NYC traffic deaths dip slightly in 2024, but still far up from pre-pandemic levels

The number of people killed in vehicle crashes annually in New York City is on track to drop for the first time since 2020.

The city transportation department reported 247 traffic deaths in 2024 as of Dec. 22, down 4% from the 257 reported during the same period last year. Transportation officials see that as a sign of progress — but transit advocates say the streets are far less safe than they were in 2019, when 215 people were killed in crashes at the same point in the year.

Mayor Eric Adams last year promised to “daylight” — or remove parking spaces near crosswalks to improve visibility — at 1,000 intersections in 2024 as a key way to prevent crashes. But Department of Transportation data shows he’s far behind that mark. Officials said the department is on track to daylight 1,000 “locations” this year instead of intersections. A single intersection can have more than four locations.

Street safety activists have criticized the mayor and the transportation department, saying a lot more work needs to be done to “daylight” across the city.

“It’s a huge concern for us,” said Jackson Chabot, advocacy director at the street safety group Open Plans. “There’s an ongoing challenge and hopefully an opportunity for the administration to provide resources to the [Department of Transportation] to implement hardened daylighting going forward.”

Adams last November said it’s “imperative that we take the right steps, in the right direction” to make street infrastructure safer for pedestrians.

Adams’ public goal to daylight 1,000 intersections every year came about a year ago following the death of 7-year-old Kamari Hughes, who was killed by an NYPD tow truck driver in Fort Greene.

The city took some other steps towards improving street safety this year, including reducing the speed limit from 25 to 20 mph at some locations. The transportation department plans to make the same reduction at 250 locations by the end of 2025. Thanks to legislation called “Sammy’s Law” — named after Sammy Cohen Eckstein, a 12-year-old killed by a driver in Park Slope in 2013 — that passed in Albany earlier this year, the city is permitted to lower the speed limit to 20 mph on nearly any street across the five boroughs — but the City Council would need to pass its own law to mandate a citywide reduction.