Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Media Watch

New York DMV No Longer Describes Traffic Crashes as “Accidents” [Updated]

By Brad Aaron | Feb 14, 2013 | 13 Comments

A sharp-eyed reader pointed out to us that the New York State DMV has stopped using the word “accident” in its annual statistical summaries. On its 2011 data web page, and in each of its 2011 reports, DMV refers to traffic crashes as “crashes.” “Accident” does not appear in any of the agency’s 2011 materials. […]

STREETFILMS

The Refreshing Pedestrian Scenes of “Silver Linings Playbook”

By Clarence Eckerson Jr. | Feb 4, 2013 | No Comments

I finally got around to seeing the Oscar-nominated “Silver Linings Playbook,” and it’s a charming film. It certainly deserves to be right up there with the top pictures of 2012. And as the film unspooled, I got a pleasant surprise: Neither of the main characters owns (or drives) a car. Except for the opening scenes […]

Keeping CNN Honest: 10 Ways Anderson Cooper Got the Rail Story Wrong

By Tanya Snyder | Jan 31, 2013 | No Comments

Last Friday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper ran a segment about high-speed rail as part of his “Keeping Them Honest” series. Reporter Drew Griffin did an “exposé” of a Vermont rail project that spent .00006 percent of the federal stimulus money on needed track improvements and came in on time and under budget. Scandal! It amounts to […]

Three City Pedestrians Killed in Five Hours; No Charges Filed

By Brad Aaron | Jan 30, 2013 | 7 Comments

Three pedestrians were killed in separate crashes in Manhattan and Brooklyn last night. At around 7:50 p.m., 85-year-old Richard Griffin was on his way to visit a hospital patient, according to the Post, when he was apparently struck head-on by the driver of a Jeep SUV on York Avenue at E. 69th Street. Griffin, of Staten Island, […]

The Hypocrisy of Denis Hamill’s Blind Road Rage

By Ben Fried | Jan 30, 2013 | 31 Comments

How’s this for some cognitive dissonance? Daily News columnist Denis Hamill, whose stock-in-trade is bitter nostalgia, went off yesterday on the city’s efforts to make streets safer for biking. The rant is straight out of the John Cassidy mold — basically, Hamill wants you to know that cyclists today have it easy because, unlike himself, […]

Despite Awful Track Record, Plaza NIMBYs Always Good for a Quote

By Brad Aaron | Jan 28, 2013 | 5 Comments

In case you missed it, the Brooklyn Paper ran a by-the-numbers NIMBY react piece on a public plaza that has been proposed for Broadway near Bedford Avenue. Though DOT has installed dozens of successful, community-backed plazas across the city, reporter Danielle Furfaro leads her story with typical narrow-minded complaints and baseless predictions. Furfaro says the […]

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