NYC Council districts covering South Bronx, East Harlem, southeast Queens lead city in traffic deaths and injuries, says safety group

City Council districts representing the South Bronx and East Harlem as well as the Rockaways and other areas of southeastern Queens led New York City in traffic deaths in 2022, a safety advocacy group says.

Ten people died in Council District 8 in the south Bronx and east Harlem, and another 10 died in District 31, which includes Far Rockaway and portions of southeast Queens, according to city fatality data analyzed by Transportation Alternatives.

District 8, represented by Council Member Diana Ayala, was the most dangerous part of the city for motorists last year, the data shows. Besides the 10 deaths, the district saw 96 people injured in motor vehicles. In total, 117 severe injuries were reported in the district in 2022.

District 31 in Queens — represented by Council Member Selvena Brooks-Powers, chair of the council’s Transportation and Infrastructure committee — had 109 total traffic casualties. Besides the 10 deaths, the casualties in 2022 included 56 severe injuries last year.

Transportation Alternatives identified two other city council districts as hotspots for injury and death last year.

Manhattan’s District 3, which stretches along the West Side from the southern edge of Central Park down to Chelsea, was the most injurious to pedestrians, with 44 reported pedestrian injuries. Five people in the district represented by Council Member Erik Bottcher died in traffic crashes, and 92 were severely injured, the data shows.

Directly north, Manhattan’s District 6 — which includes most of the Upper West Side as well as heavily-bicycled Central Park, saw 26 serious injuries to cyclists, the most reported in the city. In that district, represented by Council Member Gale Brewer, one person was killed in a motor vehicle crash and 68 were severely injured.

“It’s really important that we’re shining a light on serious injuries that don’t get reported on,” Elizabeth Adams, Transportation Alternatives’ Senior Director for Advocacy said Wednesday.

“The impetus and thinking here is we often talk about fatalities, but we forget the full scope of what traffic violence does to our city.”

Serious injuries are those that involve the loss of a limb, the loss of an organ, or a hospital stay longer than 90 days, Adams said. In such cases, “the medical costs alone could be life changing,” she said.

Transportation Alternatives criticized the city Department of Transportation for not including severe injury data in its public-facing Vision Zero map, which tracks crash data citywide.

“The DOT should be putting this out,” Adams said of the severe injury data. She noted that, while public, much of the injury data was hard to find or embedded in PDF documents, making it difficult to compile.

A DOT spokesman said that while the Vision Zero map does not differentiate between minor and severe injuries, the department uses that data internally to guide its decision making.

A non-interactive map in the department’s most recent Pedestrian Safety Action Plan measures so-called “KSI” data — “killed or severely injured” pedestrians — and identifies similar hotspots to Transportation Alternatives’ analysis.

The DOT spokesman said the department has planned Vision Zero projects with serious injury data in mind since the rollout of the safer-streets effort, because planners at DOT consider each serious injury a possible fatality.