From Chaos to Compliance

by B' Spokes
Thursday, August 27 2009 @ 01:49 PM GMT

[I so want to do something like this here.]

The NYPD likes to brag that they issued 1.2 million traffic tickets last year. That's not much considering that drivers run 1.2 million red lights each day.

In New York City, the phrase "traffic law" often seems a misnomer for the rules of the road. More often, those "laws" appear to be suggestions, recommendations or afterthoughts.

To test this assumption, T.A., with the help of dozens of volunteers, set out to quantify just how often New York City's traffic laws are broken. We sent out scores of observers to a few big intersections and recorded nearly 40 hours of traffic data. In doing so, T.A. was able to demonstrate a simple method for understanding the pervasiveness of traffic violations that the City could easily adopt.

The results, published in the new study titled From Chaos to Compliance (PDF), are hardly surprising, but still, they paint a shocking portrait of New York City streets:

Traffic law violations occurred approximately three times every minute per intersection -- 157 times an hour.
Drivers failed to yield the right of way 24 times an hour.
Drivers disregarded traffic controls, including traffic signals, signs and roadway markings, approximately two times every minute -- over 100 times an hour.
Over 38 hours of surveying, no summonses were issued for moving violations in the survey areas.
57% of pedestrians believed they were endangered by traffic while navigating the survey areas.
43% of pedestrians actually avoid an area or intersection in their neighborhood because they feel endangered by lawless driving.

The report suggests that a lack of deterrence facilitates this type of behavior and calls on the Mayor and the New York City Police Department to approach this problem scientifically, by deploying personnel where they're needed most, adopting the study's methodology and applying it to gauge compliance, deploying traffic cameras to monitor conformity with speed and traffic-signal laws and enabling citizen-reported violations through 311.

Had the NYPD been enforcing the violations observed in the study, the City stood to make a minimum of $478,645 in fines. Considering the budget woes of New York City, the fact that thorough enforcement at just four locations for only 38 hours could yield nearly half a million dollars in benefits, makes a better approach to enforcement both a financial and safety necessity.

As of press time, neither the Mayor nor Police Commissioner Kelly has acted on these suggestions, but if they want to make traffic laws into more than suggestions, they've got a good place to start.