Costs of “Vision Zero” New York City Traffic Plan

New York City’s newly minted mayor, Bill de
Blasio, unveiled
the details of Vision Zero, a broad, swedish-inspired effort to
reduce “traffic violence” to nil. A whole slew of technologies –
speed cameras, laser guns, anti-speeding tax meters, black boxes –
will be deployed if approved by the state legislature.

286 fatalities were linked to vehicles last year in New York
City. That is tragically close to the murder rate of 333. The
deaths are mostly attributed to “dangerous driver choices,” hence
the mayor’s focus on reducing speed and targeting less cautious
drivers. 

Vision Zero would probably reduce traffic fatalities (although
not to nothing Sweden has
reduced traffic-related deaths by about 50%). But the plan has
consequences.

Timothy P. Carney
goes eyeball to eyeball with data-gathering enabled by Vision
Zero’s taxi black boxes in a Washington Examiner op-ed,
“How long before every car registered in, say, New York State or
Maryland is required to come with a black box, whose data the state
can access upon suspicion of a crime?”

We can imagine these black box devices used for bulk data
collection similar to National Security Agency metadata harvesting.
Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille
describes America’s splintered, Panopticon apparatus that

includes traffic cameras repurposed for surveillance in
Ohio.

De Blasio singles out speedy taxi drivers and apportions an
enforcement squad to deal with them. But Bhairavi Desai, director
of the Taxi Workers Alliance,
said, “Statistics show that taxi drivers are the safest
motorists on NYC streets.” Officials
estimate the total program would cost some tens of
millions.

New York mayors have an affinity for nanny state reforms geared
toward enhanced health and safety. De Blasio already plans to

ban Central Park horse carriages and advance predecessor
Michael Bloomberg’s war on soda. New York City pioneered the

ban on trans-fats and Bloomberg’s last act was to
ban e-cigs in public areas.

Anyway, what applies to New York City’s citizens does not apply
to the rule maker. The mayor’s caravan was
caught speeding last night.