For those interested in this, I can highly recommend "What Seattle can learn from Dutch street design" [1]. It's a presentation that gives an overview of all sorts of small infrastructural measures, similar to the Queens Boulervard redesign, taken in the Netherlands to prevent traffic deaths. What makes it especially interesting is that e.g. rather than reducing the speed limit, cars are nudged to slow down through using different material for the road, or by simply making the road less wide.
I remember the disaster of an intersection at the juncture of Queens Blvd and the northern terminus of Woodhaven Blvd at Queens Center Mall. There was an average of one accident per day at that intersection with the yearly total closer to 400. I took the bus to school and passed through that intersection on a daily basis. It was so bad that I would cross the streets using the subway station as a tunnel to avoid setting foot in that death trap. I have also witnessed a handful of accidents myself when passing through.
They redesigned the traffic pattern and made the street along the mall one way which solved the accident problem. Now the entirety of Queens Blvd is safer.
The most interesting concept is that of shared spaces- it’s a bit counter intuitive, but if you put cars on the same level (figuratively and literally) as pedestrians, cyclists and other road users you can significantly reduce accident rates. You do this by removing curbs, signage, lane markings etc. This encourages road users to pay attention to the road ahead and slow down, and also makes the whole area a nicer place to be in.
The journey time may seem slower to car drivers, but given you eliminate most major accidents the average journey time is probably the same.
Presumably there is a limit to this, after all at some point in the distant past we started adding curbs, signage etc in an attempt to improve road safety.
To make way for faster cars. We have collectively conceded our streets to cars. Making shared spaces requires cars go very slow. In city centers and precincts it makes total sense. Cars shouldn't dominante the CBD traffic flow.
The road between the Natural History, Science and Victoria&Albert museums in London removed all but light posts and drainage, then put back in ridges for blind people.
Those are really interesting indeed! It should be noted that concepts like those don't always work, see point 3 at [1]. If a road is still used as a through route by many cars, than cyclists and pedestrians will in effect still be forced out of the way.
Shared spaces are interesting, but I wonder how scalable they are. People can take special attention when using a specific road, but can they keep it during long stretches?
Exactly. And given the size of the country involved, i doubt there are many highspeed intersections. I dont think having pedestrians walking on a 90+kph road will ever be safe. That is a thing in canada and the US. Bicycles ride the shoulder and we have crosswalks across some highways. At highway speeds, clear separation is needed.
Slowing everyone down will mean increasing journey times. Outside of cities, traffic rarely limits speed. Eliminating all accidents wont make calgary any closer to vancouver.
Indeed. Most of the measures taken are meant to improve safety in cities - obviously you're not going to create a shared space on a highway. The Netherlands has highways, but they're cars-only. Luckily, I believe the accident rate on highways, especially involving cyclists or pedestrians, is already far lower than in cities.
you can have effective curbing and drains without the strict, right-angle demarcation we often see now. retro-fitting all that infrastructure though would cost a fortune
As a New Yorker and a driver, I can tell you I've been gobsmacked by the resistance put up to fight protected bike lanes and speed cameras (which we just lost in bulk as the legislation supporting them was not renewed). Madness.
When Citibike was first announced, there was all kinds of outrage. Comments predicting that it will be mayhem, there will be a bloodbath, it will snarl the streets, and all kinds of other doomsday scenarios were put forth in hearings and online forums.
None of it came to pass. There has been one fatality with Citibike in 5+ years, during which 60+ million trips have been taken. The city has adjusted to the increase cycling activity- I used to get cut off, honked at, and generally harassed for being on "their" road, but the active hostility is all but gone, and I see many more drivers actively looking at the bike lane before attempting a turn.
NY is large enough that there will always be a vocal minority to change. In my own building I was in disbelief when a board member is trying to drum up resistance to a citibike rack being put outside of our building. He is an older gentleman, and just a month before had been complaining about cars illegally parking in the space across the street where they proposed to put the rack. When pressed about what his specific concern was, the best he could come up with is "it will be bad for the buildings value!" and got visibly angry with me when I asked how additional transportation options would decrease the value of the building...
the active hostility is all but gone, and I see many more drivers actively looking at the bike lane before attempting a turn.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the prevalence of cameras on bikes, too. I've seen a lot of action cams on bikes and helmets, and those may encourage less-jerky behavior.
As a former Phoenix resident, I completely understand the resistance to speed cameras. They are always touted as a public safety measure, but widely regarded as little more than a revenue machine. In my experience, the trigger speed was always perilously close to the natural flow of traffic which (at least in the places where I have lived) is consistently the speed limit + some amount. The net effect was always a sudden, dramatic slowing of traffic in the camera zone followed by a return to business-as-usual.
