Tag: Nicole Gelinas

NYC subway-track deaths soar, driven by social-media dares

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2023/04/02/nyc-subway-track-deaths-soar-driven-by-social-media-dares/

Excerpt:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had distressing news last week: Deaths on subway-train tracks soared in 2022, to 88.

It’s a little-remarked element of our post-2020 era of disorder and chaos.

….

But as with everything else in New York in the past three years, things went awry. Last year’s 88 track deaths were 35% above the 2018 and 2019 averages — 65 each year.

For context, 120 pedestrians died above ground last year in crashes with cars or trucks, close to the average of 121 in 2018 and 2019.

….

What’s going on? Of 1,365 known subway-track incidents in 2022 (most of which didn’t end in death), about 15% were accidental falls or medical emergencies, a new MTA analysis finds.

A thankfully surprisingly low number — fewer than 10% — was suicides or suicide attempts.

An even smaller percentage was assaults — that is, people being pushed to the tracks. (Though with pushes to the tracks comprising three of last year’s 10 subway murders, a 30-year high, a small percentage is too many.)

In most cases — well more than two-thirds — people ended up on the tracks voluntarily.

In 20% of total cases, people were clearly mentally ill (but not attempting suicide); in another 10% or so, people were drugged or drunk.

….

The worst spike in track intrusions started a little more than a year ago, in December 2021 to February 2022. (This includes January 2022, when Michelle Go was pushed to her death in Times Square by a mentally ill, violent ex-con.)

This winter, track intrusions are down 30%.

Why? Largely police enforcement.

Author(s): Nicole Gelinas

Publication Date: 2 April 2023

Publication Site: NY Post

Crash Curse: In New York City, traffic deaths are up as enforcement is down.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.city-journal.org/nyc-traffic-deaths-up-as-enforcement-is-down

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Since the Covid pandemic hit New York City in March 2020, traffic deaths have skyrocketed, just as they have across the country. Locally and nationally, these deaths have paralleled the same double-digit trajectory upward as homicides and drug-overdose deaths. In 2019, 220 New Yorkers died on city streets, near the record low of 206, set the year before. In 2021, 273 people died, a nearly one-quarter increase in two years. In 2022, as of late May, 93 people have died, down slightly from last year, but 12 percent above pre-Covid levels.

….

s in many areas of public safety and public health, New York City started the pandemic with an advantage. In 2019, the city’s 220 traffic deaths—whether people in cars, or pedestrians, or cyclists—represented a per-capita rate of about 2.6 per 100,000 residents, just a small fraction of the 11.1 per 100,000 killed nationwide. Among large, urbanized areas, New York stood out for safety, as well. In Miami-Dade County in 2019, for example, the rate was 11 per 100,000; metro Atlanta’s rate was similar. Even among denser northeastern and mid-Atlantic cities, which have long had lower traffic-death rates than the sprawling south and west, New York performed slightly better than Boston, with its 2.8 traffic deaths per 100,000, and much better than Philadelphia, with its 5.7 deaths per 100,000.

Pre-pandemic, New York’s falling traffic deaths made it a national outlier. Between 2011, when traffic deaths hit a modern low nationwide, and 2019, such fatalities across the country rose by 11.9 percent, to 36,355 annually. In Gotham over this period, by contrast, they fell 12 percent. The difference in pedestrian casualties was especially striking. Nationwide, pedestrian deaths began rising in 2010, after having fallen, reasonably steadily, for at least three decades. By 2019, annual pedestrian deaths had risen from their 2009 low by more than half. But in New York, pedestrian deaths fell by 21.5 percent over the same near-decade.

Author(s): Nicole Gelinas

Publication Date: Summer 2022

Publication Site: City Journal

Soaring US road deaths reflect the same lawlessness as murder surge does

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://nypost.com/2022/02/06/soaring-road-deaths-reflect-lawlessness-in-the-us/

Excerpt:

Yet even as roads have grown more crowded, this trend has continued: 2020’s total 38,680 traffic deaths were 7.2% above 2019’s.

For the first nine months of 2021, road mileage driven wasn’t even 2% below 2019 levels. The 2020 reason for higher traffic deaths disappeared. People could no longer drive at 100 miles per hour because there was no one else around.

Yet traffic deaths were nearly 18% higher than two years before. The 12% increase between the first nine months of 2020 and 2021 was the highest hike in that period in recorded history, say federal regulators. 

When 2021’s full numbers are in, they’ll likely exceed 42,400 traffic deaths — the worst total in 16 years. Traffic deaths are supposed to fall every year, as road design and cars grow safer (although bigger cars are bad for pedestrians).

…..

This isn’t a universal phenomenon: Road deaths are down in France and Britain from 2019.

Author(s): Nicole Gelinas

Publication Date: 6 Feb 2022

Publication Site: NY Post

Data proves it: Pandemic is no excuse for NYC’s rising tide of violent crime

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/05/09/pandemic-is-no-excuse-for-nycs-rising-tide-of-violent-crime/

Excerpt:

So he [NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio] hasn’t acted with much urgency as the murder rate rose 47 percent last year, to a total of 468 people killed, and has risen this year, so far, by 17 percent. 

…..

In London, the global city that most closely resembles Gotham, the murder rate plummeted last year. It fell to 126 from 150, down 16 percent. 

Why? Well, that’s obvious: It was the global pandemic. “Many, many crime types have reduced as you would expect,” said Met Police chief Cressida Dick, noting that fewer people were outside to fight with each other. 

How about Italy, hit hard and early by the pandemic? There, murders fell by 14 percent, to 271 from 315. 

France with its troubled banlieues? The country’s murders were down 2 percent in 2020, to 863. 

….

But these are all safe countries anyway. So what about cartel-ridden Mexico? There, murders fell by slightly less than half a percent last year, to 34,523 — the first decline in six years. 

Author(s): Nicole Gelinas

Publication Date: 9 May 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

Albany progressives are trying to drive away job-creators with a massive tax hike

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/02/28/albany-progressives-drive-away-job-creators-with-tax-hike/

Excerpt:

The Invest in Our New York Act is a package of six bills hiking state taxes by $50 billion a year. 

Numbers out of context are meaningless. Why not raise taxes by $200 billion, or heck, $90 trillion? But in the context of the New York state budget, $50 billion is an ­unprecedented hike. Without the pandemic and lockdowns, the state likely would have taken in $90 billion in taxes this coming fiscal year, meaning the bill’s proponents want to raise taxes by close to 60 percent. 

A sample of the new taxes: first, on high-income labor. A single filer with $1 million in income would see a 23 percent state tax hike, to 8.41 percent, up from 6.85. A filer making $10 million would see a 48 percent hike, to 12.14 percent, up from 8.82 percent. 

Author(s): Nicole Gelinas

Publication Date: 28 February 2021

Publication Site: NY Post