NYC DOT Relaunches Truck Smart Ad Campaign to Reduce Bridge Strikes, Promote Traffic Safety

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IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 3, 2025  
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NYC DOT Relaunches Truck Smart Ad Campaign to Reduce Bridge Strikes, Promote Traffic Safety

Advertising material for NYC DOT's Truck Smart campaign, which includes billboard and radio advertisements. Credit: NYC DOT

NEW YORK - New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez today announced the relaunch of NYC DOT's successful Truck Smart advertising campaign to promote safety and awareness amongst truck drivers, in an effort to protect pedestrians, cyclists, and infrastructure such as the city's overpasses. The ads will run on billboards, radio programs, and major approaches to the city through late December. Truck safety is a top Vision Zero priority as crashes involving trucks and pedestrians or between trucks and cyclists continue to result in fatalities or serious injuries at a higher rate than other types of vehicles.

"With the holiday season underway and freight being at the forefront of the city's transportation challenges, it is important that we raise awareness for truck operators about pedestrian and cyclist safety, and on the costly impacts to our infrastructure when official truck routes are not followed," said NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez. "The Truck Smart ad campaign is designed to heighten truck drivers' awareness for pedestrians, cyclists, and truck heights at our overpasses."

The billboard component of the campaign features five safety messages:

• Check your blind spot; look for pedestrians and cyclists
• Give bikes three feet when passing; don't pass if you can't
• Size Matters; trucks, know your height
• Don't take shortcuts, use truck routes
• Trucks turn safest at five mph

Advertising material for NYC DOT's Truck Smart campaign, which includes billboard and radio advertisements. Credit: NYC DOT

An excerpt of the Size matters, know your height radio ad follows:

• On New York City streets, size matters. As a truck operator, your attention to safety saves lives.
• Know your vehicle's height-and plan ahead. Low clearances on city parkways make them off-limits to trucks and commercial vehicles.
• A wrong turn can lead to dangerous-and costly-collisions. Don't let that be you.

The billboards will be featured in multiple locations, including: along the Long Island Expressway, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in both Brooklyn and Queens, the Gowanus Expressway, the Major Deegan Expressway, at a Lincoln Tunnel exit entering Manhattan, along Manhattan's West Side Highway, and at Forest Avenue and Maple Parkway on Staten Island, near Route 440 and the Staten Island Expressway.

The campaign's radio component features four different ads, ranging from :15 to :30 seconds, and will be broadcast in the New York City market, but will also reach the trucking community via streaming on TuneIn radio. The radio ads convey the same messages in the billboards, with additional context provided by the narrators.

Trucks and pedestrian/cyclist safety

NYC DOT found that between 2003 and 2016, truck-involved crashes with pedestrian or cyclists involving serious injuries (KSI) resulted in higher rates of fatalities than when other vehicle types were involved, with 40 percent of the pedestrians KSI being fatal and 30 percent of the cyclist KSI resulting in death. There were 140 freight-involved fatalities between 2020-2024, amounting to 11 percent of all traffic deaths in that period. Overall, NYC had 792 freight-involved KSI during that five-year span.

Trucks and bridge strikes

Between 2019 and 2021, the city experienced an increase in bridge strike incidents along city parkways, rising from 72 in 2019 to a high of 108 in 2021 during a period of intense pandemic-driven freight activity. While these numbers have seen some improvement, dropping to 86 in 2022 and stabilizing at 63 in both 2023 and 2024, bridge strikes remain a preventable hazard that demands constant attention.