A new billboard in East New York shows a pedestrian thrown into the air after jumping from the front of a car while his coffee is sprayed everywhere. “Acceleration is ruining lives,” it said. “Fun.”
The aim of the campaign is to scare off speeding drivers in this neighborhood of Brooklyn, where 35 people have died in road accidents since 2017.
This is part of New York’s latest effort to combat insane speeding, which has turned neighborhood streets into racetracks and led to the highest traffic deaths in eight years.
“It’s getting out of hand – cars are moving at high speeds every day,” said William Candelario, 64, whose car repair shop in the neighborhood was hit by a van last year.
Image of a billboard from the new city safety campaign. Credit … New York Department of Transportation
On Monday, the city’s commissioner for transport, Idanis Rodriguez, will present a new safety campaign in three dozen neighborhoods such as East New York, where casualties and injuries are among the highest in the city.
Target areas include Bushwick and Canary Islands in Brooklyn, Jamaica in Queens, Haarlem and Washington Heights in Manhattan and Hunts Point in the South Bronx. City officials said the neighborhoods were selected based on increased disaster figures.
“We have seen too many people die on our streets, and disasters are disproportionately concentrated in some communities in New York,” Mr Rodriguez said.
The campaign will include 18 high-profile billboards on roads and highways with major accidents, as well as posters at the back of public buses and gas station pumps. City workers will be sent out to hand out postcards, brochures and flyers.
In New York, road deaths rose to 64 this year by April 26, from 61 in the same period last year, largely due to a jump in deaths among drivers and passengers, which nearly doubled to 23 this year. 13 last year.
Pedestrian deaths – although still the largest share of trafficking deaths – have dropped to 30 this year from 39 last year.
Two cyclists were killed, as last year, as well as four motorcyclists, two more than the previous year, amid a boom in the pandemic of cycling and electric bicycles, scooters and skateboards.
Just over a quarter of the 64 deaths this year were on highways – including three deaths at Henry Hudson Parkway and Grand Central Parkway – while the rest were on local streets across the city.
Road deaths have turned some of the hard-earned gains on the city’s eight-year transport policy, called Vision Zero, which once aimed to eliminate all trafficking deaths and has become a national model. According to the policy, the city won state approval to reduce the speed limit to 25 mph from 30 mph on most streets, built an extensive network of nearly 2,000 automated speed cameras and redesigned many streets to make them safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
Mayor Eric Adams, who took office in January, has vowed to expand Vision Zero’s efforts. He recently pledged $ 904 million for the city’s street plan for the next five years, which will include redesigning dangerous intersections and adding more protected bike lanes and pedestrian areas. He said police officers would also step up enforcement of traffic rules.
In addition, city authorities are lobbying state legislators for local control of city streets, which would give them powers to set speed limits, extend red light cameras and extend speed camera hours in school areas to nights and weekends. when the cameras are off and the speed has increased. “The city must be able to control its own destiny so that we can quickly make changes in response to the current crisis,” Mr Rodriguez said.
The new $ 4 million advertising and media campaign aims to boost these other traffic safety efforts by trying to change driver behavior.
“This is a crisis and we need to use every tool we can to make our streets safer,” said Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that has helped the city tackle traffic violence.
There was an epidemic of speeding and reckless driving across the country during the pandemic in part, as some drivers were encouraged by the more empty roads and poor police enforcement, according to transport experts. There is also an increase in car owners in New York, as many people avoid public transport.
Even before the pandemic, a growing number of cities sought to reduce speed limits and design safer roads for fears that higher speeds and larger vehicles such as SUVs would lead to more serious injuries and deaths.
“The risk of death increases exponentially with increasing speed,” said Alex Engel, a spokesman for the National Association of Public Transport Employees. “This is especially important as vehicles on the streets have become larger.”
The eight-week nationwide campaign will also include TV commercials showing a pedestrian or cyclist thrown back into a fun cadence. And it will target drivers on social media based on their online searches and will work in certain print publications.
Eric Gera, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, said that while media campaigns are important, they don’t have the same immediate effect on slowing drivers as, say, expanding the use of automated speed cameras. “I think it takes a long time to change the culture of driving in the same way it took a long time to change the culture of smoking,” he said.
Some transport advocates have called on cities to focus more on redeveloping dangerous streets, saying it is not enough to enter a neighborhood and tell drivers not to speed when the streets are essentially built to drive traffic as much as possible. -fast.
“This is a vicious circle,” said Leah Shaham, executive director of Vision Zero Network, a non-profit campaign. “Why is there speeding here?” That’s because of the environment we’ve built. “
In East New York, the billboard will be seen by drivers passing a particularly dangerous intersection on Atlantic Avenue and Pennsylvania, where 167 people – including 154 passengers in motor vehicles – were injured in crashes from 2015 to 2019, according to the latest available data. .
Laura Remiggio, 35, a make-up artist and stylist who said she was nearly hit by a car while visiting a client in East New York, said drivers were driving too fast and cut her off on the sidewalk. “People have to be there first and cars are waiting – and they’re not waiting,” she said. “I’m running because the cars don’t stop.”
But 67-year-old Ian Johnson, a New Jersey driver, said some pedestrians should also pay more attention. He said he often had to alert people who don’t watch while crossing or on their phones “when they almost get in my car.”
Mr Candelario, whose car repair shop is a few steps from the billboard, said he hoped the billboard would finally attract the attention of drivers.
“It opens your eyes and makes you think,” he said. “You have to be firm. You have to put a little fear into it. “
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