The NYPD appears to be over its jaywalking blitz near the site of three deadly car crashes, and is refocusing efforts on corralling drivers who speed and fail to yield to pedestrians who are crossing with the light. This week, they put a radar gun connected to a speed monitor at 96th street and Broadway to show drivers how fast they were traveling, as shown in the photo above.
In addition, officers have been ticketing drivers who fail to yield or are distracted while driving.
“Inspector Nancy Barry, who leads the 24th Precinct, said at a CB7 meeting last Thursday that on a single day last week, officers issued 79 summons for drivers for distracted driving or failing to yield to pedestrians, but only 31 to pedestrians for not following signals,” the Columbia Spectator reported earlier this month.
NYPD stats show that the precinct has given 82 tickets for failure to yield to a pedestrian in January, versus 15 in December.
“We’ve been focusing more on education than enforcement for pedestrians,” 24th precinct Captain James Dennedy told the Daily News this week.
Dennedy also said that the 24th precinct intends to train more officers to use radar guns — currently six are trained, but the precinct wants to train four more.
“I’m trying to get more people radar qualified,” he said. “Only one [officer] on every squad is trained and they have to respond to 911 calls, too.”
Although officers have been increasing enforcement of traffic violations, they haven’t increased the number of speeding tickets they’ve issued by much: “During the 28-day period ending Feb. 16, there were 16 speeding summons issued in the precinct, compared to 12 during the same time period last year.”
Robert Josman, who sent the photo above and two others registering speeds of 17 mph and 22 mph, thinks that street safety activists are overestimating the speeding problem in the area. He watched the cameras at rush hour on Tuesday and didn’t see people speeding.
“Much to the dismay of several of our local self appointed anti car activists czars, and a few members of bike lobbing pressure groups, not one car was going over 30 mph. As many cars approached people said ‘oh look he is speeding for sure’ and took out cameras, only to be visibly disappointed when the radar camera clearly showed they were not speeding.”
Josman added, however, that he is making “no excuses for drivers that do speed and operate theirs with disregard to others, especially pedestrians.”
The DOT has also been studying the intersection of 97th street and West End Avenue, where 9-year-old Cooper Stock was killed in January. And Borough President Gale Brewer has now added that intersection to a list of dangerous streets that need to be reviewed. We wrote about the other four intersections on that list here.
Read all our coverage of pedestrian safety here.
This part was left out of my comments:
There is a camera that is not visible unless you look for it, it reads your speed, before you can see it and sends it to the board in the pictures. It them flashes what your speed is.
Yesterday afternoon and again in the evening I went down to take a look at it.
Since you don’t see the apparatus before it reflects your speed, it can not be said
that drivers see it and slow down.
FYI it should read ….and operate their cars
Sorry about the typo
“He watched the cameras at rush hour on Tuesday and didn’t see people speeding.”
What a surprise. Traffic is too heavy. It’s rush hour! Now do it again at midnight.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I took a look at it on the way home from work last night at about 12:40 am or so and saw the same result.
I have been by it today twice, at about 8am and again just a few minutes ago.
Although most cars are going between 22 and 28mph, 28mph is the highest I have seen the equipment reflect so far, I’m actually surprised that there is not a massive number of cars showing as speeding. It is good to be able to see actual hard evidence one way or another, rather than suppositions of people. As I live very near by it I will be checking each time I go by.
Every day I walk across the 96th and Broadway intersection. Almost every time, there are one or more cars running the red light, usually headed west on 96th. NYPD is always there. Seems they might want to ticket these people as running red lights is at least as hazardous as speed.
Robert sure isn’t winning any friends by being so disparaging of his neighbors. Why does everything need to be so polarizing?
I mean, three people were killed in that area last month, street safety activists clearly have every reason to be concerned about it. Sheesh.
Also, noting that speeding is less frequent in rush hour isn’t particularly compelling. People are hit and killed outside of rush hour. NYPD will have more comprehensive data than your two hour observation. Let’s hope they make it public.
As it stands, the evidence that we have already, from speeding cameras elsewhere in the city, demonstrate that speeding IS a real problem.
While all 3 incidents were tragic, 2 out of the 3 were the pedestrians fault. The man hit at 96 & B’way was J walking from in front of Time Warner to the island at the north of the intersection, while not having the light, on a foggy rainy night.
The woman on 96, crossed 96 midblock between WEA & Bway against the light.
The car that hit the child and his father was at fault, as they had the right of way.
I’m in no way trying to be disparaging and/or polarizing I would just like for the actual facts of events be out there. That should apply even if the evidence/facts don’t support your point of view.