Edit: I should clarify that these were freeway speed cameras. Maybe they are more effective as a safety device in pedestrian-heavy areas, but I have no experience with the cameras is that context.
In South Korea, this is taken to an extreme. Every freeway speed camera is indicated on the default Maps app. It beeps (shorter and louder as the camera gets closer) and then stops.
So everyone just slows down as their maps beep and speed up again once they pass the camera. But, I think this is accepted practice and my suspicion is that a lot of these cameras aren't even real.
Just by having them placed along the freeway every x metres, they force cars to constantly slow down.
people dramatically slowing down then speeding up is likely more dangerous than everyone maintaining a speed higher than the posted limit, which makes the cameras a net negative from a safety perspective. Highways built for safety and limited speed differential across users is so much safer than limiting top speeds.
More dangerous to drivers (especially those inclined to drive at dangerous speeds), maybe. More dangerous for pedestrians? I'm not sure about that -- especially if nobody's obeying the limit in the first place, getting drivers to slow down at all is a good thing. Or do you like to have drivers speeding at 50MPH down the narrow side street (signed at 20MPH) your kids cross every day to get to school?
The "natural flow of traffic" in Manhattan and other dense parts of the 5 boroughs is dangerously fast, and way over the posted speed limit. I don't think the arguments against freeway speed cameras really hold up in this context.
The cameras we just lost were in mostly-residential areas on mostly-side streets, and all in school zones. These aren't freeways.
Every street in NYC is trafficked heavily by pedestrians, and that goes double near schools - where it's especially important for drivers to stick strictly to the speed limit.
Automation here encourages overreporting and other abuses - it's law enforcement automation, so an alternative would be to hire more officers to apply the law. Automating this work increases the amount of law applied for the same cost.
> I've been gobsmacked by the resistance put up to fight protected bike lanes
Two factors. One, traffic lanes are generally reduced; street side parking is left untouched. This leads to congestion and noise.
Two, some bikers in New York are assholes to pedestrians. Most are not, but the sting of a biker riding the wrong way, running a red light and narrowly missing you while cussing you for the gaul of walking on a designated crossing stays for a while.
I bet more cars are assholes to pedestrians than bikers and I know that cars cause more pedestrian deaths than bikers. Why aren't people more outraged about cars?
I think I'd rather have speed cameras than a multitude of state troopers/cops. But that is dependent on the type of camera. A few places in the US have gotten out of control with the number of law enforcement setting up speed traps on commuter routes. At least I know where a speed camera is if I live in the area.
Cars must stop for pedestrians at crosswalks in Norway. I got very used to this. Occasionally drivers ignore that rule, but in general, it's a very nice thing.
However, in Oslo, the only thing that doesn't stop for pedestrians is trams. I don't know why.
A tram driver pressing the emergency brake can cause injuries in the tram: the ride is normally so smooth, that many people aren't holding on to anything, or are barely holding on, and will fall.
Also, the stopping distance is longer than most people would expect. It's therefore safer to discourage people from jumping out in front of trams and expecting the tram to slow/stop to avoid them.
There's a silly tendency in discussion of US issues to prefer examples from European countries over the almost-always more applicable examples from US states. This isn't to say European or other international examples aren't extremely useful, but when there are multiple possible equivalent examples, the ones from places that are most closely related to the place under discussion are likely to be more informative. (For instance, people love to cite Sweden when discussing the US educational system, but it's usually more illuminating to look at similarly wealthy states like Massachusetts for information about what could actually be ported to the US.) </rant>
Anyways, in a minority of US states cars are required to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk, while they are required to yield to them in all states.
> Nine states and the District of Columbia require motorists to stop when approaching a pedestrian in an uncontrolled crosswalk. Minnesota mandates that a motorist stop when a pedestrian is in any portion of the roadway. Six states and D.C. require a motorist to stop when a pedestrian is upon the same half of the roadway or within one lane of the lane that the motorist is traveling upon, and two states require a motorist to stop when a pedestrian is upon the same half of the roadway or approaching closely enough from the opposite side of the roadway to constitute a danger...The majority of states, however, only require motorists to yield to, rather than stop for, pedestrians crossing at uncontrolled crosswalks. Nineteen states require a motorist to yield when a pedestrian is upon any portion of the roadway.
I agree with you there is a silly tendency and it is pretty annoying to see it. But this is what I am seeing myself, since I grew up in NYC. I have grown used to having cars stop for me when crossing the street.
For all other places in Europe (like Paris), it's same as usual - cars just will zoom by, except for lights.
I have always been a tad uncomfortable after getting hit by a car when I was 14. I mean, it's nice to see cars stop, but I am still not trustful of those behind the wheel (and who should be anyway?)
