Steve Vaccaro
Recent Posts
A Powerful New Tool to Deter Traffic Violence — If Law Enforcers Use It
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Last Thursday, the New York City Council passed Intro 238. This legislation makes it a misdemeanor for drivers to strike pedestrians or cyclists who have the right of way. Intro 238 has the potential to dramatically change driver behavior and advance the Vision Zero program of eliminating traffic fatalities. But without enforcement by NYPD and […]
NYPD Denies Access to Confiscated Bikes, Including Those of Crash Victims
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As seasoned observers of the department’s dealings with bicyclists know, NYPD has long enjoyed taking our bikes. Following the 2004 Republican National Convention, NYPD clipped locks and took bikes of persons suspected of associating with Critical Mass, resulting in a successful federal lawsuit that enjoined the practice as a constitutional violation. During a 2010 visit […]
NYPD’s Jaywalking Enforcement Boondoggle
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Although the de Blasio administration’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities does not specifically call for pedestrian traffic enforcement, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has made clear that individual precinct commanders have the discretion to do so if they determine it to be warranted. Leaving aside the many good reasons that pedestrian ticketing should be […]
How the City Council Can Impose Tougher Penalties on Reckless Drivers
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The election of numerous safe streets candidates earlier this month, followed by the exoneration of road-raging cabbie Faysal Himon and the gut-wrenching parade of daily traffic deaths since, create the best opportunity in years to impose meaningful consequences for sober reckless driving. I have been told by numerous lawyers with state legislative experience that only […]
Reforming NYPD Crash Investigations: What’s Next?
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New Yorkers were outraged to hear yesterday that there may be no criminal charges against cab driver Mohammed Himon, who plowed into a bicyclist and several pedestrians, horribly injuring a woman on the sidewalk. Although yesterday’s NYPD statement was not official, anonymous leaks to the effect that sober drivers who stay at the scene of […]
Personal Security and Livable Streets
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Yesterday’s watershed decision in Floyd v. New York, in which federal Judge Shira Scheindlin found NYPD’s stop and frisk program unconstitutional, has thrown a spotlight on the issue of personal security. Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Kelly at his side, utterly rejected the decision, suggested it would directly result in increased violent street crime, and vowed an […]
Rally for Our Right of Way
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The right of way. You won’t find it in the Declaration of Independence, the UN Charter on Human Rights, or any other foundational declaration of rights. But that’s not because it’s any less important. At least for those living in dense urban environments — a growing proportion of Americans — respect for the right of […]
NYPD Looking for Criminality in All the Wrong Places
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I was gratified to learn in March that NYPD had re-christened its “Accident Investigation Squad” the “Collision Investigation Squad” (CIS), and reportedly beefed up its 19-person force of crash investigators by 50 percent. But as a lawyer representing pedestrian and cyclist crash victims, I have yet to see the impact of these changes on the […]
Why Motorists Should Pay for Crash Investigations
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As any good policy wonk knows, certain activities effectively force people who only bear the costs of that activity to subsidize the beneficiaries. To use the classic contemporary example, fossil fuel polluters receive billions in tax breaks, but pay nothing for the climate change-inducing carbon that they emit. The same problem applies to private motoring, […]
Why Doesn’t NYPD Apply “Broken Windows” to Traffic Violence?
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Reading Heather Mac Donald’s impassioned defense of the race-neutral character of NYPD’s stop and frisk program in City Journal this weekend, I was struck by the following statement of an NYPD precinct commander, Inspector Christopher McCormack, exhorting an officer to be more “proactive” in making stops: “The point here is that 99 percent of the […]
Driver Safety Laws: An Old Approach That’s Worth Reviving
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In the aftermath of a crash, we inevitably ask: How can a dangerous driver be kept off the road? It seems that the entire automobile transportation regime is aimed at keeping the driver behind the wheel. Absent impairment or flight from the scene of the crash, police quickly conclude that “no criminality is suspected.” The […]
100 Years Ago, Hit-and-Run Was a Felony in New York. Could It Be Again?
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As mentioned in Street Justice last week, legislation has been proposed that would create felony liability in some cases where a driver flees the scene after seriously injuring or killing a person. At present, leaving the scene of a crash is a misdemeanor, often a class B misdemeanor punishable only by a fine of $250.00. […]