UWS residents are urging the city to crack down on drivers who kill pedestrians, after two people—including a nine-year-old boy—were fatally struck in separate incidents on Friday.
At a vigil last night for 9-year-old Cooper Stock, who was killed while crossing West End Avenue at 97th Street with his father on Friday, neighborhood residents lamented the fact that the taxi driver who struck him walked away with nothing but a summons for a failure to yield. "It’s an outrage that this driver just walks away with a traffic violation,” Sandy Goldschein, a resident, told CBS News. “He should be in jail.”
Just a few hours before Cooper was killed, 73-year-old Alexander Shear was fatally struck by a tour bus driver at the intersection of Broadway and 96th Street only two blocks away. That driver was not cited.
The number of pedestrian fatalities are alarmingly high so far this year, and Upper West Siders aren't the only ones pressing the city for change. And yesterday, Mayor de Blasio called for the city to immediately install more speed cameras and inflict harsher penalties on drivers caught speeding. "We think there is an epidemic here, and it can't go on," he said at a press conference yesterday. "I said on inauguration day that we were here to make changes, and I meant it."
De Blasio has been touting his "Vision Zero Clock", which aims to cut down on pedestrian fatalities by tracking traffic deaths. Until that becomes a reality, though, New Yorkers seem to be taking matters into their own hands, judging from the guerilla signage popping up around town that urges drivers to slow down and "Drive Like Your Kids Live Here."
