The article suggests that drivers who kill people get off lightly in NYC and that may be true. But what statistics say is that the City has been progressively getting safer for pedestrians over the past decade.

There were 4.87 fatalities per 100,000 in NYC in 2001 and that number has dropped to 2.8 per 100,000 for 2011.

Perhaps City officials found it more useful to make safety improvements and changing the behavior of all drivers than to harshly punish drivers who made a fatal mistake after the fact.

http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4...