There is a different quality to it, at least here in Norway - if a driver sees a pedestrian on the sidewalk, about the cross the street, they must yield.
Reno NV has that rule. I almost hit someone when I visited because I was not used to it and blew through a crosswalk when someone wanted to cross. Imho having rules like that without explicit controls like stop signs/lights seems dangerous.
> However, in Oslo, the only thing that doesn't stop for pedestrians is trams. I don't know why.
Same thing in Amsterdam, although the stopping distance seems fairly short. I think it has mostly to do with minimizing interruptions and being relatively infrequent.
And taxis also never stop, but they don’t seem to stop for anything ever.
This isn't the case in Amsterdam, bicycles and cars will stop for you you or weave around you (depending on the case) if you're on a crosswalk.
What they aren't going to do is stop for you just because you're standing on the side of the road by a crosswalk and you vaguely look like you might possibly maybe intend to cross the street.
With the amount of tourists in the city that's only going to result in a deadlock (particularly on a bicycle) where you're waiting for them to go, and they're waiting for you.
Just start walking across the crosswalk in a predictable manner and maintain your course and heading. It works.
Trams get the highest priority on Amsterdam roads, and that is because they are on rails. It means their options to avoid accidents are extremely limited: they cannot avoid obstacles, only adjust their speed.
You are right about taxis, I'm pretty sure they don't actually have breaks. I would also add bicycles to this list, they mostly ignore traffic laws in Amsterdam.
I don't believe that legally they follow any different traffic laws, and they will usually yield for you if they're turning into your lane, and should yield whenever a car would (subject to custom signage for the tram etc.).
But in practice they operate under "Bitch, I'm a tram!" rules, and you'll need to be really assertive if you're going to get them to yield when they legally should, but the same goes for taxis.
Sorry, to clarify (and I may be wrong). I'm talking about situations where the tram acts contrary to traffic signs.
Per my (translated) reading of the law[1] (article 15, subsection 1 & 2) trams only take priority over the "priority to the right" rule, but not other posted traffic signs.
So for example [2] is an intersection where I've often seen the tram go past a yield sign and cut off traffic on the left.
I had this thought, so it is interesting that it is confirmed elsewhere. I don't know if it always plays into the fact that the trams in Oslo are actually old (according to Wikipedia, from the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Oslo)
I suspect the same is true just about everywhere. In Seattle it’s not just crosswalks, technically cars have to stop for pedestrians at ALL unsignalized intersections. (Those without lights.)
Surprisingly many drivers here are pretty good about it too. Obviously it’s a bit of a negotiation depending on the intersection and visibility.
Ah sorry I meant zebra crossings in particular. The one you sent me seems to be one with traffic lights for the pedestrians.
Generally you are allowed to cross ways almost everywhere if you are giving the vehicles on the road precedence. There are a few restrictions: you should use the shortest path, if there are zebra crossings or traffic lights nearby you have to use them, if there is a lot of traffic you should cross at intersections, etc. but there’s not the general concept of jaywalking.
>"New York's transportation officials and safety advocates say the experience of the largest U.S. city offers a road map for others."
This is all very self-congratulatory and likely a PR piece that was put out on the news wire.
I imagine that the reduction in fatalities is almost exclusively due to the changes around pedestrian crossings on Queens Blvd. a horrid monstrosity that more closely resembles a highway than any kind of regular street.
It is actually rare to see police pulling over cars and issuing traffic tickets in NYC. And if anything as the congestion has worsened drivers have gotten more brazen. Cars regularly block the intersection, run red lights rather than stop, regularly block the cross walk and regularly fail to yield to pedestrians in cross walks. In fact these are the norm. Spend 5 to 10 minutes walking during rush hour you are pretty much guaranteed to observe all of these in the short time frame.
NYC is a road map for what a dysfunctional to non-existent traffic policy looks like.
That's a saving of roughly $500M with the ~$10M/life figure used by government agencies like the EPA and the NHTSA, which works out to ~$60 per NYC citizen. Has anyone tried to estimate the value lost to less efficient traffic flow? Median household income is $50k, so valuing the median person's time at a few times the minimum wage, say $30/hour, suggest that initiative was worth it if it cost the typical person less than 2 hours over the year.
This should of course include the bike and pedestrian traffic flow, which has plausibly gotten more efficient considering the type of changes being made.
Keep in mind this isn’t just about pedestrian fatalities - traffic fatalities across all modes decreased.
I think sometimes these conversations get framed only as “driver convenience” vs “pedestrian and cyclist lives”. Which, admittedly it sometimes comes down to, but these programs are saving drivers lives too.
