As New York City slowly implements a long-delayed reform of the private waste hauling industry, pedestrians and workers keep getting injured or killed at an alarming rate, according to a new report.
The city’s overhaul seeks to eliminate the long, inefficient routes common among commercial haulers. In 2019, the City Council passed a law requiring the implementation of a zone system, but the rollout has faced numerous delays. Just one out of 20 zones citywide will be implemented in the coming months. The new report, by the campaign Transform Don’t Trash NYC, argues the cost of that delay can be seen in the grim tally of injuries and deaths tied to the commercial waste industry.
Safety violations are still widespread among fleets of trucks owned by companies awarded spots in the new zones, according to the report, which found 103 injuries and three deaths involving those companies. The report analyzed data generated by the U.S. Department of Transportation from June 2022 to June 2024.
“Drivers and workers on these trucks [have] to do excessively long and fatiguing routes, which obviously can contribute to worker and public safety hazards,” said Justin Wood of the nonprofit law firm New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, one of the groups that compiled the report. “These things haven't yet changed because we don't yet have a full citywide implementation of this law.”
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