A bill under consideration by the City Council yesterday would require the NYPD to post data about traffic crashes and moving violations online in a timely manner, broken down by precinct. At a rally before the hearing, Council Member Jessica Lappin, the bill's co-sponsor, said, "People are dying on our streets. Everyone knows anecdotally where the dangerous intersections are, but it’s nearly impossible toget the hard data. I want to change that. We are working to ensure that people have the information they need to advocate for their communities." If passed, the NYPD would be required to regularly publicize:
- The number and type of moving violations issued
- The number of traffic crashes and vehicles involved
- The number of traffic fatalities
- The number of traffic fatalities involving drunk drivers.
During yesterday's hearing, the NYPD's Chief of Transportation, James Tuller, urged the Council to vote down the bill: "By requiring the Police Department to devote extensive resources to the collection, review, and publication of this data, valuable and diminishing police resources would be diverted from the actual work we already do in analyzing traffic accidents... Further, the information sought by the bill does not provide meaningful information which can illuminate the reasons for a vehicle accident... This information is only valuable to those with the training, knowledge and experience to understand its context and interpret it correctly.
For example, the issuance of a certain number of summonses of a certain type may be interesting as a curiosity, but it will never by itself be meaningful unless one knows all of the relevant factors influencing that number, such as deployment levels, targeted enforcement, precinct conditions, special operations, traffic volume, operational initiatives, local construction, and environmental conditions. That is the role of the police commander."
Last year, 256 New Yorkers lost their lives and approximately 70,000 were injured in traffic-related crashes, according to the DOT and state DMV data. And the Health Department says that being struck by a car while walking is still the leading cause of injury-related death for children under 14 in NYC. Organizations like the AARP and Transportation Alternatives say the greater transparency would help city planners and communities make streets safer. "How can anyone make decisions that affect life and death in 2010 based on information from 2008?”asked Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives. "This is publicly-gathered data, and lives will be saved by it being made publicly accessible."
