Working Families Party Endorses Bill to De-Criminalize Bus Operator Accidents

The New York State Working Families Party, an influential backer of Mayor de Blasio and other progressive elected officials, has issued a Memorandum of Support for City Council Bill Int. 663, "An amendment to Vision Zero law Int. No. 238, creating a new subdivision of the law clarifying exemption of City bus operators from right of way codification."

Read the Daily News story here.

The bill was introduced in the Council by Daneek Miller (D-Southeast Queens), a former Bus Driver, and has garnered significant support in the Council. It its Memorandum, the Working Families Party cites the "impossible situation" in which Bus Drivers are placed by the current Vision Zero law, which mandates an arrest for "failure to yield" at an intersection when there is a pedestrian accident. The impossible situation is created because mass transit Bus Operators, alone among public employees, must negotiate dozens of turns each day into busy pedestrian crosswalks where both the bus and the pedestrians have the right of way. When accidents occur, either through inadvertent carelessness on the part of the pedestrian, glare or lines of sight which prevent the Operator from seeing, the Operator is held culpable under Vision Zero even when no recklessness occurs.

The Bill would stop the automatic arrests of Bus Operators after "right of way" accidents, allowing the current MTA accident investigation system to take its course, assigning culpability, if warranted, following the investigation. Click "read more" for the complete text of the Memorandum of Support.

MEMORANDUM OF SUPPORT

LEGISLATION Int. No. 663

TITLE A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to the right of way of pedestrians and bicyclists.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS An amendment to Vision Zero law Int. No. 238, creating a new subdivision of the law clarifying exemption of City bus operators from right of way codification.

JUSTIFICATION

Working Families strongly supports Vision Zero, and embraces its goal of eliminating traffic-related fatalities in New York City. We applaud Mayor de Blasio for his leadership on this issue, which has inflicted heartbreaking tragedy on far too many New York families.

However, we are concerned that the Vision Zero legislation, as it now stands, puts more than 10,000 New York City bus operators in an impossible situation. On the one hand, MTA scheduling and route demands require the city’s drivers to navigate their buses through intersections teeming with pedestrians thousands of times each day, a circumstance which applies to no other large group of drivers. But despite these unique job requirements, even accidents that are unrelated to reckless driver behavior can lead to criminal charges for bus operators, including handcuffing, fingerprinting and arrest. In effect, this criminalizes the everyday work of these drivers.

For this reason, Working Families submits this memo urging Members of the New York City Council to support Council Member Daneek Miller’s amendment, Int. No. 663, which recognizes the unique situation facing bus operators working to transport New Yorkers safely across the City.

New York City’s bus operators transport 2.5 million New Yorkers on a normal workday. They do so with the utmost care for the safety of pedestrians, knowing that every pedestrian death on NYC’s streets is an unimaginable tragedy that causes profound grief, deep sorrow, and unfathomable suffering.

When the NYC Council created Vision Zero, it rightly wrote in an exception for drivers of municipal vehicles who, to fulfill their duties, are required to enter crosswalks where cyclists and pedestrian have the right of way. The exception does not apply if the driver acts recklessly.

The law was not designed for the purpose of punishing conscientious bus operators who are forced to operate repeatedly in dangerous circumstances. Therefore, New York Working Families rejects the notion that accidents not resulting from recklessness are criminal acts.

Instead, Working Families supports Council Member Daneek Miller’s amendment, which explicitly includes MTA Bus Operators in the exception. Further, we call upon the Mayor, the MTA, the Police Department and the Department of Transportation, in conjunction with the labor unions representing bus operators, to undertake a comprehensive review of all of the issues affecting bus mass transit and pedestrian accidents. Such a review should address factors including but not limited to potential route and schedule changes and safety adjustments to buses, in order to do everything possible to reduce pedestrian accidents while at the same time respecting the jobs being performed by hardworking New York City bus operators.

For More Information, Contact Janel Quarless, NY Legislative Campaigns Manager: 718 222 3796 x251 or jquarless@workingfamilies.org