New York should use its red-light and speed cameras to prevent deadly crashes.
In early March, a tow-truck driver fatally crushed a woman crossing the street in the crosswalk in Brooklyn. It was not the first time this vehicle had caused a deadly crash: The same truck had run over and killed a woman in Queens, also in the crosswalk, five months previously. The reality is that New York is plagued by traffic deaths caused by vehicles with histories of traffic violations, and it’s time for the City to use red-light and speed-camera data to do something about it.
New York has long employed broken-windows policing as a strategy not only to address quality-of-life complaints but to prevent more serious crime, because people who commit small infractions — such as jumping over a subway turnstile — disproportionately go on to commit violent offenses. A similar approach can work to make pedestrians, bicyclists and everyone else who shared the roads safer from reckless drivers.
Until recently, New York City traffic deaths fell steadily, from a high of 701 in 1990 to a low of 206 in 2018, bucking a national trend in recent years. That’s thanks to two big factors: redesign of the streets to make more room for pedestrians and cyclists, and enforcing the law, including through 150 red-light camera zones and 750 speed-camera zones, enabled by state legislation over the past quarter-century and decade respectively.
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. Based on a recent issue brief.
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