New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order Thursday requiring new safety technology across the city's non-emergency municipal vehicle fleet, including pedestrian warning systems and intelligent speed assistance.
Executive Order 19 directs the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to install audible pedestrian alerts on approximately 4,000 existing non-emergency municipal trucks by June 2029. The alerts are linked to turn signals and designed to warn pedestrians, cyclists and other road users when a truck is preparing to turn.
The order also mandates that all newly purchased or leased non-emergency city vehicles and trucks be equipped with pedestrian alerts and intelligent speed assistance, which limits vehicle acceleration after exceeding the local speed limit or a preset speed threshold.
New York has already retrofitted 1,000 municipal vehicles with intelligent speed assistance technology since 2022, making it the nation's largest municipal fleet using the system. According to the city, the technology has reduced dangerous speeding among equipped vehicles by 64% over more than 8 million miles of driving.
"Our administration expects every driver to do their part to keep our streets safe for everyone, and that begins with those behind the wheel of our City vehicles," Mamdani said in a statement.
The city has installed more than 105,000 vehicle safety upgrades over the past decade, including truck side guards, backup alerts and surround-view cameras. New York operates the largest electric municipal vehicle fleet in the state, with approximately 5,850 electric vehicles and 2,500 charging stations.
Democratic state lawmakers and New York City Council members praised the executive order, saying the added safety features could help reduce crashes and improve pedestrian safety.