New York City is taking the next step in its years-long effort to improve municipal fleet safety, moving technologies that were once tested on a limited number of vehicles into procurement and operations across the city fleet.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed Executive Order 19 on July 23, requiring Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) in contracts to purchase or lease new civilian city fleet vehicles and pedestrian alerts in contracts for new city fleet trucks.

The order also directs the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) to retrofit existing city fleet trucks with pedestrian alerts by June 30, 2029.

For fleet managers outside New York, however, the significance may be less about the individual technologies and more about how the city got there.

From 50 Vehicles to Fleet Policy

New York City's use of ISA dates back to 2022, when DCAS launched a pilot involving 50 vehicles from nine city agencies.

ISA uses GPS positioning and digital speed-limit maps to determine the applicable speed and prevent further vehicle acceleration once the vehicle reaches that limit or a predetermined threshold. Drivers retain the ability to temporarily override the system under certain circumstances.

The program has since grown substantially. According to Executive Order 19, DCAS has implemented ISA on 1,000 vehicles across 22 agencies and 23 vehicle types, with equipped vehicles logging millions of miles since the initial launch.

More importantly, the city has been measuring the results.

DCAS reports a 64% reduction in dangerous speeding among ISA-equipped vehicles. The city previously announced plans in 2025 to expand ISA across its civilian fleet as part of its Safe Fleet Transition Plan.

Executive Order 19 takes that effort further by making ISA part of the city's vehicle acquisition process. Contracts for the purchase or lease of eligible civilian fleet vehicles must now require the technology, and ISA must be installed before the vehicle is accepted by DCAS' Bureau of Quality Assurance.

The order also directs DCAS to continue monitoring speeding incidents, collisions, and system overrides. DCAS can adjust maximum speeds, including establishing restrictions below posted limits in sensitive pedestrian areas such as parks or school zones.

Addressing the Risks Around Large Trucks

Speed management is only one component of the order.

New city fleet trucks must also be equipped with pedestrian alerts, which are connected to a truck's turn signals and provide an audible warning to pedestrians, bicyclists, and other road users when the vehicle turns.

The City had already deployed the technology on approximately 800 trucks before the executive order.

Now, DCAS must retrofit existing city fleet trucks with pedestrian alerts by June 30, 2029. City officials estimate that roughly 4,000 existing civilian trucks will ultimately receive the technology.

Emergency-service trucks are treated differently. The order directs DCAS to work with emergency-service agencies to test pedestrian alerts on those vehicles and, when they prove effective, take practicable steps to include them in future purchases.

Building on a Larger Safety Strategy

Government Fleet has followed the city's efforts as DCAS expanded the use of telematics, truck side guards, surround cameras, automatic braking, backup cameras, pedestrian alerts, and other safety technologies through its Vision Zero Safe Fleet Transition Plan.

The city's approach has increasingly centered on using operational data to determine which technologies should advance from testing to broader adoption.

That progression is what Peter Goldwasser, executive director of Together for Safer Roads, sees as particularly significant.

“What is particularly significant is the progression from testing safety interventions, to measuring their performance, to incorporating them into how a major fleet purchases and operates vehicles,” Goldwasser said. “This is how proven safety solutions move from promising ideas to standard practice.”

Together for Safer Roads has previously worked with New York City and DCAS through fleet-safety initiatives including its Truck of the Future program.

A Blueprint Other Fleets Can Adapt

Rather than treating a pilot as the end goal, Executive Order 19 illustrates what can happen after a fleet has enough evidence to determine whether a technology is delivering the intended results.

For another city, county, or state fleet, that could mean identifying a specific safety problem, testing a solution on a manageable portion of the fleet, establishing performance metrics before deployment, and using those results to determine whether the technology belongs in future vehicle specifications or procurement requirements.

“The challenge in fleet safety is increasingly not whether effective technologies and practices exist,” Goldwasser said. “It is how fleets can adopt them consistently, incorporate them into procurement and operations, measure their impact, and implement proven solutions at scale.”

In New York, a 50-vehicle ISA pilot ultimately helped inform a policy affecting thousands of municipal vehicles.

For other public fleets, the numbers may be smaller, but the progression — test, measure, standardize, and scale — offers a model that can be applied at nearly any fleet size.