Pedestrians are a menace on city streets and responsible for their own deaths nearly half the time, according to the union that represents MTA bus drivers.
Transport Workers Union Local 100 spokesman Pete Donahue said pedestrians are their own worst enemy, killing themselves by mindlessly wandering in front of buses and cars.
He said the city’s own “Vision Zero” data shows that pedestrians are at fault in 47 percent of the cases where they die.
“It’s a fact that people are constantly darting or sauntering through intersections against the signal, crossing midblock far from the relative safety of a crosswalk, texting with their heads down. We all do it,” Donahue wrote in a blog he posted on the TWU Web site Monday.
“Only tourists from the Midwest, or from countries with a more obedient populace, seem to wait patiently on the curb.”
The MTA workers’ union has been a vocal opponent of the city’s new Right of Way misdemeanor law and last year settled a lawsuit where the city agreed to qualify the law to make it harder for cops to arrest drivers on the spot.
Transportation-safety advocates said the the union’s message is ham-fisted and insensitive.
“This is a strange message to send just after a year when reckless and speeding drivers killed 16 New Yorkers who were on sidewalks and in buildings, doing things like eating ice cream, trick-or-treating or holiday shopping with their loved ones,” said Brian Zumhagen, spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, an organization that supports de Blasio’s Vision Zero plan.
City officials also said the TWU’s post is out of line.
““Public servants serve the people,” said City Hall spokesman Wiley Norvell.
“The TWU’s leadership should spend less time concocting ways to blame the children and grandparents who are the victims of these horrible crashes, and more time working to protect the people it’s supposed to serve.”
According to NYPD statistics, pedestrians represented 58 percent of all traffic deaths last year and dangerous driving contributed to 69 percent of pedestrian fatalities.