‘Wreckless Spending’: Crash Claims Involving NYC Municipal Vehicles Cost Taxpayers Over $500 Million

An NYPD police car in New York in a file photo. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

New York City taxpayers have paid more than $500 million dollars in civil settlements related to crashes involving city vehicles over the past decade.

The majority of crash claims were made against the New York City Police Department, according to a Feb. 12 report from the office of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.

Payments to people injured in incidents involving municipal vehicles jumped between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, despite the shrinking number of claims against the city.

The statistics suggest that auto crashes were more severe and many resulted in death or life-altering injuries to the victims.

“Fatalities and serious injuries resulting from traffic crashes are persistently high in New York City,” said the report.

“Deadly crashes surged in 2020 and remain at elevated levels relative to pre-pandemic years.”

The rise in settlements with the city coincided with an increase in traffic fatalities nationwide during the pandemic.

Car Crashes Increase Nationwide Since Pandemic

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in 2020 that American drivers had been engaged in riskier behavior, with an 18.4 percent jump in traffic fatalities to more than 20,000.

 Meanwhile, the first half of 2021 saw the largest six-month increase in crashes in the United States on record.

NYC recorded a spike in traffic fatalities over the past two years, with a 20 percent increase from 2019, the year before the pandemic.

In 2022, 253 people were killed in vehicle crashes after reaching a peak of 273 in 2021.

The nationwide trend of increasing traffic fatalities has seen deaths among pedestrians and cyclists reach new highs over the past three years, said the city report.

“The epidemic of vehicle crashes is a serious public safety concern to New Yorkers,” Lander said.

 “When a New Yorker is hit and harmed by a squad car or a garbage truck, it’s New York City taxpayers who have to settle the bill.”

NYC Employees Costing Millions

New York City has the nation’s largest municipal fleet of vehicles, with nearly 30,000 in inventory and 85,000 operators.

Claims stemming from over 4,000 crashes involving the municipal fleet have cost the city $653.8 million over the past decade.

 The NYPD, which accounts for about one-third of the city’s fleet, is responsible for $246.8 million in settlements, or about 38 percent of the total claims.

The amount to settle road accident claims adds another cost outside the NYPD’s regular budget, for which taxpayers continue to foot the bill.

The city also paid $121.4 million to settle police misconduct claims in 2022—the most in at least five years, which is separate from the payments sent out to civilian crash victims.

The NYPD is also on track to exceed its overtime budget by $369 million this year, according to the Independent Budget Office.

Improvements for Road Safety

New York City mayor and the city comptroller have said that improvements to road safety are in the pipeline.

“By accelerating adoption of fleet safety technologies, reducing the size and number of vehicles in the city fleet, and holding city drivers and agencies accountable, we can save lives—and many of millions of dollars too,” Lander said.

The city comptroller’s report recommended that the size of the municipal fleet be reduced and called for the use of smaller vehicles to reduce the severity of the incidents.

City agencies are also being called to do more to hold their drivers accountable for their driving to prevent wreckless crashes.

Agencies are being called to hold drivers within their departments accountable via penalties escalating from remedial driver education to temporary or permanent suspension of city vehicle driving privileges.

NYC is currently testing a pilot program that outfits 50 government vehicles with speed limiters using geolocation, to adjust the allowable speed, based on posted limits, Bloomberg reported.

The technology prevents a driver using these vehicles from accelerating past the speed cap.

However, NYPD and other emergency vehicles are excluded from the program.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams has called the pilot program a success so far, with the test vehicles traveling more than 130,000 miles and staying within the speed limit parameters more than 99 percent of the time.

“The results of the intelligent speed assistance pilot show that we can leverage technology to reduce unsafe driving behaviors,” Adams said last month.

Challenge to NYC Initiative for Eliminating Road Fatalities By 2024

Unfortunately for the mayor, Lauder’s report said that the deadly trend in city vehicle accidents could reverse the gains in safety under the city’s “Vision Zero” initiative—a program aimed at eliminating all traffic deaths and serious injuries on NYC streets by 2024.

The program increased criminal charges against traffic violators, lowered the city speed limit from 30 to 25 miles per hour, created slow zones, increased enforcement, increased use of speed cameras, invested more in vehicle and pedestrian traffic signals, and stricter enforcement of taxi drivers.

Government officials, while on duty, are still exempt from city traffic laws and cannot be charged with a crime.