De Blasio: Everyone in This City Has to Yield to Pedestrians

As you know, we're training a lot of people who work for the city of New York in how to be safer and better drivers. MTA we do not control. But I think there's an opportunity to work with the MTA to figure out what will help these drivers to do their work more safely. I think that the whole picture should be looked at -- the routes that they cover, the schedules they're on, the kind of training they need. If the equipment creates a problem, obviously -- what's more important than safety? What's more important than saving people's lives and avoiding horribly injured people? This is what we come here first to do in government.

So if it turns out that the design of the buses creates a safety problem -- can we fix that with different mirrors or other adjustments? That's a valid question. But in the here and now, our message to everyone in this city, whether they work for the city, or they work for the MTA, or a private individual, is you have to drive safely. You have to yield to pedestrians. You have to respect that there's new laws now that clearly penalize those who do not yield to pedestrians. We're here to save lives and everybody has to be a part of that.