Caveat: Samantha Lee’s body landed mid-block, but that doesn’t mean she was standing mid-block when the ambulance struck her. Although NYPD tends to be very quick to draw victim-blaming conclusions when pedestrians are injured or killed, there is video, I heard somewhere, that showed her in the crosswalk before she was hit. As we mentally wrap the story up and draw conclusions, for me it’s helpful to remember everything we don’t know. We know she was 26, graduated from med school in June, lived right there on 96th, and was an anaesthesiology resident at Columbia University Med Center. We don’t know: how fast was either driver going, how could neither driver see her, did either driver try to slow down and avoid hitting her, were they texting or on the phone, was she texting or on the phone, does either driver have a history of speeding or running red lights, etc. None of this has been reported, we don’t know these details. We think we know, but we don’t – and we will never hear the story from her side.
So the implications being:
1) street design and light timing are not important factors in influencing the decisions of the tens-of-thousands of people who use that intersection on a daily basis;
2) That questionable decision making on the part of pedestrians is such a heinous thing that it can result in death on the part of the pedestrians, and that death cannot/should not trigger any self-reflection on the part of the community as to what can be done in terms of education, in terms of engineering, and in terms of enforcement, to mitigate the likelihood that similar incidents will occur in the future.
Bad engineering leads to bad decision making. Anybody who actually attended DOT’s presentation on West 96th street and Bway can testify to how poorly designed the previous arrangement was.
Say what you will about the safe streets folks, they are at least agitating for improvements *where they can be made*.
I shudder to think what would happen if everybody just threw up their hands, as you seem inclined to do. But that’s just me.
The cars from the boonies have not been coming into the City for the last few weeks due to snow conditions and the cars in the City are largely stuck in snowbanks. How is it that people dont slow down when they are turning corners. Why didn’t the cars that hit the people allegedly crossing on red lights see them? Are they mad?
Unbelievably ironically, the WSJ reporter who covered Mayor de Blasio’s traffic safety announcements on Tuesday, was hit by a turning school bus at 95th and Amsterdam on Wednesday. Yikes!!!! I believe he was shaken up but otherwise okay.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/02/wall_street_jou_3.php
Ironic too, DiBlasio being a normal hurried citizen:
http://politicker.com/2014/02/bill-de-blasio-refuses-to-take-speedgate-questions-despite-vow/
http://nypost.com/2014/02/21/de-blasio-caught-jaywalking/
Is the following bust really what busybody activists want for NYC?:
http://boingboing.net/2014/02/21/austin-cops-violently-crack-do.html
The placement of the speed monitor is in a terrible location for detecting speeders, a much better location would have been on 96th between WEA and the Henry Hudson.
And isn’t there a red light camera at 96th and WEA? Why isn’t it operational?
Cars may well not register as speeding when they go through the red light on 96th and Broadway, especially heading West to the highway. Yesterday, the walk light was on and 3 cars went through the crosswalk on 96th, without seeming to notice either the red light they were running or the pedestrians in the crosswalk. “Anti-car activist czars” are not concerned just with speeding but failure to follow other laws.
Cars go through the red light at north east corner of 96th & Bway even when 2 traffic officers standing together were visible at north side of island. Why aren’t they doing their job properly at 2 different positions at this dangerous intersection? On President’s Day, 2 traffic officers were standing on the northwest corner–certainly NOT directing traffic…but telling me that there wasn’t much traffic.Absurd
“…officers issued 79 summons for drivers for distracted driving or failing to yield to pedestrians, but only 31 to pedestrians for not following signals..”
THE COPS STILL DO NOT GET THE POINT! ONE UNADDRESSED PROBLEM IS THE SIGNALS!
AS I WROTE TO BREWER, THE SIGNALS THEMSELVES ARE NOT SET SO THAT SLOW WALKERS–SENIORS, MOTHERS/OTHERS WITH CARRIAGES PLUS SMALL KIDS IN TOW, THE DISABLED–CAN CROSS SAFELY–ESPECIALLY AT BUSY HOURS. THE GREEN WALK SIGNAL NEEDS TO BE LONGER AND THE ORANGE CAUTION SIGNAL NEEDS TO BE UPPED TO 20 SECONDS, AT MINIMUM, WITH A BEEPER THAT SPEEDS UP BEEPS DURING THE FINAL 6-7 SECONDS.
WHY COPS WOULD RATHER GIVE TICKETS THAN BE PART OF WORKABLE SOLUTIONS IS BEYOND ME–EXCEPT IT ISN’T!
K.S.FINE PHD