2026 NYC Safety Overview
Manhattan's average traffic-safety score, second in the city. The densest borough is close to the safest to cross
NYPD crash records per home on the street
Our safety score measures traffic. It is built from NYPD collision records since 2021, counts people hurt rather than crashes filed, weights a death five times an injury, and divides by the homes and businesses on the street. It is not crime data. Crime is a separate count further down this page, and none of it enters this score.
Measured that way, 2026 looks nothing like the received wisdom:
- Staten Island leads at 56, and Manhattan is second at 55
- Brooklyn sits at 49 and the Bronx at 49, effectively level
- Queens finishes last at 43, the borough most often recommended to families
- Manhattan holds the fewest blocks scoring 85 or higher, 132, against 145 in Queens and 260 on Staten Island
Short dense blocks with slow traffic and a great many front doors produce a low crash rate per household. Wide fast arterials with houses set back from them produce a high one. Suburban form produces the wide, fast roads this score punishes.
Read the traffic-safety score for the exact street before you read anything about the neighborhood.
Note: Scores are recomputed weekly. The crash file runs from 2021 through mid-2026 and is reloaded with the rest of the pipeline.
Safest NYC Streets by the Data
Live rankings from NYC 311, HPD, DOB and NYPD crash records, updated weekly. Streets with fewer than 25 data points excluded.
| # | Street | Traffic safety |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | NETHERLAND AVE | 100 |
| 2 | BRISTOW ST | 100 |
| 3 | MARBLE HILL AVE | 100 |
| 4 | RECTOR PL | 100 |
| 5 | E 238 ST | 100 |
| 6 | BOGARDUS PLSingle development | 100 |
| 7 | 1 ST | 100 |
| 8 | PALISADE AVE | 100 |
| 9 | BURDEN CRES | 100 |
| 10 | TUDOR CITY PLSingle development | 100 |
| 11 | DEVOE TER | 100 |
| 12 | MULFORD AVE | 100 |
| 13 | DINSMORE PLSingle development | 100 |
| 14 | VANDERVEER ST | 100 |
| 15 | BETHEL LOOPSingle development | 100 |
Safest Neighborhoods by Borough
Average traffic-safety score by borough: Staten Island 56, Manhattan 55, Brooklyn 49, the Bronx 49, Queens 43.
Manhattan finishes higher than almost anyone expects, and Yorkville is where that is clearest. The 10028 ZIP code, East 79th to East 86th, averages 87 across its graded streets and 10021 averages 85. East 69th Street scores 94, West 12th Street 96 and East 72nd Street 91. The Upper West Side around 79th averages 80.
Brooklyn holds 185 blocks at 85 or higher, the second-largest supply in the city. Grace Court in Brooklyn Heights takes a perfect 100, with Montieth Street, a 2-building development, at 97 and 96th Street in Bay Ridge level with it. Park Slope's 11215 averages 71 across its 35 graded streets, genuinely strong, and Bay Ridge's 11209 averages 61.
The Bronx matches Brooklyn's average and beats it on standouts. Gale Place in Kingsbridge takes a perfect score, with Palisade Avenue at 100, Johnson Avenue at 99 and Thieriot Avenue in Soundview at 98. The borough holds 183 blocks at 85 or higher, and they are spread across it rather than clustered in the north.
Queens finishes last, and its two most-recommended neighborhoods land on opposite sides of the line. Forest Hills' 11375 averages 46, under the citywide 50. Bayside sits well above it: 57 in 11361, 61 in 11364 and 71 in 11360. The through-roads are what pull the borough down. Roosevelt Avenue scores 23 and Steinway Street 27.
Staten Island leads on average and on supply, 260 blocks at 85 or higher. But its estate roads sit at the floor of the city alongside its arterials: Richmond Terrace scores 2 and Hylan Boulevard 3. The South Shore residential grid is where the borough's number comes from: Thornycroft Avenue scores 98, Winchester Avenue 98 and Fairbanks Avenue 97.
Todt Hill Road scores 0 out of 100 on traffic safety. Thornycroft Avenue, four miles south on the same island, scores 98.
Why the Block Beats the Neighborhood
A neighborhood-level ranking hides the thing that decides your risk. Two streets a few hundred feet apart, same ZIP code, same reputation, routinely sit fifty or more points apart on this score, because one of them is an arterial and the other is not.
Staten Island makes the case inside one neighborhood. Todt Hill Road scores 0 and Benedict Road, the estate lane beside it, 13. Four miles south on the same island, Thornycroft Avenue sits near the ceiling at 98. The borough average of 56 describes neither.
So "is this a safe neighborhood" is the wrong question for this number. The right one is whether the street carries traffic that is not going to it. Use the neighborhood to narrow the search, then read the block, because on traffic the block is nearly the whole answer.
Pro Tip: A block under 20 on traffic safety ranks in the bottom fifth of streets of its own type, which almost always means it is carrying regional traffic past its own front doors. Check that number before the viewing, not after.
Street Crime Ranks the Boroughs in a Different Order
The traffic-safety score holds no police complaint in it. A second figure does, printed on every street page under the crash record: NYPD records in four categories on one block, felony assault, robbery, murder and a burglary at a home, since 2021 and through June 2026. Streets with 20 homes or more also carry a rate per 100 of them. It is a count of reports rather than a grade, and it stays outside the letter the page opens with.
The order it puts the boroughs in is not the traffic order. On the median residential street, the Bronx reads 3.6 counted events per 100 homes, Manhattan 2.2, Queens 2.1, Brooklyn 1.7 and Staten Island 0, with 54 percent of Staten Island's residential streets recording nothing in five and a half years. Queens finishes last on traffic and sits in the middle here. Manhattan finishes second on traffic and second from the top here.
Two streets named above read differently on the two numbers. Roosevelt Avenue scores 23 on traffic safety and holds 695 counted events at 7.94 per 100 homes, three times the 2.49 of the busy avenues it is ranked against, so the elevated corridor is the weak block on both counts. Benedict Road, the estate lane beside Todt Hill Road, reads 12.82 per 100 homes on 5 events across a few dozen houses, against 1.38 for quiet residential streets. A rate on a denominator that small moves by whole points on one report, and the figure is worth less there than the count beside it.
Richmond Terrace carries a precinct station house, and its page says so, because the NYPD files every complaint it could not place at the station house rather than at the address.
How to Evaluate Street Safety
Four things to do before you sign, in order.
- Read the traffic-safety score for the exact street. A block near the ceiling and a block near the floor can share a corner, and the traffic-safety column averages 50 across the city.
- Ask where the street goes. Streets that connect two arterials carry traffic with no reason to be on them, and that is the single strongest predictor of a bad score.
- Read the quiet score alongside it. The two disagree more than you would think. Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights scores 98 on quiet and 10 on traffic safety. Quiet tells you nothing about how fast the cars are moving.
- Walk the crossing you will use daily, at the hour you will use it. Our number is a five-year average, and a school-run crossing at 8am is a specific problem it cannot see.
Traffic safety is one of nine measures behind a street's overall grade. The others are quiet, cleanliness, road condition, parking, housing violations, transit access, street trees and food access. The street page shows all nine.