Steve Vaccaro

A rare op-ed from the city's leading lawyer for victims of road violence.

The Law Office of Vaccaro & White is representing the victim in what may be the first case of a precinct-level charge for violating NYC Administrative Code Section 19-190, also known as the Right-of-Way Law.

Monday night, Deputy Inspector Jessica Corey, the commanding officer of NYPD's Central Park Precinct, led a discussion of street safety in Central Park. Convened by the Central Park Conservancy, it drew representatives of most major advocates and organizations of recreational users of the park, including NY Road Runners, Transportation Alternatives, Asphalt Green Triathalon, Central Park Skate Patrol, and various bike clubs and bike racing organizations.

Last Thursday, the New York City Council passed Intro 238. This legislation makes it a misdemeanor for drivers to strike pedestrians or cyclists who have the right of way. Intro 238 has the potential to dramatically change driver behavior and advance the Vision Zero program of eliminating traffic fatalities.  But without enforcement by NYPD and prosecutors, Intro 238 will be no more than an unheeded "message in a bottle."

As seasoned observers of the department's dealings with bicyclists know, NYPD has long enjoyed taking our bikes. Following the 2004 Republican National Convention, NYPD clipped locks and took bikes of persons suspected of associating with Critical Mass, resulting in a successful federal lawsuit that enjoined the practice as a constitutional violation. During a 2010 visit to New York by President Obama, NYPD without notice confiscated bikes wholesale along the president's route, failing to tag the bikes and making it extremely difficult for their owners to reclaim them. Now, NYPD has taken things to the next level by shuttering its bike pound for a year and a half, and refusing to allow owners to claim their bicycles indefinitely.

Although the de Blasio administration’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities does not specifically call for pedestrian traffic enforcement, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has made clear that individual precinct commanders have the discretion to do so if they determine it to be warranted.

The election of numerous safe streets candidates earlier this month, followed by the exoneration of road-raging cabbie Faysal Himon and the gut-wrenching parade of daily traffic deaths since, create the best opportunity in years to impose meaningful consequences for sober reckless driving.

New Yorkers were outraged to hear yesterday that there may be no criminal charges against cab driver Mohammed Himon, who plowed into a bicyclist and several pedestrians, horribly injuring a woman on the sidewalk. Although yesterday's NYPD statement was not official, anonymous leaks to the effect that sober drivers who stay at the scene of a crash will face no criminal charges are almost always borne out  — unless the District Attorney conducts its own investigation.

Yesterday’s watershed decision in Floyd v. New York, in which federal Judge Shira Scheindlin found NYPD’s stop and frisk program unconstitutional, has thrown a spotlight on the issue of personal security. Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Kelly at his side, utterly rejected the decision, suggested it would directly result in increased violent street crime, and vowed an appeal.