The first couple lines of linked WSJ article says differently, though I don't have a WSJ account so I can't say if this is an actual rise or just the result of a higher driving population
> overall traffic fatalities down by 27 per cent. The first half of 2018 has seen the fewest traffic-related fatalities in any six-month period ever measured in America's most populated city, officials say.
Edit: From the original article, but you’re right, 2017 showed an increase in certain modes, with a decrease overall.
> Has anyone tried to estimate the value lost to less efficient traffic flow?
I currently work with traffic safety applications, and while I do not claim full expertise in this industry, I do know that the primary metric for success is reducing the number of fatalities. I have never seen a single product request around balancing efficiency of traffic against lives. That just isn't how the goalposts are set.
The NHTSA definitely uses this metric for many decisions.
Anyone who doesn't explicitly compare the cost of lives vs. efficiency of course does so implicitly when ever they say that a possible safety feature "isn't reasonable" or "isn't feasible". (After all, we could all have more safety by setting a max speed limit of 10 mph and building speed-bump-covered roads to prevent faster travel.) The implicit method allows people to say silly things like "we never compromise safety for any reason", it inevitably leads to strictly worse trade-offs.
We both know none, and my comment didn't state otherwise. The NHTSA nevertheless has significant influence on traffic design (not just vehicle regulations):
> Another of NHTSA's major activities is the creation and maintenance of the data files maintained by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis. In particular, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), has become a resource for traffic safety research not only in the United States, but throughout the world. Research contributions using FARS by researchers from many countries appear in many non-U.S. technical publications,[8] and provide a significant database and knowledge bank on the subject.
The issue is a total lack of enforcement. One can recognize the older NYC drivers by their refusal to enter an intersection if they cannot be sure to clear it on green. It is because in the late nineties in Manhattan blocking the box was equivalent of doing 90mph in a 55 zone in front of a state trooper ( the only time one could get away with it if the said state trooper was already busy writing a ticket to someone else ) -- you would get the a $100-$500 dollar ticket and you would get points on the license. Not it barely happens even on the streets with SBS lanes and traffic cops.
Let this sink in. $300 dollar and two points on a license for not clearing the box ( including crosswalks ) in 1996. It was when a spiffy dinner for two in NYC was about $80.
If NYC were to deploy a 1000 cops to write these tickets for a month today there would be no congestion in three months as no one would want to risk thousands of dollars in tickets for the $10 they could make by trying to squeeze the cars into the yellow light -- and the ones that would risk it are sure to lose the cars and licenses quite quick.
They do enforce it. My office is on one of the major feeders to the Holland Tunnel (Broome/Watts Street), so it gets extremely congested everyday from 4 to 6. Every light cycle, several cars block the box, and a small team of traffic cops sprints out from their hiding spot around the corner, ready to write tickets. I think it's just a matter of scaling that tactic out to other intersections where traffic comes to a complete stop for twenty seconds at a time, allowing cops to give and explain tickets in the intersection without disrupting the flow of traffic.
I had a car follow me laying on the horn non-stop for two straight blocks in Brooklyn, no exaggeration. I was going less than 45 miles per hour on a narrow residential street with cars parked on both sides, that was completely unacceptable. They eventually illegally passed me when it was clear I wasn't going to drive in a way to leave myself enough reaction time to be able to stop if an obstacle jutted out from between parked cars into the road.
That's just one example that sticks out in my head.
Given that those narrow residential streets are typically home to lots of kids, and that the speed limit on them is 25MPH, I hope you were driving not just under 45 but under 30.
Chalk it up to Uber and their ilk, which not only discourages people from using public transport, but also significantly adds trips, which wouldn't have happened otherwise.
>"Chalk it up to Uber and their ilk, which not only discourages people from using public transport,"
The MTA actually does a pretty good job of discouraging people from taking the subway these days, probably more so than Uber. Maybe you haven't seen the news but the subway has been in throes of a crisis for more than a few years now [1].
While I would like to see less cars on the streets, its hard to make the argument that people shouldn't use car services when the alternative is regularly failing its'riders.
It applies to general pedestrian safety in NYC. When cars block the crosswalk you often have to walk dangerously close to cars in the intersection to get around them. It didn't used to be this bad in NYC.
The the 80s NYC of my youth almost every aspect of traffic engineering was worse and more dangerous. You may not have observed cars blocking crosswalks because the crosswalks were missing.
Modern crosswalks, especially on avenues, usually push back where the car is supposed to stop 3-6 feet. Usually without markings, drivers will target (and overshoot) the curb cut.
There's definately more "blocking the box" now, but IMO that's more about "smarter" traffic signals that are frequently broken or result in too short/long wait times.
Of course it didn’t; there used to be less traffic! And the only solution is to reverse the trend of traffic growth—specifically, to reduce the average footprint of an individual traveler.
