The State of the Roads: 70th Precinct Moving Violations Numbers

In a neighborhood, a borough and a city with so many daredevil drivers, the 70th Precinct’s Moving Violations statistics can provide valuable insight into the state of the roads. The latest data available is from the month of July.

For 2012 until the end of July, the 70th precinct reports 10,492 moving violations. This number dwarfs our Western neighbor in the 66th precinct  (5,770, covering Borough Park and Kensington) and our Eastern neighbor in the 63rd (5,051, Marine Park and Flatlands) but measures up to the 67th (10,887), an area covering much of East Flatbush. The 61st (5,492, Sheepshead Bay) and 78th (4,301, Park Slope) also come in well below the 70th’s high mark.

In all of 2012, the most prolific offense belonged to cell phone violations. 2,176 violations (155 in July alone) were cell phone related.

At a Community Council meeting in March, Deputy Inspector Eric Rodriguez urged people to limit their use of cell phones and other devices while walking, riding the train, or driving. If you’re unaware of what’s going on around you, “you not only have the potential to become a victim of a crime, you also have the potential of being in an accident . . . a lot of the car wrecks we’ve been seeing, a lot of pedestrians getting hit, a lot of victims of crime are paying attention to their phone and not their surroundings.”

Other common violations included safety belt problems (1,725 instances in 2012), improper turns (780) and disobeying signs (956).

Do the numbers surprise you? Are there any violations out there that you see being given too much or too little attention? Perhaps you’ve heard of the holy church of traffic violations that is and always has been Coney Island Avenue. If the traffic laws start getting enforced there, it’d be hard to imagine us not taking a sizable lead in number of violations over the 67th precinct.