A fatality in Middle Village
In less than two years, NYC School bus drivers have killed two pedestrians at intersections. A councilmember’s response is to bemoan DOT and a lack of speed bumps- but there’s more to saving lives than blaming DOT…especially when you’re the council member who voted against the Streets Master Plan.

Yesterday morning, there was a tragic crash in Middle Village which resulted in the death of a senior citizen. Bing Nuan Chen, 82, was a business owner, who was killed while walking with his wife. He was struck down by a school bus driver as he crossed a neighborhood street.
The local councilmember, Robert Holden, took the opportunity in social media and the papers to state that DOT has denied requests for improvements and safety studies of the area, and those studies could have saved a life. Specifically, Holden bemoaned a DOT response that left the district with just one of the 5 speed humps his office requested.
Over and over again, residents complained about the neighborhood traffic situation, which often sees red light runners and speeding drivers putting the lives of pedestrians at risk. This is a neighborhood that started a lawsuit over a proposed bus lane.

That may be true, and we certainly hope DOT will aggressively utilize every tool available to keep residents safe from reckless drivers. Many of these tools are the basic tenets of the Streets Master Plan, which Councilmember Holden voted against in a vote in City Council on October 30th. The Streets Master Plan, did pass and with it comes the promise of improvements including:(taken from New York City Council Intro:1557–2019)
150 miles of physically or camera-protected bus lanes over five years, with at least 20 miles in the first year and at least 30 miles during each subsequent year;
Create one million square feet of pedestrian space over the first two years.
Transit signal priority at 750 intersections during the first year and 1,000 intersections during each subsequent year;
250 miles of protected bike lanes over five years, with at least 30 miles in the first year and 50 miles in each subsequent year;
Bus stop upgrades like benches, shelters, and real-time passenger information at 500 bus stops each year;
Redesigning at least 2,000 signalized intersections over five years, with at least 400 redesigns each year;
Accessible pedestrian signals at no fewer than 2,500 intersections, with at least 500 installations each year;
Assessing and amending commercial loading zones and truck routes;
• Developing parking policies to promote the master plan’s goals of safety, mass transit use, reduced vehicle emissions, and access for individuals with disabilities; and
Finally, DOT would be required to conduct a public education campaign on the benefits of each master plan.
Councilmember Holden’s chief of staff, did call me back and we spent about 20 minutes discussing the ramifications of deadly crashes like these, the way the city unfurled Vision Zero, and the many ways these crashes can be prevented. It’s my hope that all of city council will be tasked with understanding the initiatives of Vision Zero and be able to intelligently pass this information on to their constituents. As a regular at community board meetings, it’s quite common for DOT to present to a room full of people who have never heard of street design, don’t want to learn anything about it and consider activists like myself entitled bike people.
But another New York City pedestrian has been killed. The circumstances of his death are an almost elegant combination of factors that are repeatedly dismissed by those in government who should be leading the way.
Here are some of the other concerns that we hope are addressed in light of the tragic death of Mr. Chen.
NYC DOE Office of Pupil Transportation

This is the 2nd fatal crash by a Queens schools driver in 2 years. Elise Hellinger was killed in a crosswalk by a turning school bus driver in Kew Gardens, Queens on March 13th, 2018. It was over three months until that driver was eventually charged.
The incident reports of these bus companies are not public and digging in, one discovers that 2 or 3 companies own all the busses but make subgroups like Grandpa, Little Angel and the like, so the crash records are even harder to trace. The NYC Schools Borough Director of Operations must be transparent and accessible for inquiries from the general public. it’s not an “accident” when a professional driver, who has supposedly completed some training to safely transport children drives into an intersection when she states she couldn’t see anything. That’s negligence. Possibly negligent homicide.

NYPD
The fatality occurred within the 104thPrecinct, part of NYPD Borough Patrol Queens North, whose traffic department is led by relatively new commander, Jason Liff.
I briefly spoke with Holden’s chief of staff, where he lamented the lack of enforcement of the 104, and it’s frequent response that they lack the resources to do traffic enforcement in the area. This is a key factor in whether NYPD will ever successfully carry out the tenets of Vision Zero. As advocates, we need to look at what kind of funding, training and tools are being used to change driver behavior, the number one cause of crashes with fatalities or serious injuries.