Vision Zero is city-wide initiative for pedestrian safety in NYC not just Queens Blvd.[1]
And blocking cross-walks is very much an issue concerning pedestrian safety. So yes the OPs comment does very much apply to the article being discussed:
No mention of bulb outs. New York's streets probably don't have room for bulb outs like they've tried in SF. Most SF streets with bulbs really don't have the pedestrian congestion you see on NYC corners. There, you might see a dozen people standing in the crosswalk waiting for the light change and traffic racing past them. Many pedestrians trying to jump ahead of those standing on the curb.
But at least New Yorkers use the crosswalks. Market, Van Ness, Tenderloin, SF multi-lanes jaywalkers Xanadu.
For the non-SF, similarly unenlightened (like me):
Bulb out:
Curb extensions (also called bulb-outs) extend the sidewalk into the parking lane to narrow the roadway and provide additional pedestrian space at key locations; they can be used at corners and at mid-block. Curb extensions enhance pedestrian safety by increasing pedestrian visibility, shortening crossing distances, slowing turning vehicles, and visually narrowing the roadway.
NY has them and seems to be adding more (not fast enough in my opinion), sometimes in conjunction with chicanes. The crosswalks are also relatively massively wide (especially compared to Chicago which seem almost comically narrow).
NYC streets have plenty of room for bulb-outs, but it would require reducing the amount of (mostly free) on-street parking, which is a political third rail.
Somewhat-related: The US Department of Transportation recently released finalized rules regarding low-speed audible warning sounds for hybrid and battery-electric vehicles to prevent pedestrian injury:
I really don’t like that plan. It may not be bad, depending on what the noise is, but unless it’s done well it will be a new, annoying sound that I have to hear all the time.
I don’t see the safety benefits either. Cars going less than 20 mph are not particularly dangerous. On top that that, in most situations where you’re going less than 20 it’s the drivers responsibility to watch for pedestrians, not the other way around. (Parking lots, big streets in cities where there’s crosswalks every couple hundred feet, shared spaces where pedestrians and cars are in the same lane).
It’s probably more likely to let people drive faster through parking lots (as people hear the car behind them and move over) than create any safety improvements.
I'm not sure I understand your argument with regard to responsibility. When I'm laying on the pavement, I don't think I'll care that much whose responsibility it was to avoid the collision.
To your last point, why would a car emitting noise result in people speeding through parking lots? Most cars on the road are already emitting noise. This is just bringing hybrid and electric cars into parity with existing vehicles.
If you happen to witness a Fisker Karma cruising around at low speed, you'll hear their take on it. I didn't find it too offensive- it sounds like the guitar tone from that Morrissey song "How Soon is Now?".
Note that you're describing the main operating mode in the last paragraph - this holds true for parking lots as it does for other shared spaces (who should be paying attention is somewhat academic).
Over 20 mph, the tires are the main noise source even with gasoline cars (unless you take off the exhaust muffler, which is a bit of a corner case).
May cars already implement such a noise. The fact that most people don't realize this, despite undoubtedly being exposed to it regularly (the Prius has had this since 2012, for example), is a good indication of how unobtrusive it is.
Probably helps to have a paramilitarized police force with an annual budget of $5.6 billion and nearly as many employees as there are active personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces. :)
The NYPD is fairly useless when it comes to traffic enforcement other than ticketing cyclists.
They'll ignore trucks blocking crosswalks (and endangering pedestrians). Double parking in bus and bike lanes. Tractor-trailers (which are technically illegal to drive through the city at all without a special permit for each delivery, but that's never enforced) blocking both crosswalks and the entire intersection because they didn't wait for the street ahead to have room, and making blind turns where they come within inches of mowing down pedestrians crossing with the light (whom they couldn't see because their cab and hood are too high, which is part of why they're illegal).
Heck, police cruisers are some of the worst offenders when it comes to blocking crosswalks; parking on sidewalks (thus forcing pedestrians into the street), and other such obnoxious behavior.
And when a driver crushes or kills a pedestrian or cyclist, the NYPD goes out of their way to defend instead of prosecuting the driver. Even when eyewitness accounts and video evidence show the driver at fault. Even when the driver was driving without a license or under the influence.
No, it doesn’t. The police around here generally ignore traffic violations unless they are specifically conducting a “sting”.
I recently was told that this is actually a matter of policy, because someone discovered that cops were using traffic violations as an excuse to disproportionally target minorities, like the old “broken windows”
policing days.
Honestly, it even makes a bit of sense... traffic is so dense now and violations so frequent that even the minimal effort of enforcement would shut down entire arteries. How do you pull over a bad driver when there’s no space to pull them over?
There’s no way out of this mess except for fixing the subway and congestion pricing.
