A 7 year old male pedestrian was fatally struck by a car in New York City on Thursday.
Payson Lott was walking to school with his mom. They were in the crosswalk with the light in their favor at the intersection of Blake Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue when a Jeep recklessly struck them. Payson died in the accident. Her mother Shadeen Lott suffered personal injury.
65 construction workers died from unintentional overdose while on the job in the US in 2018 compared to respectively 48, 32, 27, 18, 17, 7 and 7 in 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011. These deaths represent more than a quarter of the 305 overdose fatalities at workplaces recorded for all industries in the US in 2018. The construction industry is one of the most affected industries by the opioid crisis in the US.
In its recently published Quarterly Data Report, the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) provides an in-depth analysis of the dramatic increase of unintentional overdose fatalities on american construction sites.
A 10 year old girl was fatally struck by a school bus in New York City. The accident occured yesterday morning at 6:45 am at the intersection of Crescent Street and Wortman Avenue in the East New York area.
10 year old Patience Heaven Albert was walking to school with her 15 year old brother. They were in the crosswalk when an empty school bus made a right turn from Crescent Street onto Wortman Ave and struck the young girl. The intersection of Crescrent Street and Wortman is a residential intersection with a four-way stop sign.
On Monday we wrote about the death of 3 pedestrians over the weekend and now we learned that two additional female pedestrians died after being struck by cars in New York City on Sunday and Monday. Since last Thursday, NYC recorded one pedestrian death everyday and two on Sunday. This is intolerable.
On Monday night a 59 year old female pedestrian was struck by a car while she was crossing at the intersection of Sampson Ave and Tremont Ave in the Bronx, around 7 pm. The woman whose identity has not been released so far, was rushed to the hospital but could not be saved. The driver stayed at the scene of the accident and wasn’t charged. The police are still investigating the cause of the accident. Read more in PIX11
Following the increase in fatal bicycle accidents in New York City last year the DOT recently announced that New Yorkers would get 30 more miles of protected bike lanes all over the city this year.
The de Blasio administration has so far announced that 10 of the 30 miles would be allocated to Brooklyn and 10 others to Manhattan. In Brooklyn where most fatalities occurred last year, cyclists will soon have protected bike lanes while riding along 4th Avenue north to the Barclay Center, while riding out of the new Kosciuszko Bridge on Meeker Avenue and on Navy Street close to the Brooklyn Navy Yard as well as on Remsen Ave in Canarsie.
On the map released by the DOT at a previous conference (see picture), the pink lines show the protected bike lanes that will be added this year in Brooklyn and the yellow lines show potential protected bike lanes that might be added in 2021. The green lines are the existing bike lanes. Read more here
3 pedestrians died and two other were injured after being hit by motor vehicles in New York City over the weekend. Another pedestrian also died from injuries he sustained earlier in the month last Thursday.
26 year old Jose Contla was standing next to his vehicle parked on 19th Avenue near 86th Street when a driver hit him and took off. He was on his way to open the family bakery where he was working part time to pay for his degree in criminal justice at John Jay College. Contla fell on the ground and was found unconscious on the road by the EMTs. He was rushed to the hospital but could not be saved. The police are still looking for the driver of a black sedan (see picture).
A welder died and another construction worker was seriously injured after a building collapsed on a NYC construction site yesterday.
50 year old David Johnson, a father of two daughters going to college, was working on the demolition of a building located at 147-05 94th Ave in Jamaica, Queens, when the second floor where he was standing collapsed. Johnson and another unidentified worker were buried in the debris. When firefighters arrived, the condition were so bad that they had to use ladder trucks to free the victims. Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Hi co-worker was transported to the hospital with critical injury.
Johnson was an unionized welder with Local 79. He took the job at the non unionized demolition site run by the general contractor Cole Partners Inc because it was hard for him to find work. Before the accident, Leslie White, another member of Local 79 who worked as a safety supervisor on another site told him the day before “that thing is going to collapse”. Johnson told her not to worry.
Did you know that 95% of fatal train accidents were caused by vehicles at train crossings and pedestrians on tracks? Every 3 hours in the US someone is hit by a train. Most of these accidents are preventable.
According to preliminary Federal Rail Road Administration Statistics, 262 people died and 871 were injured in 2,296 collisions with trains in 2018 in the US. 2,217 collisions occurred at highway-rail grade crossings. Pedestrian rail trespassing resulted in 1015 causalities (fatalities and injuries). California and Texas have the most accidents for both highway-rail grade crossings and trespassing. New York ranked number 4 of all states with the most pedestrian trespassing causalities. 36 people died and 13 were injured while trespassing on New York railroads in 2018.
Two years ago one of our clients, actress Ruthie Ann Miles and her five year old daughter were struck by a reckless driver as they were crossing the street in the crosswalk with the light in their favor. The daughter was killed and the actress who was pregnant at the time of the accident, later on lost the baby she was carrying. Another 1 year old child was also killed in the accident. The driver, Dorothy Burns, had a history of reckless driving. In the year preceding the accident she was caught 4 times speeding in school zone areas and 4 other times running a red light.
Despite the many Vision Zero Initiatives implemented since 2014, the number of people dying in traffic accidents increased again last year after 4 years of decline. Many accidents were caused by reckless driving.
In an effort to address this problem, the City Council is about to adopt a new program that targets reckless drivers. The reckless driving initiative is expected to start as a 3 years pilot. During that time any owner of a vehicle that is charged with 5 red light camera violations or 15 speed camera violations in a year will have to complete a safety course developed by the DOT. If a reckless driver refuses to attend the safety course his vehicle may be seized.
Two years ago, Harry Ramnauh was crushed to death by a glass panel at a Manhattan construction site. He was a security guard at the construction site of the $3 billion Luxury Central Park Tower which when completed will be the tallest residential building in the world. Reaching 112 floors and a height of 1,550 feet, it is also the most expensive development in New York City. Apartments are listed at up to $63 million with a total projected sellout of $4 billion. (see building under construction on the right side of the picture)
Contractor argues that “failure to safeguard the public” doesn’t apply because the victim was a worker
After the death of the security guard, The New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) issued several citations to Lendlease, the general contractor for the construction of the residential tower. Lendlease successfully fought most of the violations and recently filed another petition against the DOB and the Office of Administration Trials and Hearings arguing that one of the citations, “failure to safeguard the public during construction”, doesn’t apply to the case because the victim was not a member of the public but a worker at the construction site. Lendlease also argues that the violation was issued based on an inspection that occurred 3 days after the accident and therefore it didn’t reflect the conditions at the time of the fatal construction accident.
New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog