Skip to Content
Streetsblog New York City home
Streetsblog New York City home
Log In
Pedestrian safety

A Year Later, How’s James Vacca Doing on His Pledge to Protect Pedestrians?

Today NYC DOT announced its progress on a series of measures designed to promote safer riding habits among commercial cyclists. The agency has held 17 multi-lingual forums around the city to educate businesses and commercial cyclists about how to ride safely, and distributed kits with reflective vests, bells, and lights to 1,500 commercial cyclists through a partnership with delivery.com.

DOT also announced that enforcement of a package of laws passed by the City Council last October will start in April. The new laws, which include a requirement that commercial cyclists take an online safety course, were touted by City Council Transportation Chair James Vacca as a way to end the "wild, wild west" environment on city streets.

Now that Vacca's laws are about to take effect, it's worth looking back at what's happened since he started his big safety push.

Back at the end of 2011, Vacca told the Post that he wanted to ramp up bike enforcement in the year ahead because, “My priority is protection of the pedestrians, and my mantra is that the pedestrian is always right, even when the pedestrian is wrong. Everything I do is governed by that basic foundation."

In the year after Vacca proclaimed that everything he does is governed by the imperative to protect pedestrians, more than 130 pedestrians have been killed by drivers in New York City. None have been killed by cyclists.

But it was the commercial cyclist legislation that sailed through Vacca's committee in the fall, while bills urging reforms to NYPD's broken crash investigation procedures, which let deadly drivers get back behind the wheel without so much as a slap on the wrist, continue to languish.

So you've got to question whether protecting pedestrians is really a priority for the chair of the transportation committee, since improving pedestrian safety seems to fall somewhere below "making it legal to park in front of your own curb cut" on Vacca's to-do list.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog New York City

Sean Duffy’s ‘Great America Road Trip’ Wants You to Drive to Central Park

Sean Duffy's "Great American Road Trip" encourages Americans to drive to sites in the most transit-rich and car-choked parts of the country.

July 3, 2025

Ex-DOT Official Warns NYC’s ‘Counterproductive’ E-bike Speed Limit Will Curb Biking, Safety

The mayor is working overtime to undo the decade of gains for cycling in the Big Apple, a former de Blasio administration official told Streetsblog.

July 3, 2025

Thursday’s Headlines: Just the News Edition

Things are slowing down for summer, but not entirely. Here's the news.

July 3, 2025

DOT Boss Defends Adams’s ‘Vision Zero’ Record As Agency Fights A Bike Lane in Court

Traffic fatalities are down and the DOT is taking a victory lap — even as it argues against a protected bike lane in court.

July 2, 2025

Cyclist Arrested After Crash with Electric ‘One-wheel’-Style Unicycle

Carolyn Backus is charged with fleeing the scene of a crash causing serious injury, but the details are murky.

Wednesday’s Headlines: Return of Summer Streets Edition

Summer Streets is back and bigger than ever. Plus more news.

July 2, 2025
See all posts