July 19, 2018

Speed Cameras Save Lives in New York City, But State has Funding Hold-Up

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In 2014 New York City installed speed cameras to monitor speeds around 140 schools in the city. Data collected from the NYC Department of Transportation show that they work, with a 60 % reduction of vehicular speeding in school zones. Even better, 81% of speeders caught do slow down, never obtaining a second speeding ticket.

Individual schools showed finer data results, with a school in Brooklyn having overall injuries drop by 57%, and pedestrian injuries by 64%. Given these results and the fact that Mayor de Blasio has celebrated the lowest amount of traffic deaths in New York City’s history,it only made sense to double the number of school speed cameras.

And that’s where things got confusing. New York City has worked towards Vision Zero (meaning zero traffic deaths) by lowering the City’s default speed limit to 25 miles an hour and installing more than 2,000 Leading Pedestrian Interval crosswalks.

But the rogue behaviour of holding up funding for a program that saves lives has galvanized action with New York City residents, including a student from Brooklyn Tech who had three friends killed by cars within the last fifteen months.

As Mayor de Blasio observes “The data is clear: speed cameras save lives. When it comes to our kids, we don’t have any time to waste. We need our current speed camera program renewed and expanded before it’s too late. This is quite literally life or death.”

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  1. Maybe Vision Zero is not the right message. How about the Dutch phrase from the ’70s: “Stop the murder of our children”

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