Traffic Justice

When it comes to deadly recklessness, drivers don't need the New York Times to tell them to "Go for it," as Charles McGrath did in last week's paean to the urban supercar. After a stunningly violent weekend on city streets, the indulgent motoring fantasies of McGrath and his target audience appear all the more vacuous.

The 2009 race for Manhattan district attorney presented a rare opportunity for proponents of safer streets. After decades of indifference toward victims of vehicular violence from Robert Morgenthau, advocates succeeded in making traffic justice a prominent campaign issue for his would-be successors. Contenders for the office pledged to take definitive action to reduce the carnage on Manhattan streets and punish drivers whose recklessness has in recent years resulted in a death toll on par with that exacted by gun-wielding murderers.

A city firefighter who left a man to die on a Brooklyn street was sentenced to community service on Monday, the result of a plea deal with Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes.

A 25-year-old man was brutally killed by two hit-and-run drivers in Crown Heights early Wednesday.

The lawsuit filed by the family of Mathieu Lefevre against NYPD could change police procedure in the aftermath of fatal crashes, making it easier for grieving relatives to access crucial information.

Contrary to media reports, the Domino's Pizza delivery driver accused of killing pedestrian Margaret Myers in Brooklyn earlier this month is not facing charges for her death.

Court documents reveal that NYPD decided not to charge the hit-and-run driver who struck and killed Brooklyn cyclist Mathieu Lefevre based on video of the crash. While it's not clear how video footage can prove that the driver didn't know he had hit Lefevre, it was apparently sufficient evidence for the department's Accident Investigation Squad.

Last week we reported how the botched NYPD investigation into the death of Brooklyn cyclist Stefanos Tsigrimanis was initially compromised due to a department policy that keeps the Accident Investigation Squad from working cases unless the victim is believed likely to die. When an emergency room doctor told police that Tsigrimanis was not fatally injured, AIS called off its investigation, and did not return to the scene for 46 days.

Conventional wisdom has it that in the state of New York a motorist must be breaking at least two traffic laws at the time of a crash to be charged with criminal negligence. As Nassau County ADA Maureen McCormick told Streetsblog: "It is believed that if a defendant commits two simultaneous traffic violations in the course of a collision, that automatically allows for a criminal charge because one violation would be considered 'ordinary' or civil negligence."