DOT Launches Anti-Reckless Driving Campaign Featuring Families of Victims

DOT announced yesterday that it is launching an education campaign to combat reckless driving — specifically speeding, distracted driving, and failure to yield to pedestrians. These three violations combined account for 40 percent of New Yorkers killed in car crashes, DOT says.

The campaign, which will be on bus shelters, billboards, radio and social media, and will soon be accompanied by a campaign against drunk driving, features family members of those killed by reckless drivers. One ad features Audrey Anderson, whose son Andre, 14, was killed in 2005 while riding his bike on Shore Front Parkway in the Rockaways. Another ad shows David Shephard, whose fiancée Sonya Powell was killed in a Baychester Avenue crosswalk in 2009 by a speeding driver.

In 2012 alone, 34 people were killed by drivers not yielding the right of way, 48 were killed by distracted drivers, and 59 were killed by speeding drivers, DOT says.

In its release announcing the campaign, DOT noted that pedestrian fatalities are on the rise in recent years and singled out drivers who mount sidewalks as one of the reasons for the increase in fatalities. Researchers said last week at Elmhurst Hospital that they are also seeing an increase in sidewalk crashes.