The paper is an invaluable resource for city pedestrian and traffic safety advocates, and a strong indictment of the legal system that has permitted deadly traffic chaos to flourish in a city where motorists are a minority of residents and commuters.

The report, Killed by Automobile: Death in the Streets in New York City 1994-1997, says its findings indicate that police, transportation, criminal justice and driver-licensing officials are "failing in their duty to make the streets safely available to all."

Killed by Automobile reports on data painstakingly compiled by Right of Way from 947 NY Police Department fatal pedestrian and cyclist crash records. Overall, 1,020 persons not in automobiles were killed by cars, trucks and buses in NYC during 1994-1997. 880 of the fatality reports analyzed were for pedestrians.

Main findings include:

• The most frequent causes of fatalities were vehicles turning into pedestrians in crosswalks, followed by speeding and driving through a red light or stop sign.
• Autos are equal opportunity threats, killing New Yorkers of every income level and ethnic group roughly in proportion to the group's population share.
• Drivers were summonsed for moving violations in only 16% of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities during 1994-1997- police cited only 7 drivers-less than 1% of those who killed pedestrians-for violating laws specific to pedestrian safety.
• Drunk driving was known to be present in only 4% of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities (less than 3% in 1997), suggesting that DWI is a relatively small subset of a larger class of dangerous driving that is routinely ignored in law enforcement and the media.
• New Yorkers age 65 or older were more than twice as likely to be killed by an automobile as to be murdered.

The central and most innovative analysis in Killed by Automobile is the "culpability coding" of crash records from 1997. The analysts defined a matrix of driver and pedestrian actions from NYPD and NY DMV records and categorized fatal crashes as "driver largely or strictly culpable," "driver partly culpable" or "driver not culpable." The essential variables were pedestrian or bicyclist right of way, such as walking on a sidewalk or in a crosswalk, and illegal or irresponsible driver behavior like speeding or light-running.

The results showed drivers were largely or strictly culpable in 74% of cases where sufficient information existed for culpability coding, and were largely, strictly or partly culpable in 90% of the known cases. Hit and run, drivers turning into pedestrians in crosswalks, and speeding were the top three driver faults in killing pedestrians and cyclists.

The report says City claims that pedestrian deaths fell sharply from 1997 to 1998 as a result of a new traffic law enforcement campaign have gone unsupported by release of details on fatalities and the parameters of the "crackdown." It cites a number of non-enforcement factors that may have contributed to the decline, and says pedestrian injuries in 1998 fell only slightly from 1997. Killed by Automobile says the City has not released traffic fatality reports in four years.

To purchase Killed by Automobile, send a check for $7.50 (includes shipping) to Right of Way, 305 Broadway, # 402, NYC 10007. (www.rightofway.org)

Adapted from a letter from Right Of Way to Queens D.A. Richard Brown. There was no reply.

Brown's office told Newsday's Ellis Henican yesterday that advocates should target changes in state law to enable prosecutors to charge drivers in cases like this, but even the infamous "rule of two" (see MTR #162) seems to apply here. - Ed