Wednesday’s Headlines: Speeding is No Joke Edition

We've urged our Editor-in-Chief Gersh Kuntzman to catch up to the vertical video trends du jour. His one-time employer the New York Post offered him the perfect opportunity: a front page devoted to Mayor Mamdani's move to reduce the speed limits outside every school in the city to 15 miles-per-hour by 2029.

True to form, The Post's story acknowledged the dangers of speeding — specifically, that crash victims are far more likely to die the faster the driver who hits them is going — while its front page treated the mayor's entreaties to safety as "left-wing" lunacy: "Spurred by the anti-car left," the front page read, "Mayor Mamdani yesterday announced plans to lower the speed limit in every school zone in the city from 25 mph to 15 mph — and have enforcement even when school isn't in session, 24 hours a day. He also said if the City Council passes it, he supports an intolerably slow 20 mph speed limit for the entire city."

"Intolerably slow"? More like intolerably safe, as Kuntzman laid out in his clarion call of a short-form vertical video, which you can watch below:

The facts didn't stop The Post from running a subsequent op-ed from an Albany area-based former spokesman to Gov. George Pataki, who slammed the new speed limits as a "cash grab" while unironically lauding the city for reducing traffic fatalities — a success that city officials attribute in part to lower speed limits and automated speed enforcement. A 2025 DOT report showed 95 percent drops in speeding at locations with cameras.

The Post followed that op-ed with another pro-speeding piece from its editorial board, which flat-out ignored the proven safety benefits of speed cameras for all New Yorkers — belittling them as "for kids" to parrot anti-safety drivel that dangerous driving is somehow okay at night when school is out of session. The editorial also echoed the argument that Mamdani's lower speed limits are a "cash grab" — even though they don't come with any new speed cameras.

Of course, speed cameras work when they make less money, not more — because fewer drivers speed. To wit, the average number of drivers caught per camera has dropped significantly since the speed camera program started in 2014 as the number of cameras has grown, DOT data shows.

But some people can't resist the urge to drive fast and dangerously. As Streetsblog USA Editor Kea Wilson wrote in 2023, just 60.5 percent of U.S. drivers consider driving more than 10 mph over the speed limit in "residential areas" to be "extremely" or "very" dangerous.

If only they'd seen the chart.

In other news:

• The MTA sued the Trump administration for improperly withholding funds for the Second Avenue subway. (NY Times, Gothamist)
• Hey, discourse: People making less than $50,000 per year spend the most on food delivery. "Broke millennials" are the top spenders. (The Argument)
• New York Magazine's Chris Bonanos explored the ins and outs of (the possible end of) free street parking. (Curbed)
• Driverless trucks are coming to a highway near you ... (NY Times)
• ... just hope you're not stuck in one when it gets attacked by righteous Luddites. (NY Times)
• Is the mayor's "free buses during the World Cup" trial balloon even real? Because no one has asked Janno Lieber about it. (amNY)
• Morgan's in Brooklyn wants to free itself from the clutches of the delivery app industry. (NY Post)
• The Trump administration is pushing New York closer to an eventual LIRR strike. (PIX11)
• Surprise, surprise: New Jersey's e-bike ban isn't protecting kids from dangerous drivers. (ABC7)
• Legislators in Albany want to require skyscrapers and other buildings to turn off the lights late at night. (ABC7 via X)
• An off-duty NYPD officer shot a man in the head after tracking down his wife's stolen car to the Bronx on Monday. (NY Post, NY Times)
• Republican wannabe governor Bruce Blakeman throws in with Vickie Paladino. (QNS)