Proposed reduction of speed limit for NYC

"It is pedestrians with their heads buried in their p.hones while they cross the street. "

DRIVERS with THEIR heads buried in their phones/GPS/texting/eating/applying makeup/doing everything but driving are a much worse hazard than a random pedestrian doing just about anything.

Matt I walk every day and I drive every day in manhattan.
First, it is impossible for me and anyone else to text while driving it manhattan.
Maybe occasionally check who texted me while stopped at a red light.

As a pedestrian I encounter one driver every 2 weeks who is inattentive to the crosswalk situation.

As a driver, every other traffic light there is a pedestrian causing an unsafe situation even to the most attentive drivers.
Most other international major cities on our level have barricades at sidewalks to curb pedestrian behavior.

Still Matt, you did not argue that reducing the speed is beneficial.

BTW I can promise a reduction from 30 to 20 will affect the amount of deliveries any business can make to their customers, which I also promise will raise product costs to city dwellers.
Oh, and the same amount of people will still be killed in traffic accidents.

people get hit by turning cars, which cant turn at particularly fast speeds.
this is confirmed by statistics.
speeding cars on straightaways are not the problem.
In fact, left-turning cars are the pedestrian killers.

If we want to save pedestrian lives, we need to look at our instersections.
reduction of the very reasonable 30 mph spd limit will not help.

I support enforcement of the spd limit, and all traffic laws, but to lower the spd limit will do nothing to save pedestrian lives, and it will paralyze the city.

Yikes is right.
My additional 2c is that non-messenger bicyclists are a big problem on non bike pathways. They are a hazard to pedestrians and because they are in the road, they show up in tight spaces that couldn't fit a car and wouldn't ever be risked by a pedestrian, and then they wonder why they aren't noticed and get hit.
Bike hit by an opening car door - that's the fault of the bicyclist who ought to know and be aware of the potential danger since the danger is in front of them and they themselves are hard to spot. Banning silly bicyclists should be a big priority.

Yes Gboro, Yikes touches on the largest problem, enforcement.
Bikes dont stay to the right and treat red lights as if they are pedestrians.
I think at least some small enforcement (see Alec Baldwin) will have some affect.

We dont enforce pedestrian behavior at all.
It's carte blanche which empowers a substantial amount of pedestrians to progressively behave worse.
THe texting when crossing a street leaves no room for adjusting to a perfect storm involving a distracted car driver, whether the distraction is from egregiously texting, putting on makeup, etc.,or a legitimate momentary blind spot.

The fact is, a driver is not texting in manahattan while making a turn. THe pedestrian in the street who is texting and no longer making eye contact with the driver or the situation is the change in equation.

We should not be enforcing pedestrian behavior, whatever that really means, particularly in context of your concern about use of smartphones.

Jaywalking is a crime. I consider it my given right here, but I don't enter ongoing traffic with just a hand extended toward oncoming traffic and no obvious regard visually for vehicular patterns. Pedestrians, bikers, and drivers all have to take some responsibility. Headphones are dangerous, etc. There is ample precedent in enforcing certain rules to promote the greater well-being.

Jaywalking is a crime. I consider it my given right here, but I don't enter ongoing traffic with just a hand extended toward oncoming traffic and no obvious regard visually for vehicular patterns. Pedestrians, bikers, and drivers all have to take some responsibility. Headphones are dangerous, etc. There is ample precedent in enforcing certain rules to promote the greater well-being.

Jaywalking is a violation, not a crime. Really aboutready, if you are going to claim 50% of your husband's law degree, you ought to know this.

NYC = Nanny City I agree with the original poster a reduced speed limit will not save lives only drive up costs, and of course the mayor can still speed and go thru lights he should lead thru example. If they want to save lives ban texting while walking and put up gates at lights to stop pedestrians and get rid of those bikes!

What is he proposing lowering the speed limit to, anyway? Across the nation, 25 mph is standard for "urban" areas, with 15 mph in "school zones". The extra 5 mph, in my opinion, a) doesn't make any difference, and b) is ignored on straigthaways anyway by most everyone going 40 up and down the avenues.

I thought there IS a law on the books in NYC about wearing headphones while walking on the sidewalks. Am I wrong?

