[B’ Spokes: Note that New York’s pedestrian fatality rate is ranked at #17 while Maryland is ranked #7 by FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System by NHTSA.) The one thing New York has that we don’t is: "The police department, too, has reclaimed traffic enforcement as a high priority" ]
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\nBy Justin Davidson, New York Magazine<\/p>\n
This should not be controversial: When the light turns green and you step off the curb and into a crosswalk, a car should not whip around the corner at the same time, causing your body to crumple and snap. If that does occur, it shouldn\u2019t be legal. And if it\u2019s illegal, it should be punished. And yet motor vehicles did hit 854 pedestrians all over the city last month, killing eight of them \u2014 a run of grief, violence, and horrific injuries that, statistically speaking, makes April a relatively peaceable month. And unless they were high or stoned, the vast majority of those drivers are back on the road. Menace a child with a baseball bat, and you will likely go to jail; kill that kid with an SUV and you\u2019ll pay a few-hundred-dollar fine. Manslaughter by motor vehicle is a perfectly legal crime.<\/p>\n
The de Blasio administration and its allies are pushing hard to change that state of affairs, but success will require more than just adjusting stoplights or redesigning intersections; it means transforming an entire culture. We have to recognize that crashes are preventable disasters rather than random events \u2014 not accidents at all, but the product of individual decisions. Reckless and distracted driving must become a new taboo.
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