New York City’s safest year for pedestrians due to concerted effort of street redesign, speed restrictions

In 2023, New York City recorded its safest year for pedestrians since record-keeping began in 1910. In a city of 8.5 million people, 101 deaths were due to vehicles striking pedestrians, less than one-third the number of the early 1990s.

New York City ramped up its efforts to make walking and biking safer in 2014 when the city reduced its speed limit to 25 miles per hour. It also launched a speed camera enforcement program and started campaigns to educate drivers and pedestrians.

In recent years, the city has redesigned dangerous intersections—1,500 such projects last year alone—using various strategies. These include:

• Implemented leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs) that lengthen red light intervals for a few seconds so pedestrians can get a head start
• Constructed raised crosswalks that slow cars and improve visibility
• Created more daylighting that removes parked cars near crosswalks to improve visibility
• Installed turn bumps, strips of high-visibility black-and-yellow plastic that prompt drivers to wait to turn instead of jutting out in front of pedestrians crossing the street

Smaller-scale safety fixes such as these don’t require outreach to local community boards or comprehensive studies. Other measures such as adding bike lanes or bus-only lanes that remove parking spaces are more contentious.

The city has more to do to make streets safer, though. Total traffic fatalities remain high, with drivers dying in crashes at greater rates than in past years. Experts attribute higher traffic fatalities to a spike in dangerous speeding and bigger vehicles.

In addition, fatal crashes involving cyclists are at a 23-year high. The rising number of electric bikes has been cited as a factor in cycle accidents mostly in vehicle collisions on roadways that lack bike lanes. The city has extended bike infrastructure in recent years, but just 3% of its streets currently have protected bike lanes.