The Big Apple and Its City-Wide Campaign Against Car Crashes

The City of New York is easily among the most sought after cities in the world. Many people from all over are more than willing to give up what they have elsewhere in order to be in the Big Apple.

But living in the city also has its price. Because there is a lot of demand for it, it is now among the most expensive cities to live in not only in the United States but also in the world. Aside from that, being in NYC also has its own set of risks. One of such risks is being involved in any form of car crashes. Such events can lead to high repair costs for the car, especially when their result in the need for car machine repair and services such as car glass repair Victoria. More importantly, such crashes have the potential to be fatal. 

True enough, 299 traffic-related deaths were reported by the end of 2013. This prompted the city’s mayor to look for ways to make his city a lot safer for all its residents and visitors. Specifically, Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a long-term program that he called Vision Zero. This program generally aims to reduce the number of traffic-related deaths and injuries in NYC to zero by 2024. 

How does this program achieve its quite ambitious goal? Four major steps are identified: (1) talking to and effectively educating the general public, (2) enforcement of existing traffic laws and other relevant legislation, (3) making streets safer through design overhaul, and (4) legislating new policies that can be of help in eradicating crashes and other similar incidents. 

Among the four, the first one is perhaps the one that is the most challenging to implement. More than half of all crashes on record by the time of the program’s inception are caused by errors in the driver’s judgment. Around a third of that is caused errors on the part of the pedestrian. 

But the city government is not intimidated by this. As part of the program, authorities are in contact with several schools and other learning facilities in order to spread awareness and to encourage the participation of everyone in making sure that the streets of New York are free from all sorts of accidents. 

The aggressive strategies employed by the program might have worked because the number of those involved in car crashes have been steadily decreasing since the program started in 2013. In 2018, the city has recorded its lowest number of traffic-related fatalities since 1910 with only 200 deaths. 

However, Marco Conner, the deputy director of an advocacy group called Transportation, said that that number still represent too many casualties. While he does not lose sight of what the program has achieved thus far, he bemoans the observation that the city is still just taking ‘baby steps’ in response to the issue. He stressed that there is still a serious need to do a lot more. 

It’s a good thing that Mayor de Blasio promises to exert more effort to further build on the program’s successes. Specifically, he is looking at enforcing more laws require drivers to yield or give way to pedestrians. If all goes according to plan, then a safer NYC will be within reach by the end of 2019.