A pedestrian waits to cross Lexington Avenue in Manhattan in February 2024.
Photographer: Charly Triballe/AFP via Getty Images
New York City Just Had Its Safest-Ever Year For Pedestrians. What Went Right?
Ten years after New York became the first US city to adopt the Vision Zero traffic safety model, transportation authorities and activists see progress and frustrations.
Not long ago, a pedestrian was hit and killed by a car just about every day in New York City. Even as traffic fatalities declined overall in the US in the early 1990s, New Yorkers were being killed by cars at nearly double the national rate. In 1990, the death toll exceeded 700, and half of those victims were on foot. “What is wrong with New York?” the New York Times asked in 1993.
But today it’s a different story. Notwithstanding the Covid-19 pause of 2020, the largest city in the US ended 2023 with its safest year for pedestrians since record-keeping began 114 years ago, with 101 deaths for a metropolis of 8.5 million people.