The NYPD is launching a unit focused solely on traffic enforcement at hot spots where many cyclists and pedestrians have been mowed down by cars and trucks, The Post has learned.
Mayor Bill de Blasio will unveil the 100-officer unit at Thursday’s “State of the City” speech — after months of taking heat over the first year-to-year increase in traffic fatalities since the 2014 launch of his so-called “Vision Zero” initiative to end deaths on city streets.
“While we’ve made tremendous progress over the past six years with Vision Zero, there is still undoubtedly more work to do to make our streets safer,” de Blasio said in a statement. “We are doubling down on our enforcement efforts to ensure that more New Yorkers arrive home safely every day.”
Until last year, the Vision Zero program had been a statistical success, with five consecutive years of declining traffic fatalities. But 2019 marked the most deadly year for cyclists in two decades.
The NYPD’s “Vision Zero Unit,” set for launch in the spring, will rely on collision data to identify locations with “disproportionate” rates of “pedestrians and bicyclists struck by vehicles, especially collisions involving large trucks,” City Hall said.
Enforcement will focus on speeding, failure to yield and drunk driving, as well as clearing bus lanes and bus stops.
The new unit will be housed within the 3,000-cop NYPD transportation bureau, whose members are currently dispatched to do traffic safety enforcement on a case-by-case, day-by-day basis.
The NYPD’s enforcement practices have faced scrutiny amid the spike in deaths. Last week, police officials revealed that cyclists received more moving violations than truck drivers last year — even though 43 people were killed by trucks in 2019 while just one was fatally hit by a cyclist.
Bike advocates said they hope the new unit focuses its energy on motor vehicles — and trucks in particular — rather than scofflaw cyclists and pedestrians.
“We’re starting to see the city understand that trucks are disproportionately dangerous,” said Transportation Alternatives spokesman Joe Cutrufo.
“I hope that this unit focuses its efforts on what’s truly causing dangerous conditions on our streets, and not on cyclists and jaywalkers.”