More Pedestrians and Cyclists are Dying in N.Y.C. Drivers are Often to Blame. – The New York Times

Susan Moses was biking home from getting a manicure when a Lyft driver slammed into her a few blocks from her Brooklyn apartment. She died in a hospital a week later.

A grandmother and a nurse, she was one of 28 cyclists killed last year on the streets of New York City.

Ms. Moses, 63, was hit on a busy street with no bike lane. The driver did not face criminal charges, even though a judge found that he was responsible for the crash and revoked his license.

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A year later, her family is still struggling to understand her sudden death.

“She was so loving and giving, and she did not deserve to go this way,” her daughter Lila Moses-Lieberman said.

It is a grief that hundreds of families across the city feel deeply. At least 221 people died in traffic crashes last year — five years after Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to eliminate all traffic deaths. The mayor’s high-profile safety plan, known as Vision Zero, had been showing signs of having an impact.

Then the death toll rose abruptly last year. This year is already off to a deadly start.

Part of fixing the problem is understanding why people died.

In an effort to identify patterns, The New York Times analyzed city crash data on both injuries and deaths.

The examination showed that much of the problem comes down to careless driving, including driver inattention, failing to yield and speeding.

Despite a perception that pedestrians are darting into traffic and cyclists are flouting the rules, the police cited errors by pedestrians and cyclists in less than 5 percent of fatal crashes last year. There were also three fatal crashes that did not involve a vehicle, in which a pedestrian and cyclist collided.

The victims represent a cross section of New Yorkers — young and old; women and men; wealthy and working class. A 10-year-old boy was killed in Brooklyn; a beloved pediatrician died in Manhattan.

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Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat in his second term, is under growing pressure to address the crisis.

Many American cities are struggling to bring down traffic deaths, but some European cities like Oslo and Helsinki have made remarkable progress on Vision Zero, a Swedish approach that views all deaths as preventable.

After Los Angeles and Chicago embraced Vision Zero, traffic deaths dropped slightly last year, though pedestrian deaths remained stubbornly high.

Here is what we know about why people are dying on New York’s streets:

When someone is killed in a traffic crash, a police officer files a report and assigns a contributing factor for the crash based on preliminary information.

Four contributing factors were listed on those reports in about half of crashes that killed pedestrians and cyclists last year: driver inattention or distraction, failure to yield, disregarding traffic signals or signs and unsafe speed. Five crashes involved alcohol, and five resulted from vehicles backing up unsafely.

Mr. de Blasio said that in addition to redesigning streets and expanding speed cameras, the city must find a way to educate drivers so they feel a sense of “maximum vigilance” every time they get behind the wheel.

“We need to jolt people into understanding just how much we have to change — all of us,” the mayor said in an interview.

In February, Mr. de Blasio signed a new law targeting reckless drivers by allowing the city to seize a vehicle if someone collects too many tickets for speeding or running a red light.

Some drivers feel under attack. Joseph Borelli, a Republican councilman from Staten Island who voted against the bill, said that speed restrictions in his district were too onerous.

“I don’t believe you should lose your personal property because you’ve gotten a traffic ticket,” he said.

A driver who was not drunk and stayed at the scene of a crash does not usually face serious consequences. But drivers often behave in ways that increase the likelihood that a crash will happen.

Only four drivers were arrested in 28 cyclist deaths last year — about 14 percent of those crashes, according to the police. Eight other drivers received a summons for violations including speeding, unsafely opening a door into traffic and unsafe passing.

Sgt. Jessica McRorie, a police spokeswoman, said the police investigate every deadly crash and are committed to Vision Zero.

The police decided not to charge Mohamed Marey, the driver who hit Ms. Moses in January 2019. Officers appeared to blame Ms. Moses because she was moving across the road to turn left and was not wearing a helmet, her daughter said.

But in a rare rebuke, a judge for the Department of Motor Vehicles revoked Mr. Marey’s license in October. After reviewing footage from Mr. Marey’s dashboard camera, the judge said she disagreed with the police determination that bicyclist error caused the crash.

