At first glance, New York City just logged its safest year for traffic deaths in decades — down 31% since Vision Zero launched in 2014. But that progress hasn’t reached every neighborhood equally, and the neighborhoods it has passed by are disproportionately lower-income communities of color. Making matters worse, those same neighborhoods are some of the city’s most desolate transit deserts.
Consider Canarsie and Flatlands in Brooklyn, where New Yorkers are struck and injured in traffic at nearly double the citywide rate — 84 serious crashes per 10,000 residents, compared to 47 citywide. Consider also that eight of the 10 city neighborhoods with the highest crash rates are lower-income communities of color, and have received far fewer of the slow zones and safety upgrades driving citywide numbers down.
This is not two separate failures, as low-income New Yorkers are often the last to reap the benefits of new policy and innovations. To start, it’s time for New York to embrace the autonomous vehicle technology already reshaping city streets from Atlanta to Phoenix to San Francisco.
As I have traveled across the country in recent years, I have seen firsthand how so many cities and states have worked to allow autonomous vehicles on their streets — cautiously, but more importantly, without turning a blind eye toward the future. As driverless rides nationwide are projected to more than double this year alone, demand is clearly there. As is proof that this technology is potentially the greatest opportunity to improve traffic safety outcomes in a generation.
In fact, one report found autonomous vehicles were solely at fault in just 4% of crashes involving other road users — the rest overwhelmingly caused by human drivers. Another study of New York traffic data estimated the technology could have saved more than 500 lives in the last five years.
But the data available, promising as it is, remains incomplete — and as with any innovation, real potential demands a thoughtful approach. New York cannot afford to shut its doors to this technology entirely, nor should we give companies unlimited access to our streets. Instead, New York should set standards from day one: a graduated cap on vehicles, controlled service areas, career opportunities for taxi workers, and robust data reporting requirements.
On its own, the argument for creating a pathway for new technologies to make our streets safer speaks for itself. But when as many as two million New Yorkers live in transit deserts, it is communities of color that are just as often the ones with no alternative when those streets fail them.
For communities that have waited generations for a subway line that will never come, autonomous vehicles could offer something transformational: transit connections for those still underserved today.
But this is not just a story about safety, it is about opportunities for the communities that are too often denied access to innovations. The same way app-based ride-hailing freed Black New Yorkers from a lifetime of cabs that wouldn’t stop, autonomous vehicles offer the next leap forward in rides that can’t discriminate.
This fall, Albany should work together to champion policies that would open the door to a well-regulated autonomous vehicle industry. New Yorkers deserve the opportunity to see what this technology can do to make our streets safer with laws focused on safety above all, operator accountability, and economic opportunities.
Autonomous vehicles are already making streets safer in cities and states across the country, and their potential to create new opportunities by filling transit gaps is only growing. Setting up roadblocks won’t stop that future from arriving, New York can’t afford not to shape that future.
Sharpton is founder and president of the National Action Network.