City Increasing Tickets as Part of Dusk Driving Campaign to Avoid Deadly Accidents

NEW YORK, NY — Drunk driving is usually the issue on the minds of politicians when talking about avoiding deadly car accidents. But the city wants to point to another issue that kills pedestrians — dusk driving.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday the city would be stepping up enforcement of nighttime driving as the sun has begun to set earlier in the day. The NYPD will be out in full force over the next three months writing tickets for a host of violations. The initiative is part of the mayor's "Vision Zero" campaign to eliminate pedestrian deaths due to car accidents.

Severe crashes in the early evening increase almost 40 percent in the fall and winter months around the end of daylight saving time, according to city data. Also, the city says lower visibility leads to twice as crashes involving turning cars. Forty percent of the traffic fatalities in New York City in 2015 happened after Oct. 1 — just 25 percent of the year. Daylight saving time, when clocks are set back an hour, lands on Nov. 6 at 2 a.m. this year.

In response to these numbers, the NYPD will be increasing patrols in every precinct during dusk time, deploying traffic safety agents to dangerous intersections, and cracking down on speeding, failure to yield to pedestrians, using a cellphone while driving, and blocking bike lanes. In other words, expect a big increase in tickets written across the entire city from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

"The NYPD takes the safety of all users of our City’s streets and roadways seriously and will play an active role in mitigating a potential spike in traffic fatalities as daylight saving time ends," NYPD Chief of Transportation Thomas Chan said in a statement. "There will be citywide Vision Zero enforcement activity during the evening peak hours, as well as a continuation of our education initiatives. This combination of efforts has been yielding positive results since the inception of Vision Zero."

The city released a "heat map" to show just how many deadly accidents occur in the period just before and after sunset. Even the morning commute is nowhere near as deadly as the dusk period.

Photo Credit: darkhelmet322 via Wikimedia Commons