>There’s no way out of this mess except for fixing the subway and congestion pricing.
Good luck with that. Politicians have private drivers shuttle them everywhere -- If they took the subway into work, we'd have a much better state of affairs.
Sounds great to me. The other day I was wondering why they don't mount traffic cameras on MTA busses for massive city coverage… but the short version is that traffic laws are determined by the state, not NYC, and the rest of the state is ruled by automobile drivers who don't want to vote themselves into traffic tickets.
[edit] btw, I was referring to issues like "blocking the box," double parking, parking in bike lanes, generally unsafe driving. Cameras track speeding, which (I believe) is actually the least of the problems we have around here. Generally traffic is so terrible that speeding is impossible.
I was imagining even lower tech than that: bus drivers would have a wheel mounted trigger, and thumb it every time they drive by a double-parked car or a car in the bus lane. The NYPD would have a person whose job was to load the bus-mounted video, jump to the triggered time stamps, review and issue tickets… I figure they could get through about one citation per minute?
Then I imagine the legislature of Albany dying with laughter…
Your comment got me wondering about the NYPD. Specifically, when I visited New York last March I was struck by the number of police vehicles visible on the street. It felt like there was barely a block which didn't have one or two police cruisers parked on it.
I live in London and by comparison it feels rare to see a police vehicle at all. Nevermind just parked along a random street.
I guess this was mostly due to timing; it was just after a major snow storm. Comparing the budget and number of officers it's not that different £3.2B and 30000 officers vs $5.6B and 40000 officers.
Ah yes! That would do it. So they have more officers (though not drastically more) and quite a bit smaller area to cover. That probably goes some way to explaining what I observed.
The NYPD doesn't give a shit about traffic violations, and is very heavily on the side of drivers. This is a longstanding cultural thing, certainly affected by the fact that nearly all NYPD officers themselves commute to work by car.
If you did the type of heavy traffic enforcement that you see on Long Island or in some upstate places, the overtime and adjudication would cost many millions of dollars.
NYPD in my observation tends to focus mostly on keeping things moving.
Ticket revenue is split between fine and surcharge. 100% of the surcharge goes to the state. In NYC, the DMV (State) adjudicates traffic matters and presumably shares the revenue. Counties/boroughs probably get a piece of the action too.
Meanwhile, NYC via NYPD gets the rage and vitriol from all of the traffic jams and general griping from the tickets. They also need to pay for overtime for testimony -- which NYPD prefers to use to flood public events with cops, etc.
>"Meanwhile, NYC via NYPD gets the rage and vitriol from all of the traffic jams and general griping from the tickets."
You don't need officers to write tickets at all you just put up cameras to pick off the low hanging fruit - speeding, blocking the intersections and blocking the cross walk. The only reason that speeding cameras were taken down was b/c the state failed to reauthorize them in time.
>"Depends on who gets the money."
It's safe to say that NYC gets that money. Upwards of billion dollars of it anyway:
>"The city collected $957 million in fines in fiscal year 2015, an increase of 7.5 percent from the previous year and a 12 percent increase since 2012."
"Red light camera revenue, which has been on the decline since 2012, jumped $1 million to $29 million in fiscal year 2015. Meanwhile, bus lane camera revenue increased to $17 million from $12 million the year before and speed camera violations increased to $31 million from $2 million" [1]
>"If you did the type of heavy traffic enforcement that you see on Long Island or in some upstate places, the overtime and adjudication would cost many millions of dollars."
Moving violations are huge cash cows though which is why upstate and Long Island rely so heavily on them. It would pay for itself many time overs on rush hours alone. It's almost surprising that a city that can't implement a congestion charge is leaving this money on the table.
>New York strategically increased enforcement on six traffic violations it identified as being the most likely to kill or injure, including:
Speeding.
Failing to yield to a pedestrian.
Failing to stop on a signal.
Improper turns.
Cellphone use.
Disobeying signs.
The 1 and 3, 4 and 6 entries are almost wholly dependent on context and the 2 is sort of a tautology.
As a pedestrian (I walk ~2mi in the Boston area daily) I really have no problem with people violating the posted speed limit, running reds that were very recently yellow or taking a right on red where prohibited as long as they travel at somewhat reasonable speeds, don't flagrantly run reds, and ignore signs in a predicable manner.
Cars acting in an unpredictable manner and cars with distracted drivers (#5) are what results in them trying to occupy the same physical space as pedestrians (#2). As I see it four of the six things listed don't actually impact the danger to me any more than the inherent difference among drivers.
As a pedestrian I'd actually prefer the cops write less tickets because the blue lights distract drivers and throw a wrench into predictable traffic flow. A good chunk of drivers act like a spooked horse when the cops are out hunting and that's not good for my safety, attention paid to the cop who's pulling someone over is attention not paid to not hitting me.