Instead, the judge blamed Mr. Marey for trying to pass Ms. Moses by crossing the double yellow line in the middle of Kings Highway when he hit her.

“Part of being safe on the road is always keeping your distance and being aware,” Ms. Moses’ daughter said. “That’s what really upset me — if you don’t know what a pedestrian or cyclist is going to do, slow down.”

Mr. Marey, 34, who was licensed by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, could not be reached to comment on the crash. He had driven for Uber, but was removed from the app in October 2018 after passengers complained about him, according to an Uber spokesman.

Lyft did not kick him off the app after Ms. Moses’ death. But the company permanently deactivated him after the judge’s decision, a Lyft spokeswoman said.

Brooklyn is the most dangerous place to ride a bike. The borough had the most cyclist deaths by far — 17 of 28 fatalities, or about 60 percent, though it has a third of the city’s population.

Across the city, pedestrian and cyclist deaths were clustered in neighborhoods like Chelsea in Manhattan and Sunset Park in Brooklyn along corridors that are known to be dangerous.

Six people were killed along Third Avenue in Brooklyn, a notoriously deadly road that does not have a bike lane south of the Gowanus neighborhood.

The city’s transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, said the industrial area was gentrifying, leading to a deadly mix of trucks and residents who like to walk or bike. She reduced the speed limit on Third Avenue, but did not select the road as part of her push to add protected bike lanes this year.

Pedestrians made up the greatest share of the city’s 221 traffic deaths — there were 124 last year, along with 44 people who died in motor vehicles and 25 motorcyclists who were killed.

In Manhattan, there were a series of pedestrian deaths in Chelsea and Harlem.

A 67-year-old woman was killed by a pick up truck in Chelsea last summer as she crossed the street only two blocks away from where a 76-year-old man was killed by a truck backing into a parking spot a few months earlier.

Until last year, traffic deaths had dropped under Mr. de Blasio. They fell to 204 deaths in 2018, from nearly 300 in 2013, the year before Mr. de Blasio took office.

But traffic injuries are actually up by about 20 percent since Mr. de Blasio became mayor.

More than 60,000 people were injured in traffic crashes in 2019, up from about 50,000 in 2014, according to city crash data.

Traffic injuries get less attention, but getting hit by a car can leave someone with serious injuries and expensive medical bills. It can become difficult to earn a living, to care for children or to use the subway and buses.

Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a street safety group in New York, was hit by an Uber vehicle in 2018 when he was living in San Francisco.

“It happens to way too many New Yorkers, and it doesn’t have to,” he said.

City officials say that the police crash data is based on initial reports and they prefer to use state data to track injuries, but even that data shows that injuries are up.

More than 70,000 people were injured in 2017, according to the state data for the most recent year that it is available. That is up from about 65,500 people in 2014.

City officials said one factor behind the recent uptick in injuries could be how the police collect data — the department switched from a paper to electronic system in the summer of 2016, and the electronic system makes it easier to submit reports, so more were filed.

Trucks and S.U.V.s are a major part of the problem, city officials say.

They are heavier and more likely to kill or seriously injure someone. The popularity of Amazon, Fresh Direct and other delivery services has increased truck traffic. With lower gas prices and a booming economy, New Yorkers are gravitating toward S.U.V.s.

S.U.V.s. and station wagons were involved in 59 of 151 crashes that killed pedestrians and cyclists last year, or nearly 40 percent, according to the police data. Other types of large vehicles, including box trucks and dump trucks, were involved in another 40 crashes.

A pickup truck struck and killed a 3-year-old boy, Bertin Dejesus, in Harlem in December as his mother pushed him in a stroller.

Brad Lander, a Democratic councilman from Brooklyn who sponsored the reckless driving bill, said that changing driver behavior had to be part of the solution.

“You’re the one driving the two- or three-ton machine,” he said, “and so your obligation to be careful is many times more than the pedestrian.”

Susan Beachy contributed research.