A 75-year-old grandmother was killed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan
on Sunday by a cab driver who admitted to working an illegal shift.
Salifu Abubkar admitted that he had worked an illegal 16-hour shift as
a cab driver when he hit and killed a 75-year-old woman as she crossed
the street on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 109th Street. She was in the crosswalk and had the light.
The cab driver, a resident of the Bronx, passed a Breathalyzer test, but
admitted to working a 16-hour shift, four hours longer than the legal
12-hour limit imposed by the City of New York on livery drivers. Mr. Abubkar
worked as a cab driver for over 20 years and routinely worked over 16
hours per day to make a living.
Mayor de Blasio’s “Vision Zero” Plan has garnered mixed
results. Since Halloween, traffic-related incidents have claimed 11 lives.
The Vision Zero plan—a traffic plan originating in Sweden in the
late 1990s with the goal of reducing the number of traffic fatalities
to zero—mandates increased police enforcement and has resulted in
police issuing over 12,000 more speeding tickets than last year. However,
it remains to be seen whether de Blasio’s plan to slap drivers with
more fines will result in fewer pedestrian deaths.