If the cops want to post officers on a random street corners with point and shoot cameras and nab people for texting and driving then I can definitely get behind that. Based on my experience and observation I don't think telling them to go hog wild on everything else would be a net positive in terms of safety (that said, I'll take real cops enforcing traffic laws over automated enforcement any day).
edit:pun not intended but I'm leaving it because I like it.
edit2: Downvoted because people are too lazy to type out why I'm so wrong. Typical Reddit.
edit3: Maybe I wasn't clear enough why I'm opposed to prioritizing enforcement of traffic law. As long as traffic is consistent I can deal. When it becomes inconsistent (possibly because people fear strict traffic enforcement) you get more opportunities for pedestrians and drivers conflicting all the time and inconsistent traffic takes the attention of the drivers away from other things, like pedestrians. As a pedestrian I want nothing to do with an intersection where a cop is sitting or an intersection where there's a known cameras because driver's attention is allocated away from possible road hazards (like me) in order to more strictly adhere to the letter of the law. Most of the violations that NYC wants to prioritize pose no threat to me by themselves whereas aggressive enforcement creates more inconsistent traffic which is a danger to me. When someone slams on their brakes for a yellow the drivers who have to change what they're doing in response to that become more dangerous to me. Attention is finite. You can't handle the dev tickets when prod is burning and drivers are no different, aggressive traffic enforcement is another potential distraction to them and a danger to me.
You are downvoted because these violations have been identified as "the most likely to kill or injure", and you haven't made any argument against that.
Drivers act "like spooked horses" when a cop is pulling people over because they're taught that they'll never be caught breaking the law. Your summary is indicative of a vastly more serious problem: Drivers break the law so frequently that it doesn't even occur to them that they're doing it.
I live in a suburb and the biggest problem I see isn't drivers, it is pedestrians. They do not use cross walks. If there is not a cross walk directly outside the shop they are leaving, they just cross the road whenever they feel like it.
Pedestrians also just stand and talk in the middle of street. It blows my mind. I have lived around the US and this is a distinctly NY thing.
And they also have the weird habit of doing their run...in the middle of the road. Even if there is an empty sidewalk with no crossings, people will just do their run in the road like they're a car.
Drivers are also to blame but there would be even fewer if pedestrians were held to some standards of road safety. Police don't even need to give tickets, just scare pedestrians into using common courtesy.
Your sentiments sum up what is wrong in much of the U.S. I am not blaming you. This is the culture you grew up in. But this type of thinking is dead wrong. Cars are what cause the danger. Pedestrians in the US have lost much of there safe access to the streets. Runners use the road because the sidewalks generally suck. If a driver doesn't have time to slow down and stop for a pedestrian, they are going too fast. It's that simple.
It's people who aren't paying attention to WTF they're doing that cause the danger, not cars or bikes or pedestrians. The rules of the road (including the rules for cyclists and pedestrians) include tons of redundancy so one party not doing what it should almost never causes accidents.
Take for example a pedestrian and a car turning right arrive at an intersection. The pedestrian has a walk signal and the car wants to make a right on red. Both those actions are triggered by the same condition, no cross traffic. In a naive simulation they'd hit each other. In the real world they see each other and one yields to the other in a manner that depends on the situation.
I walk through a "highly walkable" city to/from work every day. As someone who used to have to drive a delivery vehicle I try not to be an idiot pedestrian, when I cross on a don't cross signal I time it with the lights, I don't cross when someone might want to race through the intersection just before the light change, etc.
The behavior I see from other pedestrians and often cyclists is just moronic (and drivers too but there's so much traffic they rarely have opportunity to do stupid things). I don't expect people to wait for the ok to cross every single time but people should at least make sure their actions don't directly conflict with other traffic (like the difference between a car taking a right on red and straight up running a red). Presumably many of these same people who don't pay more than minimal attention to what they're doing when they're on foot or two wheels will continue to not pay attention to what they're doing when they're driving a car (hopefully they at least take their headphones out).
Making a city walkable is just a politically correct way of saying they're gonna make it harder for idiots to meet at high speed.
> If a driver doesn't have time to slow down and stop for a pedestrian, they are going too fast. It's that simple.
Take your circular logic and shove it up a bodily orifice where it doesn't easily or comfortably fit. If I wanted to get hit by a truck at walking speed all I have to do it time my commute to coincide with when the sun will be on the horizon and cross a particular street when all the lights are red but just before all the right turn arrows turn green. After about a week or two doing that I'd probably get hit.
Every two party accident has at least two parties that could have done something different that would have prevented the accident. Accidents are fairly diverse in their circumstances. Just assigning blame to one party by default is an exercise in bad policy.
