Driver Violations
The NYC Police Department issued drivers moving violations in only 154 pedestrian or cyclist fatalities during 1994-97, or 16 percent of the 947 cases in our database. In 88 other cases drivers received summonses for non-moving violations only, such as no insurance, defective equipment, or unregistered vehicle. (The total of 242 cases with summonses omits two dozen cases in which no violation code was entered on the DMV computer form despite an arrest [i.e., a summons] noted in the police report.) The driver left the scene (hit-and-run) in an estimated 150 cases, or 16 percent of the 947 records.

Almost all moving violations in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities were for driving without a valid license (absent, suspended, or revoked), leaving the scene, speeding, or driving while intoxicated. Only seven drivers were summonsed for violating traffic laws that specifically protect pedestrians, such as disregarding right-of-way (see note to next table), even though our analysis of the reports indicates that many fatalities arise directly from such violations.

This pattern suggests that many police officers either don "t know or don "t take seriously traffic laws intended to protect pedestrians from automobiles. While the figures here may understate summonsing frequency--some police accident reports indicate that tickets were issued which were not entered in the DMV computer abstract " the ability of drivers to kill without even receiving a ticket is an especially stark aspect of car violence in New York City.

Most non-moving violations issued in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities were for invalid or missing vehicle inspections, insurance or registration, or defective equipment such as broken lights, wipers, etc.

Killer Vehicles
Summary: Over two-thirds (68 percent) of vehicles that killed pedestrians and cyclists in 1994-97 were "cars, " a category encompassing sedans, station wagons, sport-utility vehicles, taxis and police cruisers; 26 percent were trucks, ranging from vans and pickups to tractor-trailers; 5 percent were buses; 1 percent were motorcycles. Despite causing the most fatalities, cars were the least lethal vehicle per mile traveled. As the next table shows, cars killed the fewest pedestrians and cyclists per mile driven on city streets, followed by trucks and then buses. Perhaps surprisingly, light trucks killed 24 percent more persons per mile than heavy trucks; it isn "t known whether this reflects differences in driving or in routes. Trucks combined killed over twice as frequently (per mile driven) as cars.

Buses killed 31/2 times as often per mile as heavy trucks, and over 5 times as often as all vehicles combined. While an elevated fatality rate for buses is not completely unexpected--their routes and curbside maneuvering put them in proximity to pedestrians and cyclists--the rate found here suggest a more entrenched problem of driver training and monitoring, and perhaps issues of vehicle design as well. Cars. Because state DMV codes all passenger vehicles, regardless of size and weight, as cars (separating these into useless sub-categories of two- and four-door sedans), fatalities by cars could not be broken down between sedans and sport-utility vehicles. Medallion taxicabs appear to have killed 17 pedestrians and one cyclist during 1994-97,8 while police cruisers killed three pedestrians over the four years. Per mile driven, and relative to all cars as a group, fatality rates appear to be below average for taxis and above average for police cruisers.9

Trucks. Truck fatalities are coded more precisely by DMV, enabling the subdivision of data in the next table. Small or mid-size trucks killed 167 persons, and tractor-trailers killed 56 persons, including eight bicyclists. Dump trucks, a category that includes garbage haulers, cement-mixers, asphalt trucks and similar heavy vehicles, killed 33 people, or eight per year, all pedestrians. Included in that figure are an estimated 26 pedestrians killed by garbage trucks--one-third by NYC Sanitation trucks, the remaining two-thirds by private carters. Park, in 1996; a Brooklyn woman killed in a crash with a 13-year-old who was trick-cycling on a sidewalk in Bay Ridge, in 1994; and a New Jersey man killed on an Upper West Side sidewalk in 1997 (see p. 33). The other two fatalities occurred on Manhattan streets. 8 Of the 18 fatalities coded as taxicabs by state DMV, 15 were in Manhattan and the other 3 in or near the airports, suggesting that all 18 were medallion cabs rather than livery vehicles. We infer that DMV coded the latter as ordinary sedans.

Medallion taxis log around 750 million miles a year, almost all on streets, implying a pedestrian-cyclist fatality rate of 0.6 per 100 million miles, vs. the overall car rate of 0.8. Police cruisers log around 35 million miles annually on streets, for a fatality rate of around 2 per 100 million miles.

The overall pedestrian fatality for garbage trucks, 24 per 100 million miles, was more than 8 times as great as that for all heavy trucks (see previous table). Tow trucks killed five pedestrians during 1994-97; absent data on miles traveled, we cannot determine whether this figure confirms or belies their reputation as road terrors.