Six years ago, the 104 Precinct wrote as few as 137 speeding tickets per year. Last year, the 104 wrote 1,1396, not including speeding tickets generated from speed cameras. This is an 850% jump and surely would make speeding and enforcement a popular conversation in Middle Village. It is popular, but mainly the voices heard are those of community members begrudging speed traps and notifying neighbors on how to avoid them.
That the council member would egg on his community about how DOT failed them with speed humps makes no sense, considering their proud aggressive driving and documented complaints about speed cameras and targeted enforcement within their confines. This is a council district where about 40% of people own cars. Yet calls to calm dangerous streets fail to put any attention on the drivers who are using apps like Waze to reroute around speed traps or traffic congestion. Drivers must be in the spotlight and their behavior must change- this will work better than any speed bump.
DOT Safety Education and Outreach

DOT SAFETY EDUCATION AND OUTREACH
The initial picture in a Queens paper, showed a Google street view. This is what I see:
2 cars illegally parked at the corners
A very narrow two way street
Parking on both sides, making it impossible for two way traffic
No streetlights
Intersections lacking not marked crosswalks
There are no modern curb cuts.
Neighbors commenting on social media were quick to say that the reason these streets lack traffic safety controls is because the city only cares about bike and bus lanes. Sadly many are unaware that the Streets Master Plan would really take the politics out of safety, and provide many tools to calm these deadly streets.
There are mountains of actual data which demonstrate the success of these implementations. If only the city had a way for the average resident to grasp it. There is!

Our streets were not designed for the capacity we are facing nor were they ever imagined to be used for car storage for an ever increasing number of large vehicles such as SUV’s. Council District 30 lacks transit accessibility that other neighborhoods in NYC enjoy. Redesigning the streets, making bus networks that are swift and accessible and educating drivers and vulnerable road users to this imperative is sadly not being done properly at the DOT.

Neighbors would have to accept that efficient bus routes could reduce the number of drivers and reduce congestion.
Council District 30 has had 133 speed humps installed since 2009, as it stands and with a little education and outreach, the district could also ask DOT to implement programs that could raise awareness for both pedestrians, drivers, seniors and children.

TECHNOLOGY
Vision Zero View is an interactive map that the city and DOT established in 2013. It has a number of tools to help residents and elected officials look at their neighborhoods and see the number of crashes, injuries and fatalities as well as what types of implementations and outreach have been done in the area. DOT lists 6 different forms of outreach and 13 different techniques of street redesign that could inform residents.
Ideally, this tool would be used to learn about and request various traffic calming devices, find sources of education for vulnerable road users, and use crash statistics to develop safe routes to school for children. Sadly, no councilmember I’ve ever spoken to is aware of Visionzeroview.
The utilization of this tool both at city council level as well as in the community would give all concerned a better understanding of what can be done, should be done and must be done to make our streets safe and prevent tragedies such as the death of Mr. Chen.

Another tool that could be designed to look at traffic safety, population density and hyperlocal neighborhood scenarios is the NYC doITT map. This is also interactive and can pinpoint where schools and senior centers are located. It shows business districts and capital projects from every city agency.
Vision Zero was established in 2013. As the years go on, more city agencies are being added as collaborators. It started with DOT, NYPD, TLC and Mayor’s Office. Subsequently, the DOE, DOH, and Office of Citywide Administrative Services have been added. We must push for technology to integrate what these agencies are learning through their research and safety implementations. So many of these tragedies are preventable on many different levels.
CREATE A NEW CONVERSATION
It all must start and end with a conversation. If the conversation is informed, factual and coming from a desire to find solutions, that’s best. Unfortunately, we live in an era where people read little more than headlines. Currently, the way pedestrian and cyclist injuries are reported is more damaging than informing.
Newspaper reporters are on deadline, often travel to a neighborhood they don’t know, and they lean on police to give them a quick quote. Nobody seems to realize that the cops interviewed were not witnesses to the crash, nor did they have the opportunity to speak to the victim, who has died or been carted off to an ER. When residents read these misguided newspaper articles, it creates a bias that further promotes an idea of victim blaming, or in this case, denying the driver was in any way at fault. This damages the conversations we need to have and does little to educate or inform readers of any context. (How many previous crashes existed, if the driver had a clean drivers license, or whether witnesses were available to be included in a police report.
I learned that NYPD104 said driver claimed suns’ glare. This is an important thing to note, as both and NYPD and DOT have done public service about daylight savings time being especially dangerous. So, drivers who are reading must also take heed that especially the weeks of the time change put this sun some place you don’t expect it. You must exercise more care than usual. Because when as senior from your community is killed this way it is a failure to exercise due care and it is criminal, especially when it’s a professional driver like a school bus driver..
The fact that this driver made the turn when she claimed she could not see an intersection whether a marked crosswalk or not is criminal. Somebody is dead because this negligence.

Can you try to see that speeding drivers and reckless drivers are the last ones to be blamed in every fatality? Can you try to think about or imagine situations where nothing needed to be done because those behind the wheel respected the law and drove with the priority of getting to and from places safely and without putting anyone in danger? Drivers have killed about 95 pedestrians this year and injured about 11,000. It’s nice to think a speed hump would prevent it, or a helmet would prevent a bike injury, but it would be more beneficial if people started looking at driver behavior with an eye towards changing what’s acceptable.
These types of dangerous roads exist all over New York City, and to date, drivers aren’t being held accountable. Whatever mode of transportation you use, it could have been you or your loved ones who were killed.
So please keep an open mind, make phone calls, attend meetings, and try to learn a little bit more because this is why the Streets Master Plan is needed and why it passed city council. This, friends, is not about bike lanes.
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