Bicyclists are the bane of our existence and should be banned. PERIOD. Enough of this "green" bullshit about "carbon footprints" and it somehow being "healthier" than the walking we have to do anyway over the course of our daily travels. This isn't Amsterdam or Stockholm, it never will be, and comparing New York City to European cities is beyond absurd (there are more people crammed into the five boroughs of New York than there are in ALL of California-sized Sweden).

Do any of you live in the same neighborhood as I do, where a seven-year-old on the sidewalk was mowed down by a taxi driver? Do any of you live in the same city as I do, where both my husband and I have been hit by cars? I know pedestrians jaywalk, but I'd say one out of every four drivers is in violation of traffic laws somehow -- not signalling, yakking on the phone, not yielding the crosswalk, etc. If these violations occur at a lower speed they may still lead to accidents, but the accidents won't be deaths.

*smh*

So the proposal is to not signal but at a lower speed? Not yield the crosswalk, but at a lower speed?

people should not drive personal cars in Manhattan....guess what you have the entire nation to go do this in...

people should not drive personal cars in Manhattan....guess what you have the entire nation to go do this in..."

Spoken like someone who's never had to work an overnight shift (where taking commuter railroads is all but impossible) or who's never been forced to live outside the boundaries of public transportation because of cost/family issues/etc.

And those of us who DO live in Manhattan and own cars -- even if we use them only to get out of Manhattan, we still have to drive them through Manhattan to get OUT of Manhattan

kcarscaden, I don't live in the entire nation.

If your hit by a 3000lb car your dead at 20MPH just as your dead at 30MPH so if the driver is bad the speed does not matter. Get bad drivers off the road and leave the speed alone.

aalsberg, that's not true. If that 3000-lb car is going 10 MPH slower, your chances of survival jump from 55% to 95%.

Source: fourth graph here. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127572/

Your Source over 14 years old which doesn't show where they get the statistics from, might say fatalities have been reduced but do you really want to survive if your legs got crushed, amputated and then rehab. Better dead. The problem is not the speed but nearly every time I drive in the city some stupid person either runs across the road against the light, doesn't look at the light because he is texting or listening to music. The key to less fatalities is to get the pedestrians to pay attention and to enforce the traffic laws on the books such as more ticketing for going thru red lights (not yellow as some cops and cameras do) etc.

do you really want to survive if your legs got crushed, amputated and then rehab"

This is only an argument for reducing the speed limit even further. At 10-15 MPH your legs won't be crushed (though you will be injured). I'd rather see speed limits of 10-15 MPH wherever there are people around, and then no limit at all on interstate highways (where it's an automobile-only environment). Pedestrians and cyclists are safer; drivers get their long-distance drives done quicker.

Better police attention to dangerous drivers would also help. In Brooklyn Heights I once got hit by a taxi from behind and was thrown to the ground. I limped to the police station (a few blocks away) to report it, and was turned away. They said I should have flagged down a pedestrian and called an ambulance. I think they just wanted to keep the nuber of reported accidents down

gotta love those who dont own cars offering that there shd be no private cars in new york city. i dont own a dog. shd there be no dogs allowed? they bite people, and owners often leave their shit all over the street.

laws on the books are adequate, if enforced. city's more concerned with collecting parking tkt $$ that keeping the streets safe. but that's the way of the day. Used to be cops were around to keep the city safe and running well.

Banning personal cars (or even taxing them through congestion pricing) is discriminatory against people who reverse commute to areas that are not accessible to public transit. And there are of many of us in Manhattan including a significant number who work for educational and healthcare institutions and love what they do but have other important ties to Manhattan.

Congestion pricing is an excellent idea. And I say this as an owner of a car in Manhattan.

I agree again with yikes.

I agree with NativeRestless.

wow i grew up in ny in a family of 7, and most offspring live in the city, with families of their own.
No family member of my has ever been hit by a car in NYC--the city we live in.

Front Porch: that both you and your husband, relatively recent transplants, have been "hit by cars" says you may need to get some advice from matt about how to walk the streets in a state other than obliviousness.

Sadly, children are killed in auto accidents all over the country. In fact, the rate of vehicle-related injury and death in NYC is very low, compared to other place in the US, both rural and urban.

lowered the speed limit to an unreasonable speed - not a campaign promise. But Central Park horses?