In New York City, Traffic Deaths Were Almost Equal to Shooting Deaths in 2022

Both of these crises are preventable.

A ghost bike commemorates a cyclist's death in Newport, Minnesota.Bob Shaw/Pioneer Press/AP

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This year in New York City, traffic deaths were roughly on a par with shooting deaths. As of Christmas, 246 people were killed with guns in 2022, Gothamist reports, compared with 247 people killed in car crashes. This isn’t unique to New York. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not yet released full data on 2022 traffic fatalities, but the first half of the year saw a slight increase in traffic deaths over the first half on 2021. In 2021, an estimated 42,915 people died on America’s roadways, according to the NHTSA—a 10.5 percent increase over the year prior. Last year, there were 45,090 total gun deaths in the United States, according to Gun Violence Archive, including 24,090 suicides.

In other words, you are much more likely to die in a car crash than to be killed with a gun by someone other than yourself.

Both of these crises are preventable. My colleague Mark Follman has written extensively about how measures like red flag laws and behavioral threat assessment can prevent mass shootings. Gun violence gets a lot of attention from politicians and the media, and that’s a good thing. Meanwhile, the car crisis is still only a budding concern. If you get your information from the New York Post or Fox News, you’re more likely to be constantly frightened by the scepter of rising crime than by the very real possibility of being killed by a speeding car.

Anecdotally, it has been obvious to me of late that things are bad. In the span of a single week, I witnessed two car crashes while riding my bike in Denver. Earlier this month, an SUV struck and killed a cyclist who was crossing a major roadway in a crosswalk. The driver fled the scene and has not been found. The cyclist, Logan Rocklin, died on the day that his wife, who is battling leukemia, received a stem cell transplant.

Less than two weeks later, Ainslie O’Neil, who rode everywhere with a milk crate on the back of her bike, just like me, was struck and killed at a treacherous intersection three blocks from where I live. Now, I pause for an extra moment in case there are any red-light runners on the 40 mile-per-hour boulevard that bisects the ostensible “neighborhood bikeway” I ride on to get to my favorite coffee shop.

The data support my sense of unease. According to the city’s Vision Zero initiative, there have been 82 traffic deaths in Denver in 2022. In 2021, that number was 84—up from 57 the year prior. By way of comparison, there were 73 homicides in Denver in 2022, 96 in 2021, and 95 in 2020

The fate of New York’s gubernatorial election was all about “crime” and a media that yelled about it. Maybe I should try to go hoarse in 2023.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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