New York City Council districts covering the South Bronx, East Harlem and Southeast Queens lead the city in traffic fatalities and injuries, safety group says

City Council districts representing the South Bronx and East Harlem, as well as the Rockaways and other areas of southeastern Queens led New York City in traffic fatalities in 2022, an advocacy group says. security.

Ten people died in Council District 8 in the South Bronx and East Harlem, and another 10 died in Council District 31, which includes Far Rockaway and parts of southeast Queens, according to city death data analyzed by Transportation. Alternatives.

District 8, represented by Councilwoman Diana Ayala, was the most dangerous part of the city for motorists last year, data shows. In addition to the 10 deaths, the district saw 96 people injured in motor vehicles. In total, 117 serious injuries were reported in the district in 2022.

The 31st Ward in Queens, represented by Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers, chair of the council’s Transportation and Infrastructure committee, had a total of 109 traffic accidents. In addition to the 10 deaths, the casualties in 2022 included 56 serious injuries last year.

Transportation Alternatives identified two other city council districts as hotspots for injuries and deaths last year.

Manhattan’s District 3, which stretches along the West Side from the southern edge of Central Park to Chelsea, was the most damaging to pedestrians, with 44 reported pedestrian injuries. Five people in the ward represented by Councilman Erik Bottcher were killed in traffic accidents and 92 were seriously injured, the data shows.

Directly to the north, Manhattan’s 6th District, which includes most of the Upper West Side as well as bicyclist-heavy Central Park, saw 26 cyclists seriously injured, the most reported in the city. In that ward, represented by Councilmember Gale Brewer, one person was killed in a car crash and 68 were seriously injured.

“It’s very important that we shine a light on serious injuries that go unreported,” Elizabeth Adams, senior director of advocacy for Transportation Alternatives, said Wednesday.

“The impetus and thinking here is that we often talk about deaths, but we forget the full scope of what traffic violence does to our city.”

Serious injuries are those that involve the loss of a limb, the loss of an organ or a hospital stay of more than 90 days, Adams said. In such cases, “the medical costs alone could be life-changing,” she said.

Transportation Alternatives criticized the city’s Department of Transportation for not including data on serious injuries in your Vision Zero map facing the publicwhich tracks accident data across the city.

“DOT should put this out,” Adams said of the serious injury data. He noted that while public, much of the injury data was hard to find or embedded in PDF documents, making it difficult to compile.

A DOT spokesperson said that while the Vision Zero map does not differentiate between minor and serious injuries, the department uses that data internally to guide its decision making.

A non-interactive map in the department Most Recent Pedestrian Safety Action Plan measures so-called “KSI” (“Killed or Seriously Injured” pedestrians) data and identifies hotspots similar to Transportation Alternatives’ analysis.

The DOT spokesperson said the department has planned Vision Zero projects with serious injury data in mind since the launch of the safer streets effort, because DOT planners consider every serious injury to be a potential fatality.