With murder and other crimes still much higher than before 2020, Mayor Eric Adams ended 2022 with a solid result: pedestrian deaths. The number of people killed while walking on the streets is back close to the pre-pandemic low.
Adams finished his freshman year with 118 pedestrian kills, lower than 2019’s tally of 124 and “only” 1.4 percent above the record three-year average between 2017 and 2019, which was 116.
Pedestrian deaths in 2022 were a fraction of the modern record of 377 from 1989, demonstrating all the progress New York has made for public safety during those decades.
Compare this result to the level of homicides, which at 433 homicides last year remains 43% above the 2017-2019 all-time high average of 302. Yes, that’s right, Adams reduced homicides by 11%, compared to 488 in 2021. But we are one long far from the pre-2020 normality.
Pedestrians can therefore consider themselves lucky: the roads are worse for everyone, but not so much for them. And that’s not true nationwide: While data isn’t yet available for 2022, 2021 was the worst year for pedestrians in four decades.
Why is New York doing so well here? Much of the increased safety comes from the road redesigns that the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations enacted; drivers simply don’t have as much room to accelerate and disconnect.
Adams continued these plans, restricting drivers on Manhattan’s 8th and 9th Avenues, once major expressways with six lanes each, to three and four lanes, respectively, creating more space for pedestrians and cyclists.
Adams Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez improved safety at 1,400 intersections, adding raised crosswalks (which slow down drivers) and traffic lights that favor pedestrians. Even though drivers complain that the roads feel like an obstacle course, that’s the point: Drivers can’t go fast in dense areas, and they shouldn’t.
And despite several misfires in Albany last year, lawmakers does allow New York to keep its speed cameras on 24/7, instead of just during school hours, a feat for the mayor.
So who is die in greater numbers, post-pandemic, on the roads?
Because the total number of road fatalities – including people in cars – is 18% higher than the three-year average through 2019. In 2022, 255 people died on the roads, up from an annual average of 217 before the pandemic.
They are not cyclists. Cyclists also did well last year, with “only” 17 victims, compared to the annual average of 21 in 2017-’19.
No, the people who die the most in road accidents are the same people who kill and die in gunfights and stab wounds: daredevils, in cars or other motor vehicles.
In 2022, 62 “motor vehicle occupants”, mostly drivers, died in crashes, 32% more than the three-year pre-pandemic average of 47.
Worse still, the total number of people driving “other motor vehicles” – 21, compared to, well, none, before the pandemic. This is the collection category for people who ride illegal mopeds, motorcycles without license plates, and illegally modified e-bikes to go as fast as cars or move without pedals.
Two good (or bad) examples arrived towards the end of 2022.
On December 30, an Audi driver on Brooklyn’s elevated Vanderbilt Avenue crashed into a concrete barrier on the train tracks below, killing himself. His car had a record 13 speeding tickets in four years.
Earlier that week, a man died in Queens when his car crashed at high speed into barriers in a JFK parking lot.
What is needed is more police and we are doing it some Following. Through November 2022, police made 556,000 arrests for travel offenses, up 17% from 2021. But that’s still 40% fewer than in 2019, when police made nearly 926,000 traffic arrests through November 2022. November.
Fewer police stops than in the pre-pandemic period explain why so many people are hiding their license plates. Speed cameras “reject” 4% of license plates now, up from less than 1% before 2020. People don’t mind a cop stopping them for their fake license plate.
Road casualties are a good microcosm of New York public safety.
Well pedestrians and cyclists. But even for them, progress has stalled, while New York had gotten used to making double-digit improvements every year, for decades. And unless Adams can get the police to engage even more with bad drivers, returning to 2019 levels, the total number of road fatalities will remain high and even pedestrians may not get away with, well, this year. .
Nicole Gelinas is managing editor of the City Journal at the Manhattan Institute.
