Whenever I read about pedestrian accidents in NYC, they often take place at intersections and, many times, the person was hit by a turning car.

Just last week, a 78 year old woman was fatally hit by an SUV in NYC as it made a left turn on the Upper East Side. The accident took place in the middle of the afternoon as a 2023 Nissan Pathfinder was making a left turn onto busy 2nd Avenue.

Unfortunately, many drivers turn too fast on NYC streets, that have a 25 mph speed limit. Turns should be made at a much slower speed. It is recommended that the speed should not be more than 10-15 mph. There is no legal requirement for speed, but I would think a 5 mph recommendation would be safer. In addition, left turns are especially dangerous for pedestrians because the driver making the left turn faces traffic coming towards them. The driver may be too preoccupied with trying to find a good traffic opening for the turn and not be focused on the pedestrian in the crosswalk.

An excellent summary is contained here: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/docs/00674.pdf

It describes the challenges of the driver making a left turn at an intersection:

“The complexity of the primary driving task can greatly influence the peripheral detection of pedestrians. For instance, a driver who is approaching an intersection has to concentrate on the traffic lights (primary task) as well as to detect potential threats at and around the intersection (peripheral detection).”

Also noted is the issue of older drivers, and how it affects driving skills:

“The higher involvement ratio for older drivers can be explained by various changes with age, including narrowing of their visual field, poorer contrast sensitivity, increased time required to change focus, slower eye movement, problems with depth perception, and slower decision making. Similarly, older drivers appear to have more difficulties in judging time-to-collision and acceptable gaps, especially when turning left at intersections.”

As a pedestrian, we need to keep all of our wits about us to keep from getting hit. It’s extremely important for pedestrians to be looking all around them to see any cars which appear to be starting a turn, or in the process of making a turn and try to maneuver yourself out of harm’s way. Staring straight ahead of you, or being distracted by a phone, is not a good practice. My own personal practice is to try to look directly at the driver, and, by doing that, hope he actually sees me.