08 BROOKLYN NEWS
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Moving Toward Vision Zero
Tragedy has struck Brooklyn’s
roadways far too often in 2018. Since
the start of this year, three young children
have been killed on our borough’s
streets. On Friday, January 26th, an unlicensed
heating oil truck driver fatally
struck 13-year-old Kevin Angel Flores,
who was riding his bicycle home in
Bedford-Stuyvesant. A few weeks later,
on Monday, March 5th, at the intersection
of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street in
Park Slope, a driver ran a red light and
killed one-year-old Joshua Lew and
four-year-old Abigail Blumenstein as
they were crossing the street with their
mothers.
Amid the pain of these senseless
deaths, Borough President Adams
continues to be driven to make Vision
Zero — a movement seeking an end to
fatalities and serious injuries involving
road traffic — a reality. He has long
been outspoken on the issue of street
safety, leading the early charge as a
state senator to reduce the city’s speed
limit to 25 miles per hour and speaking
out on the New York City Police Department
(NYPD)’s practice of commenting
on open collision investigations, which
historically tended to blame victims.
Two days following Flores’ death,
Borough President Adams convened a
community vigil at the corner of Jefferson
and Lewis avenues where the crash
occurred, gathering the family of the
victim as well as local community leaders,
clergy members, and safe streets
advocates from Transportation Alternatives.
He called for criminal penalties
against unlicensed drivers and the companies
that allow them to operate their
vehicles while unlicensed.
“No parent should have to bury their
child,” said Borough President Adams.
“This was a senseless act that should
not have happened and could have been
prevented.”
In response to the Park Slope fatalities,
Borough President Adams
co-sponsored the Kids March for Safe
Streets, attended the following week by
hundreds of concerned parents, children,
and local advocates. Organized in
partnership with Bed-Stuy Safe Streets,
Families for Safe Streets, Park Slope
Neighbors, Transportation Alternatives,
as well as other community organizations
and local elected officials, the
event called on the City to implement a
long-dormant traffic calming plan along
Borough President Adams marched down Ninth Street in Park Slope, as part
of the Kids March for Safe Streets, with the family and friends of Kevin Angel
Flores, a 13-year-old cyclist who was fatally struck in Bedford-Stuyvesant by
an unlicensed heating oil truck driver.
Ninth Street.
“Park Slope is in mourning,” said
Borough President Adams. “The deaths
of Abigail Blumenstein and Joshua Lew
ripped a deep hole through this community
of children and families. We must
stay together to bring safe streets to
this and every neighborhood across our
city.”
In the wake of these tragedies, Borough
President Adams called on the
NYPD for greater enforcement of reckless
driving, full expansion of speed
cameras to every school in the city, and
more efficient implementation of safe
street infrastructure including bike
lanes and curb extensions through the
City’s Vision Zero plan, which aims to
end traffic deaths on the city’s streets
by 2024.
According to data released by the
Mayor’s Office and the New York City
Department of Transportation (DOT), pedestrian
fatalities in Brooklyn increased
nearly 12 percent from 2016 to 2017.
Additional NYPD statistics revealed
that there were nine cyclist fatalities in
Brooklyn involving a motor vehicle in
2016. This does not account for the hundreds
of innocent lives impacted by nonfatal
crashes.
Borough President Adams has invested
funding to support road safety
changes that would aid in reducing future
Photo Credit: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP’s Office
incidents. In 2015, he launched the
Connecting Residents on Safer Streets
(CROSS) program, which aims to improve
street safety for the borough’s
vulnerable pedestrians. To date, the $1.5
million initiative has supported sidewalk
extensions at a number of intersections
determined to be dangerous based on
DOT crash data, including Flatbush and
Church avenues in Flatbush; Flatbush
and Washington avenues in Prospect-
Lefferts Gardens; New Utrecht Avenue,
12th Avenue, and 50th Street in Borough
Park; Nostrand Avenue and Avenue Z in
Sheepshead Bay, and Utica and Church
avenues in East Flatbush. Additionally,
Borough President Adams was a strong
advocate for the creation of a Classon
Avenue bike lane connecting Clinton Hill
and Crown Heights in memory of Lauren
Davis — a cyclist who was killed by a
driver in April 2016 — and he has called
on DOT to invest in a protected bike
lane on a heavily-trafficked stretch of
Flatbush Avenue between Grand Army
Plaza and Empire Boulevard.
“Vision Zero is not about numbers,
but rather about families,” said Borough
President Adams. “As pedestrian
deaths have substantially decreased,
we should be mindful of the continued
threats to cyclists across the borough,
particularly in heavily-trafficked areas
without bike paths.”
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