By Gretchen Berger
On Thursday, May 25, the New York City Council passed a “home rule message,” enabling “Sammy’s Law,” which has been stalled in the state legislature since its introduction in 2020, to finally pass. The Council vote was a resounding 35 to 9. If passed by the state legislature, Sammy’s Law would give New York City the ability to control its own speed limits, which are now controlled by the state. Sponsors of the bill are UWS legislators, Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, former Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, retired, and Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal.
The home rule message came from the Committee on State and Federal Legislation, chaired by City Councilmember Sean Abreu of District 7, covering part of the Upper West Side. A home rule message is the means by which a local municipality can affect state or federal law, giving it more control over various local issues. This one sends a clear message to our legislators in Albany to pass Sammy’s Law ASAP.
“Sammy Cohen Eckstein should still be with us today,” said Councilmember Abreu. “So should countless other individuals who lost their lives to vehicles traveling at unsafe speeds. This is an important — and long overdue — step to making our streets safer for New Yorkers going about their daily lives.”
What is Sammy’s Law?
Sammy’s Law is named after Samuel Cohen Eckstein, a 12-year-old boy who was tragically hit and killed in 2013 by a reckless driver while he was chasing a soccer ball into the street just steps from his home in Prospect Park West, Brooklyn. It was introduced back in December 2020, to repeal the current requirement that speed limits in NYC cannot be lower than 25 mph, or lower than 15 mph in school zones.
Stats
This bill was also in response to an uptick in traffic fatalities, which accelerated during the Covid pandemic. Last year, there were 255 traffic deaths, a 7% decline from 2021, which had been the deadliest year on record for the city. Notably, since Sammy’s death in 2013, there have been more than 2,222 people, including 96 children, killed in traffic incidents in the city.
According to the New York State Safe Streets Coalition, lowering speed limits to less than 25 mph has been shown to save lives. Researchers found that the crash rate decreases by 4%-6% for every 1 mph reduction in speed, and the fatality rate decreases by 17%. In NYC’s Neighborhood Slow Zones, which lowered the speed limit to 20 mph in concentrated areas, there was a 14% reduction in injurious crashes and a 31% reduction in injuries for both drivers and passengers. Lowering speed limits would have an impact particularly in densely populated areas, and especially near schools, senior centers, and dangerous intersections.
Passage of the Law
According to the safe streets group, Transportation Alternatives, the bill has support from both Gov. Kathy Hochul and the NYS Senate, along with Mayor Eric Adams, but still needs the approval of the NYS Assembly to be included in this year’s budget. To help its passage, a number of city officials — including Ydanis Rodriguez the transportation commissioner, along with 100 traffic safety advocates — recently “schlepped” up to Albany to meet with Assemblymember William Magnarelli (D-Syracuse), chairman of the Transportation Committee, and other key state legislators to lobby for Sammy’s Law.
The onus now shifts back to Albany to pass it before the rapidly approaching end of its session on June 8th. Assemblymember Rosenthal says that she is “hopeful” that it will now finally pass.
Meanwhile, stay tuned and look both ways before crossing!
Common sense bill…NYC is like no other place in the state, so locally elected officials should have full control over setting and enforcing speed limits.
Thank you Sen Hoylman for your support..
If this article doesn’t reflect exactly what Is wrong in NYC, nothing will. Instead of enforcing existing laws, they add another law. What good are any of these speed limits when the city doesn’t enforce any laws anyway and everyone wantonly ignores them 24/7 365 days a year? What this law will do is further enlarge NYC’s bureaucracy and give it more power. How many additional people will have to be hired for this? It’s simple, enforce existing laws and reduce the size of government. No wonder people are leaving for states with less taxes and better quality of life. There is one law that NYC does need however: they should pass a law requiring the government to enforce existing laws.
Enforcement in many cases will be automatic, by camera. And regardless, when you lower the speed limit, people may still exceed it but at a lower speed.
The city already has a 15mph limit for school zones, a 25mph limit otherwise if they choose to, and a 20mph limit in neighborhood safe zones. You want to save lives, then enforce these existing limits. I mean what are we talking about here??? If the city simply wanted a LOWER SPEED LIMIT ability, why not simply ask the state legislature to add a lower limit to existing laws? I’d bet that if you look into this more closely, you’ll see more than meets the eye.
This is not enforcement; it is only revenue generation for the City. Speed cameras delay sending the message to the speeder, who — weeks after the infraction — receives a piece of mail saying “send money”. That piece of mail is experienced as a nuisance and is too far removed in time from the speeding to tell the speeder “Don’t do what you were just doing”.
For traffic (and other) laws to be effective at discouraging the prohibited behavior, there must be on-the-spot enforcement to send that message. Just mailing a bill weeks later does nothing but make money for the City. The person who was speeding weeks ago just sees the bill as yet another cost of living in New York.
Why pass new laws if the existing ones are not enforced? They will make no more difference than the existing laws did.
I respectfully disagree. Once you know that you’re likely to get these fines, you may pay more attention to your speed in general. And as far as I’m concerned, the best way to raise revenue is to get it from people who disobey laws – otherwise everyone has to pay.
Yes definitely we should have better enforcement of existing laws on the books (don’t get me started on the cars with illegally blacked out windows all over the UWS…), but I don’t think setting speed limits is going to require any additional bureaucracy
While I understand the reason for the legislation, I would not categorize Transportation Alternatives as a “safe streets” entity.
It is the bicycles lobbying group and its focus is bicylists.
For example, TransAlt is not focused on pedestrian safety from bicyclists.
That may not be their main focus, but they certainly do promote riding safely.
Mark,
IMO TransAlt does not promote that bicyclists be mindful of pedestrian safety.,,.
When I signed the petition for Sammy’s law, I got the following response from Daniel O’Donnell:
“ With regards to Sammy’s Law (A7266/S2422), I was pleased to see Sammy’s Law included in the Governor’s Executive Proposal, but disappointed when it was not a part of the enacted budget we passed. I remain committed to the bill’s essence and, after careful review, would be inclined to support it if it were to come up for a vote.”
So it wasn’t a part of the budget. Please consider what other priorities our politicians decided to include in the budget.
Jen,
The legislature should pass specific legislation (which includes funding),
This is traditionally how it worked.
It is not a good practice to throw stuff into the budget as a way to get legislation enacted. Unfortunately this increasingly how government works.
Thank you to our Upper West Side hero Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal.
People say what difference is another law going to make it we don’t enforce the laws we already have? Well I’ll tell you. It shows that we’re civilized people and that we support and care for the families and loved ones of those to have died or been injured under the speeding wheels of so many thoughtless, uncaring and irresponsible drivers.
Sammy’s Law is a gift that Assembly Member Rosenthal and others would like to give to future generations. Let’s hope they finally succeed.
We can do other things like installing speed bumps at every intersection.
I agree. Speed bumps work. They save lives. Those should be installed especially on major busy streets where there is a possibility of speeding. Has anyone suggested this to the NYS Assembly?
Why wouldn’t they pass this law?!