Deceptive Vision Zero ad campaign

MTA has put up hundreds (225) of these display advertisements at intersections all over the city at transit shelters, on billboards, and on buses. 

The advertisements imply that an innocent pedestrian (someone’s son or brother) died at those places. A public records request reveals that these ads are based on only two fatalities that did not happen at the intersections where the advertisements are:

1) Dylan Mitchell, a 21-year-old bicyclist who collided with a garbage (Recology) truck on May 23, 2013 at Van Ness Avenue at 16th. According to the MTA's Collision Summary Report, Mitchell was at fault because he apparently hit the back of the truck while traveling at a high speed. He wasn't wearing a helmet.

2) Arman Lester, a 21-year-old skateboarder who was hit and killed by an SUV at 3rd Street near Arthur Ave. on November 1, 2014. The Collision Summary Report attributes fault to the skateboarder as a “pedestrian violation.” The MTA still doesn't recognize skateboards as a separate category?

These two incidents have been inflated into a citywide false advertising campaign for Vision Zero, the slogan that tries to pass as city safety policy. 

What the city really needs to do after every fatal traffic accident is the kind of analysis that Commander Ali did on all fatalities in 2014. His analysis showed that half of all pedestrian deaths were caused by the negligence of the pedestrians themselves, and all three of the cycling deaths were caused by the reckless behavior of the cyclists:

Police Commander Mikail Ali keeps records of all the traffic collisions and deaths and said the majority of them share something in common. “A lot of it is just really, really bad behavior,” he said. He said he’s been accused of blaming the victim in the cases of those pedestrians and bicyclists who caused their own deaths, but said showing the truth behind these collisions rather than lumping them together as statistics is important.

But "lumping them together" is exactly what the city is now doing, not the kind of analysis Ali did. The little analysis it does, like the Collision Summary Reports, is made public only after public records requests.

The city's high-injury network maps imply that physical changes to city streets will somehow eliminate death and injury on city streets by 2024.

Check out the city's How Are We Doing site to see that the city isn't doing any better under Vision Zero than it did before.