More Traffic Fatalities in New York City in 2012

A majority of those who died were pedestrians, accounting for 148 of the 274 deaths. But most of the increase since 2011 was attributable to automobile driver and passenger deaths. There were 73 of those deaths in 2012, up from 50 the year before.

The city also recorded 18 cyclist fatalities, down from 22 in 2011, and 35 motorcyclist deaths, an increase from 32. For the third year in a row, the city said, no pedestrians were killed in crashes with cyclists.

Within the data-driven Bloomberg administration, street safety figures have been trumpeted as a signature achievement in recent years, as interventions like expanded bike lanes and pedestrian plazas have remade much of the city’s transportation system.

Officials were quick to point to the long-term trend of reduced fatalities, noting that even though the 2012 figure exceeded the 245 deaths in 2011, it still represented the fourth fewest traffic deaths on record since 1910.

The city’s traffic fatality rates were less than one-third of the national average and half the rates of other big cities, officials said. Preliminary national figures for 2012 also suggested an increase in fatalities.

Connecting the statistics to recent calls to install speed-tracking cameras across the city, the Transportation Department said that speeding had accounted for about 30 percent of the deaths. Fatalities associated with hit-and-run crashes increased to 47, an increase of 31 percent compared with 2010.

According to the department, pedestrians who are hit by a car traveling at 30 miles per hour have an 80 percent chance of surviving. But those hit at 40 m.p.h. or more have only a 30 percent chance of survival.

“It’s a matter of physics,” Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, said in a phone interview.

Though the city has long lobbied for a speed camera bill, proposals have languished in Albany. A budget package in the State Assembly has authorized the city to install speed cameras, but a final budget deal for the state has not yet been reached.

Amid persistent prodding from advocates who are often critical of the city’s traffic enforcement, calls for the cameras have intensified in recent weeks, as officials like Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, have encouraged the state to approve their use.

But the plan has faced opposition from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

“Many speeders are unlicensed, some are operating under the influence and sometimes they are fleeing crime scenes or carrying weapons,” the group’s president, Patrick J. Lynch, said in a statement. “Cameras let all those dangers slip by.”

He said that money allocated for speed cameras would be better spent in hiring more officers.