Cars in New York City Will Only Be Allowed to Drive as Fast as Humans Can Run

Tessa Stuart
On Monday night, in the last hour he could possibly do so, State Senator Jeff Klein introduced a bill that would lower New York City's default speed limits to 25 miles per hour. The city's current standard speed limit, except in areas where it is otherwise noted, is 30 MPH. Lowering speed limits in the city has been a major goal for pedestrian safety advocates, and a top Vision Zero priority for Mayor Bill de Blasio (whose team met with Klein last week).

Klein's bill would lower the speed limit to 25 (roughly as fast as humans can run: 23 mph on average) and require community board approval to lower speed limits by a margin of more than five miles per hour. The way the bill is written, it would be possible to lower the speed limit in certain areas to 20 miles per hour, the magic number for pedestrian advocates, without going before a community board. (If a pedestrian is hit by a car traveling 20 miles per hour that person has a 95 percent chance of surviving the collision.)

All in all, it seems like a win for transportation advocates who inundated Klein's office with calls and tweets when it appeared he might not introduce a bill at all. (Streetsblog reports more than 500 people contacted Klein's office about the bill on Monday.)

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/06/speed_limit_bill_introduced_literally_at_the_eleventh_hour.php