>
Want to take a safe stroll around New York City? Avoid crossing at intersections. Pay special heed to cars making left turns. Do not go anywhere between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., stick to the side streets and skip Manhattan entirely.
>
>
It has never been easy to safely navigate the streets of New York, where automobiles zip inches away from smartphone-toting pedestrians and the footrace across an intersection has been compared to a game of human Frogger.
>
> But a report released Monday by the city’s transportation planners offers unique insight into the precarious life on the city’s streets — pinpointing where, when and why pedestrian accidents have most often occurred — while undercutting some of the century-old assumptions about transportation in the country’s biggest city.
>
> Taxis, it turns out, were no careering menace: cabs accounted for far fewer pedestrian accidents in Manhattan than privately owned vehicles. Jaywalkers, surely the city’s most numerous scofflaws, were involved in fewer collisions than their law-abiding counterparts who waited for the “walk” sign — although accidents involving jaywalkers are more likely to result in death.
>
> And one discovery could permanently upend one of the uglier stereotypes of the motoring world: in 80 percent of city accidents that resulted in a pedestrian’s death or serious injury, a male driver was behind the wheel. (Fifty-seven percent of New York City vehicles are registered to men.)
>
>
via [nytimes.com](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/nyregion/17walk.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)
Those darn left turns. A true menace for pedestrians and other drivers, too. I’ve always said that getting around any city would be far more efficient and safe if people limited their left turns to one or two per trip. Seriously. There is seldom good reason to turn left more than a few times on any given route from point A to B in a grid city like New York. And if you choose your left turns wisely, say at four-way stop signs instead of traffic lights, where people tend to gun it just as it turns red, or on streets with dedicated lights and lanes for left turns, you’ll be far better off, too.
Not surprising that taxis are less likely to kill you. Taxi drivers are professionals, and driving around New York is a skill that gets honed over many years of practice.
Also not surprising that more men are killing people than women. We do tend to be overly aggressive behind the wheel. Especially when we get impatient with all the pedestrians getting in our way. And we also tend to have a higher opinion of our driving skills than is realistic.
Lastly, note that inattention caused far more accidents than intoxication. Oh, and jaywalking causes far fewer accidents (though the ones that do happen as a result tend to be more deadly) than crossing legally at an intersection. I’ve been trying to get Californians to understand that one for years.
