Amy Cohen: Families for Safe Streets and Sammy’s Law

Amy Cohen is a Brooklyn social worker and street safety activist who co-founded Families for Safe Streets in 2014 after her twelve-year-old son, Sammy Cohen Eckstein, was struck and killed by a speeding van. The organization she helped build has grown from a small group of New York City crash survivors into a national network that has helped pass some of the country’s most significant traffic safety laws, including the 2024 New York measure known as Sammy’s Law.¹

The Crash That Started It

On October 8, 2013, Sammy Cohen Eckstein was near the entrance to Prospect Park in Park Slope when a ball he was bouncing rolled into Prospect Park West. A driver in the left lane stopped and motioned for him to cross. A van in the right lane passed the stopped car at roughly 30 miles per hour, trying to make a green light, and struck him. He was pronounced dead at Methodist Hospital.²

No criminal charges were brought against the driver. More than a year and a half later, an administrative law judge suspended his license for 180 days, citing failure to use due care, unsafely passing another car, and driving with an invalid license.³

Building Families for Safe Streets

Cohen co-founded Families for Safe Streets in 2014 in partnership with Transportation Alternatives, a New York City nonprofit focused on walking, cycling, and transit advocacy. Transportation Alternatives supplied 501(c)(3) status, administrative support, and organizational infrastructure; the families themselves set the group’s priorities and spoke for it in public.¹

Drawing on her background running a large social service agency, Cohen built a peer support structure staffed by English- and Spanish-speaking social workers for families who had recently lost loved ones or been seriously injured in crashes.⁴⁵ The advocacy work rested on what early accounts called the moral authority of surviving family members: testimony at legislative hearings, lobbying in Albany, public demonstrations. An early campaign, #CrashNotAccident, pushed news outlets and officials to drop the word “accident” and use “crash” instead, on the reasoning that traffic deaths are preventable.¹

What the Group Has Helped Pass

Working alongside New York City’s Vision Zero framework, Families for Safe Streets helped secure a run of policy wins. The city cut its default speed limit from 30 to 25 miles per hour. The state authorized what is now the country’s largest speed safety camera program, which operates around the clock and has been credited with cutting deadly speeding by more than 90 percent where cameras are installed.⁶ The group also helped pass a New York City law making it a criminal misdemeanor for a driver to kill or seriously injure a pedestrian or cyclist who has the right of way.¹

In 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law letting municipalities outside New York City drop their speed limits to 25 miles per hour.⁷

Sammy’s Law

The signature legislative fight was over the bill informally called Sammy’s Law, which would give New York City authority to set its own speed limits without needing state approval. First introduced in 2020, it stalled in Albany for years. In June 2023, Cohen and other Families for Safe Streets members staged a nearly 100-hour hunger strike outside the Assembly chamber during the final week of session, pressing Speaker Carl Heastie to bring the bill to the floor. He ended session without a vote.⁸

The bill passed the following year as part of the state’s FY2025 budget, and Hochul signed it on May 9, 2024.⁹ It allows the city to lower speed limits to 20 miles per hour on most streets, and to 10 miles per hour on streets undergoing safety-related redesigns, with exceptions for major multi-lane thoroughfares in the outer boroughs.¹⁰ Implementation began on October 9, 2024, when the city installed 20-mph signs along a 19-block stretch of Prospect Park West, the street where Sammy was killed, running from Grand Army Plaza to Bartel-Pritchard Square.¹¹ By the end of 2025, the city planned to reduce limits at 250 locations, including a regional slow zone in lower Manhattan.¹²

Going National

The first chapters outside New York City formed in 2015 and 2016 in Oregon, Washington State, and the Bay Area. By the early 2020s, Families for Safe Streets had chapters in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Utah, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Southern California, greater Washington D.C., Maryland, Ohio, and Toronto, with more than a thousand members.¹³

A major recent focus is Intelligent Speed Assistance, technology that uses GPS or cameras to keep vehicles from exceeding posted limits. Cohen testified before the New York State legislature in February 2026 in support of the Stop Super Speeders Act, which would require ISA devices on vehicles owned by habitual speeders. She cited city data showing ISA-equipped vehicles complied with speed limits 99.74 percent of the time, with a 36 percent reduction in hard braking.¹⁴ The bill passed the state Senate in June 2025 but died in the Assembly and was reintroduced for the current session.¹⁵ ISA bills backed by Families for Safe Streets chapters have also passed in Virginia, Georgia, Washington State, and Washington D.C., with active campaigns in California, Maryland, Arizona, and Vermont.¹⁶

Dispute Over the Law’s Scope

In June 2025, Cohen wrote an opinion piece accusing Mayor Eric Adams of “disgracefully” invoking Sammy’s Law to justify a citywide 15-mph speed limit for e-bikes. She argued the law was intended to slow cars and trucks, and that the administration had lowered motor vehicle speeds on fewer than one percent of city streets while trying to apply the law across thousands of miles for e-bikes alone.¹⁷

Results So Far

The policies Cohen has pressed for sit inside New York City’s Vision Zero initiative, and the numbers have moved. In 2025, the city recorded 205 traffic fatalities, the lowest since record-keeping began in 1910 and a 31 percent decline from 2014. Child traffic deaths fell from 16 in 2024 to 6 in 2025, a 63 percent drop in a single year. Pedestrian fatalities fell 9 percent.⁶ Cohen has said she has “no plans to give up.”⁵

1
Vision Zero Network. From Grief to Action: Families for Safe Streets Takes the Lead in NYC
2
Streetsblog New York City. Samuel Cohen Eckstein, 12, Killed by Van Driver on Prospect Park West
3
The Forward. License of Driver That Killed 12-Year-Old Suspended
4
Families for Safe Streets. People
5
Gothamist. Brooklyn Mom Continues Fight for Safer Streets a Decade Into NYCs Vision Zero Program
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NYC.gov. Traffic Deaths Reach All-Time Low
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Governor.ny.gov. Governor Hochul Signs New Laws to Enhance Street Safety
8
Gothamist. Mother of Crash Victim on Failure of NYC Speed Limit Bill
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Governor.ny.gov. Governor Hochul Joins New York City Officials and Activists to Celebrate Signing Sammys Law
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NYC.gov. Sammys Law Enactment
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ABC7 New York. Sammys Law Goes Into Effect to Reduce Speed Limits
12
Patch. Sammys Law NYC Lower Speed Limits Goes Into Effect
13
Families for Safe Streets. History
14
New York State Senate. Amy Cohen Budget Hearing Testimony
15
New York State Senate. S4045C Stop Super Speeders Act
16
Funders Network. Advocacy Spotlight: Families for Safe Streets
17
Streetsblog New York City. Amy Cohen: Mayor Adams Disgracefully Invokes Victim Sammy Cohen Eckstein in E-Bike Speed Limit Ploy