NEW YORK—Thousands of cyclists and pedestrians are injured every year on the streets of New York City. About one-tenth of those accidents are investigated.
A new bill, the Crash Investigation Reform Act, announced by council members Wednesday would create a traffic safety task force to improve the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) traffic enforcement and crash investigation protocols.
The task force would also reassess the city’s current safety enforcement efforts, including looking at the different agencies involved, their budgets, and propose ways to reduce traffic-related injuries.
There are currently 19 NYPD officers citywide assigned to investigate “fatal and serious physical injury crashes.” Council members backing the bill want to boost that number to five officers per precinct and have those officers’ names listed online.
Officers attending a crash who are not members of the Accident Investigation Squad can’t issue a summons for a traffic violation unless they personally witnessed the incident.
Councilman Brad Lander said current NYPD crash investigations aren’t thorough enough.
“As we learned at the City Council’s February hearing, thousands of crashes with serious injuries to pedestrians and cyclists happen with no real investigations, and no charges,” Lander said in a release.
During the council hearing in February, Lander asked NYPD’s Transportation Bureau Deputy Chief John Cassidy and Assistant Commissioner Susan Petito about the number of investigations carried out after serious crashes. The council was told that there had been 241 deaths from traffic-related accidents, 346 investigations, but more than 3,000 serious injuries in 2011.
The proposed legislation would also require the NYPD to follow state law regarding crash investigations—which mandates investigation into accidents that result in serious physical injury as well as death. Officers would be required to report whether a sobriety test was administered, if a summons was issued and what type. The reports would have to be kept online for five years.
Approximately 72,000 pedestrians, drivers, passengers, and cyclists have been injured in car crashes since 2005, according to Councilman James Vacca, chair of the council’s transportation committee.
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