NYPD Crash Investigations

Yesterday's fatal East Village crash is another example of how NYPD and the press blame deceased pedestrians and cyclists based mostly on the word of the drivers who killed them.

A man who says he saw the Tuesday crash that killed Marlene Baharlias echoes the story told by others: The driver backed into the senior on a Sheepshead Bay sidewalk. The witness believes a security camera in his building recorded the crash, but NYPD does not share details of crash investigations unless compelled by freedom of information requests.

A senior was killed Tuesday in Sheepshead Bay by a driver who witnesses say backed onto a sidewalk -- contrary to anonymous NYPD sources who told the Post the victim was jaywalking. No charges were filed.

A pedestrian crossing with the right of way was struck and killed in Crown Heights Sunday by a city sanitation worker who was not charged or ticketed by NYPD.

In the last 24 hours, an 80-year-old pedestrian and an MTA bus driver were killed in crashes in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Last month, the Upper East Side's 19th Precinct devoted two full pages to traffic safety in its inaugural monthly newsletter. In an echo of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who claimed at the initial Vision Zero press conference that 73 percent of crashes injuring pedestrians are the victim's fault, it featured an eyebrow-raising statistic that blames four of the five Upper East Side pedestrian fatalities in 2013 on the dead victims. But that's a misleading way to characterize the cause of most pedestrian deaths, and given NYPD's track record of rushing to blame victims in its crash investigations, it may not even be an accurate depiction of these five Upper East Side deaths.

The City Council today voted to override a number of vetoes handed down by former Mayor Bloomberg. According to the Staten Island Advance, among the bills passed was Intro 1055, which requires NYPD to release information on hit-and-run crashes and investigations.

Today's transportation committee meeting, the first chaired by Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, was short and sweet. The new chair opened with a statement outlining his goals for the 13-member committee, which minutes later unanimously passed an override of Mayor Bloomberg's veto of a bill that would give the council more information about NYPD's hit-and-run investigations.

Yesterday NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said that in 73 percent of crashes in which a pedestrian was struck by a motorist in 2013, the pedestrian was at fault. Bratton presented that figure as an indictment of pedestrian behavior, and the stat was later parroted by the press. But more than anything it speaks to the victim-blaming bias that permeates NYPD traffic enforcement and crash investigations -- a major obstacle Bratton will have to overcome to implement Vision Zero.