Tech:NYC<\/a> President & CEO Julie Samuels said the report is \u201cincredibly optimistic\u201d because the city already has effective ways to drive down traffic deaths and serious injuries at its disposal.<\/p>\n\u201cIt shows is that the kinds of interventions the city\u2019s seeing work,\u201d Samuels said. \u201cIt gives us the tools to actually address,the current concern in communities that need the most help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unequal implementation of Vision Zero, based on neighborhood analysis<\/p>\n
But the report found that those interventions are far less common in swaths of the five boroughs experiencing the greatest volume of serious crashes.\u00a0 Eight of the city\u2019s 10 neighborhoods with the highest crash rates are low-income communities of color.<\/p>\n
For instance, the report found, in the two neighborhoods with the highest crash rates, Brooklyn\u2019s Canarsie and Flatlands areas, there are 84 serious crashes per 10,ooo residents \u2014 double the citywide average of 47. In sections of the city with the second-highest serious crash rates, according to the report, including the Bronx\u2019s Melrose, Mott Haven, Longwood, and Hunts Point areas, there were 69.9 such crashes per 10,000 residents.<\/p>\n
The Queens neighborhoods of Queens Village, Bellerose, and Rosedale come fourth at 68 serious crashes per 10,000 residents, while Brooklyn\u2019s East Flatbush section is fifth with 67 per 10,000, and the borough\u2019s East New York and Cypress Hills areas are sixth at 66.6 per 10,000.<\/p>\n
Moreover, in some of those areas, the report found that serious crash rates have trended in the wrong direction \u2014 sharply increasing since a nationwide spike in reckless driving that came during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe continued inequities in terms of where the rates of crashes causing injuries or deaths are the highest, and the fact that the city has lost some ground in some areas since the pandemic unleashed a new wave of reckless driving, not just in New York, but nationally, [show] there is some very important work left to do,\u201d Dvorkin said.<\/p>\n
At the same time, according to the report, many of those same corners of the city have received fewer safety enhancements.\n<\/p>\n
For example, the report found that neighborhood slow zones are more prevalent in centralized areas, including Downtown Brooklyn with 17.3 miles, Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side with 11.4 miles, and Astoria, Queens with 7.29 miles.<\/p>\n
However, further out enclaves, such as East New York and Brownsville in Brooklyn, have just 3.7 and 3.6 miles respectively, and much of central and eastern Queens has zero.\n<\/p>\n
The report also found a significant disparity in the application of major street-safety redesigns. That includes corridor coverage, which the report\u2019s authors defined as full-block or multi-block sections of roads that have recieved street redesign features, such as protected bike lanes, pedestrian islands, curb extensions, and raised crosswalks.<\/p>\n
It points to Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn, together having 29 miles of corridor coverage and 61 intersection projects; those efforts have helped drive a 29% drop in serious crashes over the past five years.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Brooklyn neighborhoods of East and central Flatbush have far thinner coverage, with just 18 and 13 miles of corridor coverage, respectively, and 40 miles of intersection between the two of them, the report found. The same can be said for vast swaths of Queens, including Ozone Park, where just 10 intersections have gotten treatments; and St. Albans and Whitestone, which have had none.<\/p>\n
Dvorkin said the disparity likely arises from projects making much faster progress in areas where they face the least pushback and where the strongest organizing efforts bolster them.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFor too long, many of the city\u2019s street safety investments have flowed to neighborhoods where these projects were the easiest to implement,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not a question of how easy those projects are to implement technically, it\u2019s a question of where they\u2019re easiest to implement in terms of political will, where there\u2019s been effective advocacy, where local elected officials have championed these interventions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recommendations for Mamdani administration<\/p>\n
To address this, the report includes three recommendations for the Mamdani administration.\n<\/p>\n
The first is to orient the next iteration of the Streets Master Plan, which sets legal benchmarks for the mileage of new protected bus and bike lanes the city must add each year, around making those additions specifically in areas that have above-average crash rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollow the data and be unrelenting and ensure that lifesaving interventions are made everywhere and that success should be measured by reductions in deaths and injuries, not just by counting miles of infrastructure,\u201d Dvorkin said, while acknowledging that DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn has said he wants the next Streets Plan to focus on \u201coutcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Second, the report recommends phasing out \u201copt-in\u201d street safety initiatives, in which community members must apply for them through DOT, for features like neighborhood slow zones. Instead, it says the city should automatically qualify neighborhoods with above-average crash rates for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means City Hall taking a more aggressive leadership role in advocating for policies that work, not just implementing them where they are requested,\u201d Dvorkin said.\n<\/p>\n
However, Barone said DOT has halted the acceptance of opt-in requests due to the imbalance they caused.\n<\/p>\n
Third, would be establishing a \u201cStreet Safety Rapid Response Team,\u201d tasked with identifying areas with elevated serious crashes and tailoring responses to them. Dvorkin said it would be composed of staffers with some \u201ccredible lived experience\u201d in the communities where they would be sent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat Rapid Response Team would go out into those communities working closely with local elected officials, showing up at community board meetings, showing up at local civic associations, and making the case with data,\u201d Dvorkin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s low-income neighborhoods of color are disproportionately experiencing the greatest danger from traffic crashes, while receiving…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":871179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,208257,52471,316209,354480,354481,221265,354482,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,141713,354483,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,60152],"class_list":["post-871178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-center-for-an-urban-future","tag-dot","tag-dot-commissioner-mike-flynn","tag-eli-dvorkin","tag-leading-pedestrian-intervals","tag-mayor-zohran-mamdani","tag-neighborhood-slow-zones","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-traffic-deaths","tag-traffic-injuries","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vision-zero"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116759909618556031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"scene](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-15-at-6.31.41-PM.jpg\" "\\"FIRST")
The scene of a deadly traffic crash on Ocean Parkway in Midwood, Brooklyn, in March 2025.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n