> Take your circular logic and shove it up a bodily orifice
> Oh screw off with your edge case
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> Take for example a pedestrian and a car turning right arrive at an intersection. The pedestrian has a walk signal and the car wants to make a right on red. Both those actions are triggered by the same condition, no cross traffic. In a naive simulation they'd hit each other. In the real world they see each other and one yields to the other in a manner that depends on the situation
To be clear, the pedestrian has the right of way in this situation, the car should always yield.
In practice, cars often don’t respect it (happens to me daily). Sometimes because the driver is just rude or ignorant, which is a much harder problem to solve, but often because they simply didn’t see the pedestrian because the driver is looking left while they turn right. Ironically, they’re doing this for their own safety as a driver, because they don’t want to get hit from the left side.
Yes but also screw off the deliberate ignoring of the difference in risk and culpability. Its always the pedestrian that dies; its always the driver with the mechanical advantage to put their vehicle where it needs to be quickly.
>Yes but also screw off the deliberate ignoring of the difference in risk and culpability.
The expectation that big traffic is by default responsible when it crushes small stuff is completely opposite of every other case where different classes of traffic mix (unless the accident is an obvious edge case).
If a semi backs into the guy spotting it the question is why the spotter was there. If heavy equipment hits a service truck the question is why the service truck was in a place to get hit. If a tank hits a humvee the humvee driver is the first person to get yelled at. Even drunk recreational boaters are expected to steer clear of ships.
I'm not saying the bigger class of traffic should be in the right by default but the smaller class of traffic is almost without exception (i.e. I can't think of any exception) the class of traffic that has better visibility as to what's going on in a given situation and can more easily yield.
>Its always the pedestrian that dies
Physics doesn't know right and wrong.
>its always the driver with the mechanical advantage to put their vehicle where it needs to be quickly.
Yes and no. A car can go faster and swerve out of a lane faster. A pedestrian can stop much faster and signal its intentions to others much more obviously (hard to convey body language from within a car and pedestrians can't count on people to use blinkers)
Edit: I'm really interested in why this is down-voted. There's nothing that should be controversial in this comment.
I think there is problematic behavior on all sides. However, the problematic behavior of a driver results in a death due to the ton of steel they're driving at 30 mph. While pedestrians do bear responsibility for their own lives, they aren't going to kill a driver if they make a mistake. Pedestrians should be prioritized above cars, and bicycles above cars as well, if we want safe communities and a cleaner atmosphere. This does mean drivers will have to wait and move more slowly, but frankly driving is already too cheap. That's why everyone drives everywhere. We have to do more to discourage driving and encourage safer, non-polluting transport. If not, increased vehicle miles travelled, like uber/lyft and future self driving taxis, will only worsen the already car-clogged infrastructure.
There also quite a few drivers that consider speed limit + 10 to be the minimum speed guaranteed by the constitution,
and not the maxiumum speed when conditions are perfect.
Why should drivers get the right of way and implicit use of all of the road? Why not people? Cars should be second class citizens to people on the roads, unless they are specifically highways.
Running on a sidewalk is terribly unpleasant, and has its own dangers. Sidewalks tend to be uneven, among other tripping hazards. And there is limited reaction time to anticipate motorists who speed out of driveways, bowling past the sidewalk but braking before they enter the street.
>"Drivers are also to blame but there would be even fewer if pedestrians were held to some standards of road safety."
So a car that weighs 3 tons, is made of metal and moves at 25 - 35 miles and hour and human who weight less than 200 pounds and travels at 3 MPH should be held to the same standard of safety? How many fatalities do you have in your suburb where drivers are killed by walkers?
Let's turn this around: you're expecting your neighbors to give up their public space, safety, and environment because you're not willing to accept the inconveniences of more socially-aware means of transportation.
I for one would love to live in your area. I'm tired of it taking five minutes to grab a coffee from the coffee shop across the street from me because I have to walk several hundred feet to the nearest pedestrian crossing and wait for an entire light cycle to be able to safely cross a four lane street that is entirely out of scale for the business district I live in. Just so people don't have to use their legs or god forbid public transit to get around.
It's about time pedestrians reclaim what they've lost to auto-monoculture.
While this may all be true, we're talking about people being killed. Courtesy isn't what its about. Until ordinary people begin to 'walk defensively', drivers are going to have to be careful.
> If there is not a cross walk directly outside the shop they are leaving, they just cross the road whenever they feel like it.
I don't want to be too glib, but when your gut reaction is to blame human beings for using their human legs to move around in space (instead of the cars that prevent them from doing this), then it might be time to consider whether the culture has been perverted beyond a reasonable standard.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0GA901oGe4