Traffic Enforcement

City Council Member Jumaane Williams yesterday called on the city to take action to improve traffic safety in East Flatbush, where hundreds of people have been injured and killed by reckless drivers in less than two years.

Gawker dished out some richly-deserved ridicule to Tennessee State Senator Jon Lundberg yesterday, following reports that he is co-sponsoring legislation to outlaw the specific speeding camera that nabbed him doing 60 in a 45 zone last October. Lundberg denied that the incident had any impact on his decision to sponsor in the legislation, and contested the violation to boot.

A pedestrian struck by a motorist on April 1 in Bay Ridge died from her injuries. The crash occurred on a section of Fourth Avenue where DOT plans to install a pedestrian fence, and in a precinct where NYPD writes a speeding ticket once every five days.

There’s a tussle going on right now about how cyclists should ride on city streets. Yesterday's Streetsblog Network post took a snapshot of this debate yesterday, excerpting the WashCycle’s response to a Sarah Goodyear piece in Atlantic Cities.

Yesterday at about 3:30 p.m., a taxi driver struck a cyclist on Seventh Avenue in Chelsea between 16th and 17th Street. Police made two arrests at the scene, though at this time NYPD is not revealing what they were charged with.

Update: The Home Reporter reports that the elderly victim of this crash has died.

Although maintaining that cameras "are never going to be a replacement for officers," a prominent police union official told Streetsblog that he strongly supports automated enforcement. "People drive in this town with impunity," he said. "I'll take any help we can get at this point to try and reign in some of the problems."

If you walk on New York City streets (or frankly anywhere in the U.S.), you're well aware of how much unlawful and dangerous driving happens on nearly every block: red light running, speeding, double-parking, you name it.

The Post revealed earlier this week that NYPD trains only one officer per precinct to use a radar gun, which partially explains why speeding enforcement is close to non-existent in most neighborhoods. But while NYPD thinly spreads local precincts' speeding enforcement resources over thousands of miles of surface streets where pedestrians and cyclists are at risk of getting struck by drivers, the department does have a number of officers trained to apprehend speeders. The problem is that they're positioned on the city's limited access highways.