Crackdown On Drivers Not Yielding To Pedestrians Means Lots Of Tickets In Park Slope
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Some Park Slope, Brooklyn drivers were surprised by a dramatic uptick in tickets issued by the NYPD for failure to yield to pedestrians.
As 1010 WINS' Eileen Lehpamer reported, it averaged out to about one a day – 61 drivers in the Park Slope area were given tickets in the first two months of the year for the rarely-enforced traffic law.
Crackdown On Drivers Not Yielding To Pedestrians Means Lots Of Tickets In Park Slope
A woman named Pat, who was out walking, thinks it is a good idea.
"I see people getting swiped all the time," she said.
But drivers such as a man named Peter were not happy about the crackdown.
"It's as if the City of New York doesn't want you actually to own a car," he said.
But before you think drivers in Park Slope are worse than the rest of the city, it turns out the NYPD was doing an initiative during those months to encourage driver safety.
The initiative was conducted twice, once in January and once in February.
"Many drivers unfortunately fail to yield and they quickly make that left turn or right turn through the intersection thinking they'll make the turn ahead of the pedestrian even though the pedestrian has the right of way," City Councilman Brad Lander (D-39th) told WCBS 880's Rich Lamb in January. "Usually, drivers do this and they just drive right away. In this case, because that pedestrian was an undercover cop, down the street is another officer."
Police in the 78th Precinct, which includes Park Slope, handed out 96 failure to yield summonses to drivers in all of 2013.
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