The following appeared in a New York Times editorial:
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday released his plan to eliminate traffic deaths in New York City. Every preventable death is unacceptable, he said, and New Yorkers deserve safer streets. He's right on both counts.
There are more than 60 proposals in the mayor's Vision Zero plan, including many ideas that neighborhood groups and safety advocates have spent years pleading for. The no-brainers — more driver and pedestrian education and better data-gathering — should be done right away.
The Transportation Department can get moving on better lighting and street markings and redesigning intersections to make turns and crossings safer. Police can increase ticketing drivers who speed and fail to yield to pedestrians.
The de Blasio administration is right to focus on getting drivers to behave. It notes that 70 percent of pedestrian fatalities from 2008 to 2012 involved "dangerous driver choices."
The plan includes several common-sense legislative and technological solutions that could make a difference, but whose prospects are uncertain. De Blasio will need the state Legislature's permission to lower the citywide speed limit to 25 mph, to install more cameras to catch speeders and red-light jumpers and to stiffen penalties for bad driving. The chairman of the Assembly's Transportation Committee, David Gantt, a Rochester Democrat, has blocked expansion of traffic cameras, citing privacy concerns. He has shown himself susceptible to lobbying on this issue and the city should fight hard in Albany. It's ridiculous this is subject to whims in far-off Rochester and Albany.
De Blasio's focus is sensible, given that traffic crashes cause about 250 deaths and 4,000 serious injuries in the city each year. Good for him for attacking an unacceptable status quo.