How about some good news? The Department of Transportation put out a press release yesterday proclaiming that the first three months of 2026 were among the three safest first-three-month periods since records started being kept at the dawn of the Automobile Age.
Only 2015 and 2018 had fewer deaths in the first three months of a year.
In all, there were 42 fatalities from car crashes in New York City between Jan. 1 and March 31.
If 42 sounds like a lot — it is. But it’s also a lot fewer than in the days before Vision Zero, when 70 people died in crashes in the first three months of 2013. And the numbers were even higher before then.
In other words, Vision Zero isn’t a silver bullet, but it is working. Slowly, but it is working.
Fatalities of people on bicycles are way up since before Vision Zero, but there’s a sad sense to that: There are so many more people riding bikes now, as DOT has long documented.
We at Streetsblog don’t focus on fatalities because in a city of 8.5 million people and hundreds of millions of car miles traveled every year, 200 to 300 deaths is not as statistically significant as injuries and serious injuries. We noticed that the DOT press release didn’t say anything about injuries, so we asked, expecting the worst.
Fortunately, serious injuries are also down in the Vision Zero era. Between Jan. 1 and March 15 of 2019, for example, 609 people were seriously injured — that’s more than eight people per day. But of the same period last year and this year, that number dropped to 461 people, which is two fewer people seriously injured every single day.
No one should rest until those numbers are zero, but the trend line is at least going in the right direction. That should embolden the agency in its seemingly ceaseless battle against the anti-bike culture warriors and the Know Nothings and the Car Brained.
In other news:
– Insurance Journal had a deep dive into Gov. Hochul’s car premium ploy and it came to the same head-scratching conclusion as Streetsblog and state lawmakers. We urge all elected officials to read it. – Oh for heaven’s sake, Nassau County! (Newsday) – Oonee has sued the city over its decision to go with a different company over the local firm. (Oonee press release) – Remember that time Hell Gate said the DOT had killed Dimes Square? Never mind. – That deliverista hub near City Hall, which we’ve been covering a lot, really is being built. (Tribeca Citizen) – Several outlets covered the hit-and-run killing of a woman in Brooklyn (Gothamist, Streetsblog), but only Patch had the unconfirmed detail that she was killed by an ambulance driver. – Finally, one of the greatest soccer players in the world had a madcap micromobility day in the city:
