The city of New York released a traffic study today on pedestrian safety, showing exactly when, where, and why pedestrian accidents are likely to occur in the city.
From today’s NYTimes:
This is the Rosetta Stone for safety on the streets of New York,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner.
The findings could also become a tool for the Bloomberg administration to extend its re-engineering of the city’s street grid, which it says saves lives. Those changes, which have angered many drivers, include barring vehicles from major avenues and replacing hundreds of parking spaces with bicycle lanes and walkways.
Among the findings, garnered from data of more than 7,000 crashes between 2002 and 2006 that resulted in the death or serious injury of pedestrians, was that inattention was the cause of most of the accidents. That and that in 80 percent of the cases involving death or serious injury, the driver was male.
The study also examined what times of day, which streets, and what months were more dangerous for pedestrians. The city is planning to make a series of changes based on the report.
