NYPD cops are writing more traffic tickets than ever — and the tactic is leading to fewer deaths on the streets of the Big Apple, Mayor de Blasio said Tuesday.
As of Monday, city cops had handed out 35,868 speeding tickets since the beginning of the year. That’s up 17 percent over the same period last year, when police wrote 30,601 tickets.
It’s a huge leap from 2014, when the department wrote less than 12,000 speeding summonses, officials said.
The NYPD is conducting a ticket blitz this week through Sunday, and is planning two more for April, de Blasio said.
“I want everyone to realize that if you speed, the NYPD will get you,” the mayor said at a press conference.
Cops are also targeting drivers who turn at intersections when pedestrians are crossing. From Jan. 1 through Monday, cops issued 12,946 failure-to-yield tickets, up from 10,060 in the same period last year.
During the same period in 2014, cops handed out only 6,346 of such summonses, officials said.
And traffic deaths have gone down.
So far this year, 40 people have died in traffic, compared with 48 during the same period last year, a decrease of 17 percent.
De Blasio attributed the drop to the increased enforcement, newly redesigned thoroughfares and the 25 mph speed limit on local streets, which was lowered from 30 mph in late 2014.
“Everything we are doing is to protect life,” he said.
Some drivers balked at what they called extreme enforcement.
“If someone is going maybe 5 [mph] over the limit, why slap them with a $100 ticket?” said Tyesa Lee Jones, 28, who lives in Harlem. “ I got two tickets going down Ocean Avenue last summer while driving the exact same speed as everyone else, maybe 5 to 10 over. I’d rather take points on my license than pay these extreme bills that no working-class New Yorker can afford.”
De Blasio countered that drivers won’t be ticketed if they follow the laws. “If people don’t speed we don’t get revenue and we will be happy not to have that revenue,” he said. “This is not something we’re doing for revenue.”
The mayor held the conference to tout street-redesign projects, including a streamlined entrance from Tillary Street to the Brooklyn Bridge, a bike lane on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn and protected bike lanes on Fifth Avenue from 23rd Street to Washington Square Park.
Additional reporting by Jazmin Rosa
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