For years, Amy Cohen has tried to make the streets of New York safer after the death of her son, Sammy.
“These are simple solutions that don’t cost money,” he said during a trip to Albany this week. “Everyone can be a little annoying to save a life.”
Advocates for a series of traffic safety measures are making one last push this month to address deaths on New York’s roads as the state legislative session winds down.
Cohen was among advocates calling for action to prevent more traffic deaths in New York state.
They want a bill of rights for accident victims, a required 3-foot buffer for bicycles, New York City to set its own speed limits and encourage the construction of safer street designs with federal dollars and state
Anne Savage of the New York Bicycle Coalition says traffic safety affects all areas of New York State.
“We all know we have a statewide problem here that needs statewide solutions,” Savage said.
The calls for safer streets and reduced crashes come amid a rise in road deaths across the state. Federal safety statistics show New York saw a 12 percent increase in fatalities between 2019 and 2020.
“New York is suffering from a preventable crisis in traffic violence,” Savage said. “New Yorkers are losing their lives for no reason.”
Lawmakers like Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, hope New York’s traffic laws will be a model for the rest of the country.
“It’s so important that we make our streets safer here in the great state of New York — every city, every suburb, every rural community,” Kennedy said. “We want to make sure they don’t take lives.”
Brooklyn Sen. Andrew Gounardes says traffic accidents and fatalities disproportionately affect people of color.
“We have to turn that anger around and channel it as fiercely as possible to try to change policy, to try to change laws, to try to change the minds of people who don’t understand that this is a matter of life and death,” he said.
