Looking both ways isn’t nearly enough when crossing Big Apple streets.
Pedestrians deaths are up this year across the five boroughs compared with 2012 — and have spiked by 15.5 percent since 2011, The Post has learned.
While the city boasts that overall traffic fatalities are at record lows, a Post analysis found at least 141 people were killed by cars through Monday, compared with 132 over the same period last year.
There were 122 killed through Nov. 25, 2011.
“The city needs to stop with the happy talk and get serious about protecting pedestrians,” said Charles Komanoff, a pedestrian advocate for the group Right of Way.
This month has been particularly treacherous.
Cops are investigating the deaths of 21 pedestrians in November, preliminary data show. Eight pedestrians were killed in November of last year, and 11 in November 2011.
The 2013 toll includes Staten Island grandma Lizette Serano, 60, and her co-worker Marion Anderson, 47, who were fatally struck by a minivan Wednesday while crossing a street in Willowbrook.
“I feel like we’re forgotten, pedestrians,” said Serano’s widower, Carlos, 61. “People just don’t pay attention. It’s really bad. It looked like a train hit her. She was all broken up. Broken bruises on her cheek.”
Her daughter Bernadette, 43, said through tears: “She was an angel. She has five grandchildren who will have to grow up without her.”
The city Department of Transportation noted in a recent report that overall traffic deaths — which include drivers, passengers and bikers — have dropped to the lowest levels ever in the city. Police on Tuesday also hailed the drops.
“This administration never accepted pedestrian deaths as inevitable and implemented numerous safety measures — aggressive enforcement, speed cameras, pedestrian plazas and lower speed limits — to reduce them,” said Kamran Mumtaz, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg.
“These measures succeeded in helping save more than 1,000 lives over the last decade. While one death is one too many, under Mayor Boomberg the streets of New York City are safer than they have ever been.”
Overall traffic fatalities were at 226 through October, compared with 235 over the same time in 2012, the Post analysis found.
But Paul Steely White, head of Transportation Alternatives, said the rise in pedestrian deaths shows a need for stricter enforcement.
The NYPD cracked down last week, arresting 91 drivers on moving violations and issuing more than 5,500 tickets during rush hours at dangerous intersections.
“We are encouraged by recent steps taken by the NYPD, but make this sustained enforcement the rule, and not the exception,” White said.
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio campaigned on reducing pedestrian deaths and serious injuries to zero.
Activists even put up their own 20 mph speed-limit signs in Park Slope, Brooklyn, near where a child was killed in October.
Yahoo Local News – New York Post
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