Buses. As noted, buses caused 53 non-passenger fatalities--47 pedestrians and 6 cyclists--in New York City during 1994-97, an average of 13 per year. The divergence in fatality rates among bus operators is striking. Transit Authority drivers were almost three times as safe as private bus drivers per mile driven, although their fatality rate was still 50 percent greater than that of the average New York City truck driver. Two large private operators, Academy Bus Tours and Green Bus Lines, killed approximately 27 people per 100 million miles driven on city streets--a horrific rate, rivaling that of private garbage haulers. Together the two firms killed 10 pedestrians and cyclists during 1994-97.10

Many bus-pedestrian fatalities involved the side or rear of the bus striking the pedestrian while the bus was turning, as occurred in at least five out of 14 fatalities in 1997. This suggests that bus designs may make it difficult if not impossible for drivers to see pedestrians in certain positions.11 Sidewalk Killings

Five percent of pedestrian and cyclist deaths occurred on sidewalks or other off-road area where it is illegal to drive an automobile (percent calculated from 45 off-road fatalities among the 947 records, excluding 35 cases for which on- or off-road location could not be determined). Extrapolated to all 1,020 people killed by automobiles in New York City over the four-year period, an estimated 50 pedestrians, or 12-13 per year, were killed by automobiles on sidewalks and other non-street locations during 1994-97.

Sidewalk victims of automobiles were more likely to be very young or very old than was the overall population of people killed by cars and trucks. Among the 43 sidewalk victims whose ages we obtained were four children under age 10; two would have been expected based on the overall age distribution of victims. One of these was an infant girl crushed by a car that vaulted the curb on Broadway near 96th Street on Manhattan "s Upper West Side, in January 1996, apparently as the driver rushed toward a parking space. Nine people age 80 or over were killed by automobiles on sidewalks, versus six expected based on the age distribution of car victims, and just 1-2 based on population shares.

Save for one pedestrian killed when a vehicle mounted the sidewalk after the driver suffered cardiac arrest, every sidewalk fatality in our 11 Of the other nine fatalities by buses in 1997, two involved failure to exercise caution in a high-pedestrian area (driver partly culpable), one occurred when a pedestrian ran into the vehicle "s path (not culpable), one was caused when the driver suffered a seizure and lost control, and five could not be analyzed as to cause due to incomplete information database was caused by some misfeasance on the part of the driver--typically speeding, inattention, or an on-road crash that propelled a vehicle onto the sidewalk. Somewhat surprisingly, none occurred as a vehicle exited a parking lot or garage. Only three involved drivers age 70 or older; the driver was over 80 in each case. In one instance in the Bronx in 1996, an 83-year-old man took the wheel of a car whose engine was running, and careened into a neighbor "s driveway, killing him; this eerily recapitulated the 1992 Washington Square Park "massacre " in which a 73-year-old woman took the wheel from her daughter and accelerated into the park, killing five people and injuring two dozen others.

Sidewalk fatalities are particularly unsettling, as they violate pedestrian space most starkly. Yet the 50 sidewalk fatalities during 1994-97 together drew less media attention than the death of one 68-year-old New Jersey man after he was hit by a bicycle ridden on a sidewalk on the Upper West Side, in November 1997. Following that incident, the New York Times churned out four articles, a column, and an editorial, "Assault by Bicycle, " while a New York Post columnist thundered against "an assassin on two wheels " and climaxed the media frenzy by insisting, "The bicycle menace must be stopped " by any means necessary.

Though the Post moralized that "Had [the cyclist] veered a car onto the pavement, they "d pick him up, " in fact just six of the 50 drivers who killed pedestrians on sidewalks were issued moving violations--none for driving on the sidewalk.

Two weeks after the New Jersey man was killed by bicycle on the West Side, another 68-year-old was killed on a sidewalk in East Meadow in Nassau County. In that instance, however, the victim was a bicyclist who was killed when a car careened over the curb--an event that elicited only a 5-sentence story in one area paper, Newsday.

Bicyclists Killed by Automobile
An estimated 72 bicycle-riders were killed by automobile in New York City during 1994-97. The Right of Way database includes reports for 67 cases. Their profile diverges from that for pedestrians in several respects.

Over a third--36 percent--of cyclist fatalities were in Manhattan (vs. 26 percent of pedestrian fatalities), unsurprisingly in light of the borough "s estimated 60 percent share of NYC cyclist trips. Brooklyn followed closely with 34 percent of cyclist fatalities (vs. 31 percent of pedestrians), a fatality share twice the borough "s 15-20 percent share of city bike trips.13 (See table, p. 16, for borough breakdown of cyclist fatalities.)

Cyclists killed by automobile were disproportionately young and male. Only four of the 67 in the database were girls or women,14 the remainder were boys or men. A dozen cyclist victims, or 18 percent, were under 20 (eleven were age 10-19), whereas only 10 percent of pedestrian victims were under 20. While a substantial number of cyclists killed by automobile, eight, were in their fifties, only two, or 3 percent, were age 60 or over, vs. the 43 percent of pedestrian victims who were 60 or older. The paucity of older and female cycling fatalities undoubtedly reflects cycling demographics; these in turn reflect inhospitable cycling conditions that require cyclists to be nimble, daring and aggressive.

Compared to pedestrians, cyclists were more often victimized by trucks, as the next table shows. Vans killed 12 cyclists during the 13 Borough shares of cyclist miles are unknown. Weekday cyclist trips were estimated in Transportation Alternatives, Bicycle Blueprint, 1993, table, "Daily Bicycle Trips in New York City, " p. 158, row (7), to be Manhattan 63 percent, Brooklyn 15 percent. Weekend trip shares presumably are lower in Manhattan, higher in Brooklyn. Only 21 percent of cyclist fatalities in database were on weekends, vs. an expected share of 29 percent if fatalities were distributed equally by day of week.

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