I feel Western New York needs a Courtesy Promotes Safety Program to help increasing motorist awareness of
yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks and reducing conflicts between motorists and pedestrians. They need to utilize the people who are qualified to could enforce this awareness in the engineering, education,
and enforcement efforts. The Courtesy Promotes Safety program increased motorists' willing to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks from 33 to 73 percent and reduced crashes in crosswalks by 50 percent.
I live very close to a corner Avery Ave and Delaware Ave. that I called hit-and-run alley. In the last 10 years has been a very busy area for pedestrians being hit by motorists because their discourtesy to pedestrians. At that time I brought this problem to the attention of the Council members of the City of Buffalo. In all this time they have done very little to help people for the City of Buffalo. The federal government provides grants for cities to help to promotes safety within the city. Personally I don't think it would cost City of Buffalo or Western New York to have Courtesy Promotes Safety Program for this area. The biggest problem in this area that we do not have traffic engineering working with community groups to make the neighborhood safer. If the City of Buffalo really was enforcing the law would not have people going through red lights and not even hitting their breaks. The reason you have discourtesy in the city is because no one is paying the price of being ill responsible to willing to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks.
If the Street Engineering is were doing their job they would not put stoplights in sequence with a particular speed in the City of Buffalo. They were taken out of sequence so that motorist would have to slow down their speed going through the City of Buffalo. If the Police Department for the City of Buffalo was writing more tickets and enforcing the law concerting traffic within the City of Buffalo you would have less problems of discourtesy drivers. If the State of New York with the Engineering department with the City of Buffalo were working together they could solve many problems concerning yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks and reducing conflicts between motorists and pedestrians. If the community groups in junction with the educational department were working together they could solve many problems relating to safety in the City of Buffalo streets.
If Western New York had more courtesy drivers this would be a better neighborhood.