In the wake of the tragic and gruesome crashes involving two little boys, Transportation Alternatives, New York City’s advocates for street safety, today released a map of the borough of Queens showing where and how often Queens pedestrians are killed or injured by motorists.

The maps can be accessed at www.crashstat.org. With a few simple clicks, residents can see the number of historical injuries and deaths at each intersection in their neighborhood, and the crash frequency trend at particular locations. The map is based on data from 1995 through 2001, the last year for which accurate data is available.

For the borough as a whole, there were 4,749 locations with reported crashes resulting in 140 pedestrians killed and 13,076 pedestrians injured between 1995 and 2001.

To its credit, the City Department of Transportation has made some significant pedestrian oriented safety improvements at the intersection of East Fordham Road, East Kingsbridge Road and the intersection of Bainbridge Avenue and Jerome and Burnside Avenues. The agency has also made some very modest pedestrian oriented safety improvements to the Grand Concourse, the intersection of East 138th and East 163rd Streets between Bruckner Boulevard and Willis Avenue and the intersection of University Avenue, West 181st Street and Hall of Fame Terrace. And, since 1998, the NYPD has significantly increased the number of summonses it issues for dangerous and illegal driving in the Bronx.

However, Bronx streets can still be much safer. Even with vigorous police enforcement, studies have shown that the only way to create truly safe streets is for the City DOT to redesign them using modern traffic calming devices. Traffic calming, which encompasses a wide variety of inexpensive engineering measures like speed tables and pedestrian refuge islands, has successfully created safer streets around New York City, the United States and the world. Says Kit Hodge, Transportation Alternatives’ Campaign Coordinator,

“People love the Bronx because of the exciting mix of quiet residential streets and lively commercial districts. But dangerous and loud motorized traffic turns neighborhood streets into NASCAR and lively streets into lousy streets; it literally drives people out of the borough. www.crashstat.org is a powerful new tool that concerned residents can use to fight for comprehensive traffic calming, which will create safer and quieter walking conditions around schools, senior centers and parks."

Local community groups can contact Transportation Alternatives at 212-629-8080 or info@transalt.org to request free copies of the study and a booklet on how to create safer streets using traffic calming in your neighborhood.

View the supplementary maps and data here.