Here’s our monthly summary of Vision Zero progress in Queens.  Highlights:

• Progress toward reducing pedestrian and cyclist injuries is difficult to measure in most precincts.  Six precincts (102, 104, 107, 110, 111, and 115) appear to have made real progress, but boroughwide ped/cyclist injuries have only fallen 3.2% relative to the average from the past two years.
• Injuries among motorists and passengers has also been mixed precinct to precinct with the greatest improvement seen in six precincts (100, 104, 105, 107, 110, and 115).  Boroughwide, vehicle occupant injuries have fallen 7.5% relative to the previous two years.
• Tickets issued for Speeding and Failure to Yield for Pedestrians continue to be issued at a significantly higher pace than in previous years in nearly every precinct in Queens.
• However, many precincts in Queens have not significantly increased their enforcement against red light running (“Failure to Stop at Signal”).  In only eight precincts (102, 103, 104, 107, 110, 111, 112, and 114), are year-to-date enforcement levels in 2014 significantly above their 2013 levels.
• And enforcement against illegal cell phone use while driving has fallen off the charts.  Only in the 103rd precinct re enforcement levels higher than they were in both 2012 and 2013.
• Queens leads the city as a whole in terms of increasing enforcement against speeding.   It lags the city as a whole in terms of reducing traffic injuries, enforcing failure to stop at signals, failure to yield to pedestrians, and driving while using cell phones.

We continue to recommend against drawing strong connections about changes in injury rates. Vision Zero is about changing the culture.  Enforcement, education, and engineering changes will take time to translate into safer behavior.  Also, the precincts are starting at different baseline levels of enforcement and injury rates, and they’re doing a lot of hard work on driver education that doesn’t translate directly into tickets issued. We’re tracking progress, but believe we should allow more time before we start drawing conclusions.

Keeping in mind that the precincts are all starting from different baselines, here are the precincts that are leading the way, relative to their averages for 2012 and 2013: