Well what if the people enforcing this particular law do so only because they are getting some percentage of the ticket fee?
It could lead to, for instance, inappropriately low speed limits and an inordinate amount of police work on traffic violations instead of things that are more dangerous but make less money.
I completely agree with the sentiment, those are all valid concerns. But in the context of New York City I strongly believe the dangers to pedestrians are paramount.
> inappropriately low speed limits
It's hard to imagine speed limits too low for a pedestrian intensive area like lower Manhattan. According to this fact sheet [1], "In the City of London, the rate of crash-related deaths and serious injuries within 20-mph residential zones dropped by 42 percent." ... probably worth it in an area where pedestrians greatly outnumber drivers.
> inordinate amount of police work on traffic violations instead of things that are more dangerous
I'm not sure there's anything in the city right now more dangerous to the average citizen than unsafe driving, given that there are on average 4,250 permanently-debilitating injuries from traffic injuries due to traffic injuries each year in the city. [1]
If I'm reading this correctly, homicide still kills more people than traffic accidents. So while the injury rate may be higher for traffic, death rate still seems to be biased toward homicide.
As for how to make the traffic better, your source indicates 1/4 of fatalities are from drivers failing to yield right of way. One idea is that if intersections in cities had turn arrows and different parts of the cycle for turning cars and pedestrians, that could reduce that significantly. Doing an analysis of why people get hit even though they're in the crosswalk or whatever might be informative here rather than just going straight for speed limit or installing airbags on the fronts of cars.
Of course, I think the real solution is not better traffic laws, but self-driving cars. People are fundamentally poorly suited to driving cars and only a machine can do a consistent job without getting bored or impatient. Once we have a decent number of self driving cars, any ways to improve pedestrian safety will probably look totally different.
It might save a lot of lives to focus less on new traffic laws and more on making autonomous cars a reality (the legal side of that seems to be progressing very slowly).
It could lead to, for instance, inappropriately low speed limits and an inordinate amount of police work on traffic violations instead of things that are more dangerous but make less money.