether to murder or a traffic accident,” Bratton said.
For the first time ever, cameras installed to detect speeding on city streets, concentrated around school zones, will automatically generate tickets, beginning Thursday. Until now, they have generated only warnings.
“This will be a top-to-bottom effort to take on dangerous streets and dangerous driving,” de Blasio said. “We aren’t going to wait and lose a son, a daughter, a parent or a grandparent in another senseless and painful tragedy.”
The mayor vowed to “confront this problem from every side—and it starts today.”
Traffic accidents killed 11 people in the first two weeks of the year. That rate reflects an alarming spike from 2013, when 173 pedestrians were struck and killed on New York City streets, according to preliminary figures.
The top cop promised faster response times for police answering calls about serious accidents, deeper investigations and better technology and training for cops in the NYPD’s Highway Division.
Bratton also said he’ll expand the division by 10 percent, or 60 cops, for a total of 270 officers focused on traffic and accidents, which claim about 4,000 lives each year, according to Transportation Alternatives.
“One in three New Yorkers have been injured in traffic or know someone who’s been injured or killed on our roads,” said Paul Steely White, executive director of the advocacy group.
Investigators will receive the same training as homicide detectives and department brass will continue to use TrafficStat meetings to review problem areas. Cops will be equipped with laser technology for speed detection and the city will roll out speed cameras at 50 intersections, officials said.
City leaders said they plan to lobby Albany to make it a felony when someone with a suspended license seriously hurts or kills someone.
When asked about the cab driver who received just a ticket for the crash that killed 9-year-old Cooper Stock on the Upper West Side last week, de Blasio declined to comment specifically on that incident.
“My broad view is that there are more cases that deserve those [more serious] charges,” he said.
And, cops plan to crack down on drivers for failing to yield to pedestrians.
Educational campaigns will target pedestrian and driver error, which accounts for most deadly pedestrian accidents. They’ll also take aim at distracted driving, which, according to NYPD statistics, is the most common contributing factor and cause of collisions in the city.
Surprisingly, most accidents caused by inattentive driving occur because of distractions other than cell phones, the department numbers show.
The changes are part of de Blasio’s Vision Zero, a joint effort between officials and victims’ families to completely eliminate the number of fatal accidents in the city within 10 years.
“It’s time to put a stop to this epidemic,” Steely White said. “Traffic deaths are preventable.”
Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland.