Bill de Blasio’s “Vision Zero” initiative — the plan to reduce traffic fatalities to zero within ten years — has thus far been little more than a hopeful idea. This week, however, the mayor rolled out the specifics of how he intends to pull it off.
Those include everything from indicators inside taxis that tell you when they’re speeding to traffic cameras, a bigger highway police unit, and new, high-performance radar guns for cops. From de Blasio’s release:
The City will use every tool at its disposal to improve the safety of our streets. With this action plan, the City is making a bold new commitment to improve street safety in every neighborhood and in every borough – with expanded enforcement against dangerous moving violations like speeding and failing to yield to pedestrians, new street designs and configurations to improve safety, broad public outreach and communications, and a sweeping legislative agenda to increase penalties for dangerous drivers and give New York City control over the safety of our own streets.
The mayor will also institute a “Vision Zero task force” and regularly publish data about car crashes. According to Right of Way‘s Vision Zero Clock, we’re currently close, but not quite on course to meet de Blasio’s no-traffic-deaths goal by 2024.
