Media Watch

Marcia Kramer on Vision Zero: Why Isn’t City Hall Sticking It to Pedestrians?

She's back. Marcia Kramer is here to defend unsuspecting New Yorkers from Bill de Blasio and his nefarious goal to eliminate traffic deaths in the city.

By Stephen Miller

11:46 AM EDT on June 24, 2014

She’s back. Marcia Kramer is here to defend unsuspecting New Yorkers from Bill de Blasio and his nefarious goal to eliminate traffic deaths in the city.

“The city says 250 New Yorkers are killed every year; 4,000 injured,” she began her report last night on WCBS. Okay, if the city says so.

But as for the mayor’s plan to prevent New Yorkers from getting injured and killed by keeping dangerous drivers off the road, he’s got it all wrong. “Apparently not at the top of the mayor’s list is helping motorists,” Kramer said, apparently oblivious to the fact that more than a hundred motor vehicle occupants are killed and thousands more injured in New York City each year.

No, forget about protecting people in cars from reckless drivers. To “help motorists” you have to do something about those pesky pedestrians. “Who can argue that jaywalkers are a driver’s nightmare?” Kramer asks. “But not the mayor’s priority.”

You know what’s worse than jaywalkers? Of course: bicyclists. “What about bicyclists who don’t stay to the side of the road or go up one-way streets the wrong way… [and] who weave in and out of traffic, going into whatever lane they want?” Kramer asks, over a shot of a cyclist riding with traffic up Sixth Avenue, navigating outside the door zone of a stopped taxi cab.

What a nightmare.

Kramer does mention one victim of traffic violence: Noshat Nahian, age 8, who was killed just feet from where de Blasio signed the traffic safety bills yesterday.

Was he jaywalking? Riding his bike the wrong way? No, he was walking to school with his sister, in the crosswalk, with the signal, when an unlicensed tractor-trailer truck driver drove over him. Kramer never mentions that.

In the eyes of Kramer and the team at CBS 2, because de Blasio won’t address what anchor Dana Tyler introduced as “two major headaches for motorists,” New York is headed in an ominous direction.

Filmmaker Anna Zivarts has posted a glimpse of what this Vision Zero future will look like. Don’t say Marcia Kramer didn’t warn you:

Stephen Miller

In spring 2017, Stephen wrote for Streetsblog USA, covering the livable streets movement and transportation policy developments around the nation. From August 2012 to October 2015, he was a reporter for Streetsblog NYC, covering livable streets and transportation issues in the city and the region. After joining Streetsblog, he covered the tail end of the Bloomberg administration and the launch of Citi Bike. Since then, he covered mayoral elections, the de Blasio administration's ongoing Vision Zero campaign, and New York City's ever-evolving street safety and livable streets movements.

Media Watch | Vision Zero

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