Troubled by the hundreds of people killed annually in New York City traffic incidents, Mayor Bill de Blasio last year announced a plan to drastically reduce traffic fatalities citywide.
Dubbing the plan “Vision Zero,” the mayor’s administration set forth a laundry list of initiatives – installing 250 speed bumps, improving street lighting at 1,000 intersections, tightening enforcement of traffic laws, and dozens more – in an effort to make New York’s streets safer for pedestrians and motorists alike.
After the Vision Zero plan was announced, WNYC set out to systematically track and record New York’s traffic fatalities. WNYC built an interactive website where it tracked every traffic fatality across the five boroughs during 2014, a total of 269 deaths. The tracker lets users examine the circumstances that precipitated each death and learn more about the lives lost on the city’s streets.
This year, the New York World has partnered with WNYC to continue the effort. We will be tracking fatalities using emails the police department sends to news organizations whenever someone is killed in traffic. We will also rely on public data released by the NYPD to avoid discrepancies, and we’ll round out the list with information culled from news reports and social media posts. The data will be updated regularly.
The interactive will continue to reside on the WNYC site. To search 2015 traffic fatalities, click here.
Despite our best efforts, we may overlook some incidents. If you know of incidents that are missing from the tracker or have additional information about any of the incidents listed, please email us at nyworld@thenewyorkworld.com.