Recent NYC crash statistics show pedestrian deaths haven’t decreased and cyclists deaths have doubled between April and September despite de Blasio’s Vision Zero Initatives and Bloomberg’s previous implementation of bike lanes and safer street designs

135 people died in traffic accident in New York between the beginning of April and the end of September this year compared to 134 for the same period of 2013. Despite all the Vision Zero efforts and the new street designs implemented by the Bloomberg administration, the streets of New York City remains dangerous for pedestrians, bicyclists and vehicle passengers.

The graphs presented in this post compare data from NYPD crash statistics on a 3 months basis with the blue bars representing traffic deaths in 2013 and the red bars, traffic deaths 2014.

While comparing 2014 to 2013 data, the graph below shows that most of the decline in traffic deaths happened at the end of the winter. During the good season, a slight increase of fatalities in the spring was compensated by a slight decrease during the summer.

The main focus of the Vision Zero campaign is to reduce pedestrian and cyclist deaths but recent statistics show that after a sizable decline at the end of the winter, the number of pedestrian fatalities in NYC stayed stable during the spring and summer of 2014 compared to the spring and summer of 2013.

Even more concerning are cyclists fatalities which have jumped from 1 to 8 between July and September 2014 compared to the same period of 2013. As bicycling gained in popularity in New York City, the previous Bloomberg administration developed a bigger bike network and safer street designs that came to completion this year but neither these recent improvements nor the Vision Zero Initiatives prevented the number of bicycle fatalities to rise by 217% between April and September 2014 compared to the same period of 2013.

Vehicle passenger deaths were also on the rise this summer compared to the summer of 2013, after a slight decline in the spring and a huge decline at the end of the winter.

Only motorists fatalities declined this summer going from 36 in 2013 to 21 in 2014 while they increased in the spring and were stable at the end of the winter.

It is too early to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the Zero Vision Program launched at the beginning of the year by the de Blasio administration but so far data indicate that motorists are the main beneficiaries of the recently implemented traffic calming measures while pedestrian and bicyclists especially continue to be the victims of traffic violence in New York City.