Friday Video: Listen To This Polite-But-Firm British Man

Get ready to hear lots of British voices warning, “Caution! Vehicle turning left!”

Don’t fret — it’s a new automatic warning being installed on non-emergency vehicles in the city fleet to alert you — politely but firmly — that a large vehicle is about to make a turn.

Streetsblog’s Gersh Kuntzman had a chance to see it in action for another episode of “Old Man Vertical,” his ongoing parody of today’s newfangled, phone-friendly video style.

We’re all accustomed — perhaps too much so — to trucks beeping when they back up. But now, roughly 1,000 city vehicles alert you when they’re about to turn. It’s loud, but not too loud, and as long as you’re vaguely paying attention, it works pretty well, as the video shows:

Keith Kerman, the city’s chief fleet officer, is excited.

“Under Mayor Mamdani, we’re going to be placing these on all of our non-emergency trucks,” said Kerman, who is also a deputy commissioner at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. “So when a truck makes a left or right-hand turn or a backup, it’s going to provide an audible warning to pedestrians, children, bicyclists, so they can stay safe.”

The installations are part of an executive order that will fund retrofits on all 4,000 such vehicles through the end of June 2029.

As a New Yorker, I kinda wished the voice would be more aggressive, like, “I’m driving heah!” But as a street safety advocate, I’m pleased that it merely gently alerts pedestrians and cyclists of an oncoming truck and its intention to turn.

The voice is British because so is the company from which the first units were purchased. But the Kings English can be changed down the road, (perhaps to Queens?).

“We could even have a ‘Voice of Safety’ contest to pick a new voice,” Kerman said. “But we’re also going to test different voices to see what might be most effective. We don’t we don’t care about whose voice it is; we care that pedestrians know that one of our vehicles is turning.”

The squawk box is one of several fleet safety initiatives by the Mamdani administration. Picking up on where the Adams administration left off, there are now about 1,000 city vehicles that have speed governors installed inside them to prevent city drivers from driving recklessly.

“Under the same executive order signed by Mayor Mamdani, we’re going to be placing these on all the non-emergency vehicles in the city fleet, which is about 7,300,” Kerman said. “It’s the largest initiative of this type in North America, and it’s the technology underpinning for the Stop Super Speeder legislation that Gov. Hochul signed. We’re very excited about it.” (He is not the only one.)

The currently equipped vehicles have logged more than eight million miles using the technology since August 2022, the mayor’s office said, with a reduction in speeding of 64 percent.