Members of "Right of Way," a street safety activist group, installed a series of guerilla speed limit signs in Brooklyn Saturday. The signs, which read "20 IS PLENTY," are part of an attempt to slow down drivers in residential neighborhoods like Park Slope, where 12-year-old Sammy Cohen-Eckstein was struck and killed by a van last month.
Cohen-Eckstein's mother, Amy Cohen, gave a tearful testimony to City Council weeks after her son's death, in support of a bill that would reduce speed limits in residential areas.
In a press release, Right of Way quoted Cohen and applauded her call to action:
We urge the City Council and Mayor-elect de Blasio to immediately pass the pending legislation for a citywide 20-mile-per-hour speed limit in all of our residential neighborhoods. Reducing the default speed limit to 20 miles per hour will provide an important margin of error so that many crashes can be avoided and when they do occur, injuries will be significantly reduced. According to witnesses, Sammy had the light when he entered the crosswalk but it quickly changed and the driver entered the intersection at full speed. If the van that hit Sammy had been going slower, the driver would have had plenty of time to stop when he saw Sammy’s ball in the street like the car in the next lane that stopped so that Sammy could enter the crosswalk.
On Tuesday, the City Council Transportation Committee will vote on the proposed bill, which would reduce the speed limit on residential side streets that are less than sixty feet wide, Gothamist reports.
Until then, Right of Way has their signs, which include both an image of a pedestrian and a bicyclist with wings. The signs are not intended to be permanent fixtures, according to group organizer Keegan Stephan, but are the same size, shape, material, and are hung at the same regulation height as all of the official DOT signs on every other block along Prospect Park West.
“We have put them up to show the City just how easy it is,” Stephan said in a press release.
(The NYPD hasn't responded to comment on whether Right of Way's campaign constitutes an arrestable offense. We'll update when we hear back.)
Related
Before You Go
