UPPER WEST SIDE — After a year in which eight people were killed in car crashes following the city's launch of Vision Zero, no one has died in vehicle-related incidents so far this year — marking a "banner year" for the initiative, police said.
Of the eight people killed last year in the 24th Precinct — which runs from West 86th to 110th streets between Riverside and Central Park — six were pedestrians, one was a cyclist and one was a driver.
But as of Wednesday evening, no one had died in car crashes during all of 2015 so far.
"It absolutely is a banner year for Vision Zero so far," 24th Precinct Capt. Marlon Larin told residents at a community council meeting Wednesday.
However, he cautioned that "we have 10 weeks to go" in 2015.
A month after three people were killed in the vicinity of West 96th Street and Broadway in January 2014, Mayor de Blasio rolled out the Vision Zero policy, which involves infrastructure changes, more enforcement and education, with the goal of bringing traffic fatalities down to zero.
The pedestrians killed by drivers in the precinct last year ranged in age from 9 to 73 years old, and all lived within blocks of where they died.
The cyclist was a 13-year-old boy who was hit by a cab on West 108th Street and later died of his injuries.
In a separate incident, a driver was thrown from his car on the Henry Hudson Parkway at West 110th Street and died a few months later.
Last year, six fatal crashes occurred in the 10025 zip code, representing the largest jump in fatalities in the entire city that year.
Since then, the 24th Precinct has made traffic safety a priority, particularly in hot spots like the intersection of West 96th Street and Broadway, Larin has said.
The Department of Transportation redesigned that intersection, as well as parts of West End Avenue where other fatal crashes occurred.
In July, data shows that crashes had gone down after the redesign.
While both the 24th and 20th Precincts haven't seen any fatal crashes so far this year, a 68-year-old tourist was killed across from St. John the Divine in May when a tour bus pulled forward and hit her.
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