Despite the de Blasio administration's commitment to Vision Zero, there's been a surge of pedestrian fatalities so far in 2014, including a 9-year-old boy who was fatally struck by a cab driver on the Upper West Side in front of his father. That cabbie wasn't handed criminal charges and kept his license, which is more par for the course than anyone would like: only two taxi drivers out of 16 involved in fatal or serious crashes since 2009 have had their licenses revoked. But de Blasio had a plan to hold cabbies more accountable in the future: taxi black boxes.
According to AP, de Blasio wants to outfit cabs with "black-box-style data recorders and devices that would sound warnings—or even pause the fare meter—for going too fast." Paul Steely White, who runs Transportation Alternatives, told them that such a plan could influence drivers all over the city, because cabbies' driving "dictates behavioral norms to other drivers."
The Taxi and Limousine Commission says it is "still exploring the ideas," but it seems many cabbies are upset that de Blasio is singling them out for scrutiny, despite the fact that only approximately 4 percent of the roughly 200,000 vehicles involved in accidents citywide last year were yellow cabs.
This isn't a new idea: back in 2009, windshield-mounted cameras (under the model name MacBox III) were proposed. Those boxes were slightly different, designed to record data on vehicle use, road accidents and other information. "This technology is being used effectively throughout the for-hire vehicle industry, and it is saving them considerable amounts of money on their insurance costs," then-TLC chairman Matthew W. Daus said at the time. "More importantly, however, we believe this pilot program has very real potential to help us deter accidents and save lives."
That plan didn't come to fruition, and black boxes remain mostly in the realm of the theoretical right now: "It's unclear whether anyone has developed devices linking speed and fare meters, but experts say it's feasible," AP wrote.
