Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.
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college point boulevard where the cyclist was struckOn June 4 2021, 16 year old Darwin Durazno died in a bicycle accident in Queens, NYC. The driver never stopped and Darwin was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. He died from his injuries 3 days later.  According to the police report, Darwin was riding his bicycle southbound on College Point Boulevard near 18th Avenue  when the driver of a Toyota Camry swerved into the ongoing traffic lane and crashed head-on into the bicyclist.  He then sped off leaving Darwin lying in the street with severe head trauma.

Witnesses of the accident were able to provide a detailed description of the car and of the driver, a male in his 20-30 as well as what the driver was wearing. The police found that the car was a rental from Enterprise that the driver left a block away from the accident scene before fleeing on foot.

It took 8 more months for the police to establish that the driver who killed Darwin was 27 year old Christian Soriano, a Corona resident. Soriano was arrested last week and was charged with driving without a license, leaving the scene of an accident and criminally negligent homicide.  (Read more in StreetBlog)

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dangerous intersection of Cypress and CooperReckless driving in New York City continues and another pedestrian died in a horrific car accident last Saturday night in Queens. A video posted on Twitter (see below) shows the pedestrian crossing in front of a white SUV who did not yield to him and knocked him down on the ground. Then the driver of a black SUV whose car was so tall that he probably did not see the pedestrian lying on the ground, rolled over him and dragged him under his car for a few feet.  The 57 year old pedestrian was still breathing when the EMS rescued him but he died shortly later at the hospital. The driver of the white SUV, a 40 year old man received a summons for failure to yield. The NYPD did not say if the driver of the black SUV was charged. Large SUVs and trucks are responsible for a large number of pedestrian injuries and deaths in New York City.

The accident occurred at the intersection of Cypress and Cooper which is close to Glendale, Queens as well as Ridgewood and Bushwick in Brooklyn. Both cars were making a left turn from Cooper Avenue onto Cypress while other cars coming from the other direction were also turning right onto Cypress. The video shows the white SUV cutting really short in front of another car making a right turn and then the black SUV driving over the pedestrian to avoid a collision with another car turning right as well.

The intersection is notoriously dangerous but except for new pavement last year, it was never redesigned. During the de Blasio administration, according to NYC Crash Mapper, 153 crashes occurred at this location resulting in 73 people injured. Among them were 56 motorists, 10 pedestrians and 7 cyclists.

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Tesla Motors is facing product liability lawsuitsA man who was seriously injured and whose wife died after their Tesla struck a fire truck while on Autopilot mode is suing Tesla for personal injury and wrongful death. Derek Monet was driving his car on autopilot on a highway in Indiana in December 2019 when the car crashed into the rear of a fire truck that was responding to an accident and was stopped on the road.  Derek suffered a broken spine and a broken femur and his wife died in the accident

In his claim Derek says Tesla knew that its software failed to react to emergency vehicles with flashing lights but did not recall its vehicles to update the software.  The claim was filed  after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation last year and asked Tesla to release its non-disclosure agreements with drivers who were testing the “full-self” driving system. The NHTSA is aware of 11 similar accidents during which Tesla cars struck emergency vehicles with flashing lights and wants to know why the car manufacturer did not recall its vehicles after it transmitted a wireless software update designed to prevent crashes into stationary objects.

The 68 page lawsuit demonstrates how Elon Musk and other executives were well aware that the autopilot was not safe but that the company continued to “hype”  its cars as if they were

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Ydanis_Rodriguez26 people died in traffic crashes in  NYC this month according to the NYPD. This is a 63% increase compared to January 2021 when 16 people died in auto accidents in the city. This is the highest number of car accident fatalities since Vision Zero started in February 2014. 28 people died in car accidents in January 2013 and 21 in January 2014. After that the number of car accident deaths in January remained below 20 with respectively 13, 17, 18, 11, 19 and 19 fatalities in January 2015, 2016, 2017. 2018. 2019 and 2020. Among the victims were a 99 year old holocaust survivor and a teenager struck by a school bus on her way to school. After  this horrible accident, Mayor Adams said the NYPD would crack down on drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians and the new Transportation Commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez said “At DOT the team is working 24/7 to come out with a different way of how we redesign the streets, reorganize the signal system, everything we have in our agency to address this epidemic”. January numbers however show a different story: less tickets were issued for failure to yield in January 2022 than in January 2021 and among the 3,000 to 6,000 reckless drivers who have been listed in the new “Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program” managed by the DOT, only 97 took the mandated driving class so far.

Additionnally,  last Thursday, a DOT crew tried to dismantle a popular  Open Street on Willoughby Avenue in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn without informing the community. Residents immediately reacted and protested with anger. As a result the same day at night, DOT workers were reinstalling the Open Street signs that had been removed hours earlier. The residents were extremely surprised by the DOT reaction as the Open Street experience on Willoughby Avenue was very popular and the first open street to receive “Light Touch” treatment by the DOT such as planters, signage, curb extension and other safety amenities.  The dismantlement came a few days after the DOT announced that it was postponing the creation of a well needed pedestrian lane on the Queensboro bridge.

This is definitely not a good start for the DOT.

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speed-cameras1Speed cameras in New York City have lead to a decrease in crashes but some drivers says they are an unfair way to get revenue from predominantly communities of colors.

After a recent article in ProPublica looked at Chicago traffic camera tickets and found out that it was disproportionately ticketing Black and Latino drivers, Street blog NY investigated the situation in New York and found that while speed cameras were equally located all over the city, areas where streets had not been redesigned  to be safer were the areas where the most tickets were issued. These areas are where communities of color reside.

East New York zip code 11208 which is an area where 54% of the population is black and 59% of households do not have a car, cameras recorded 187,456 speed tickets, the highest in New York City.  That’s more than 500 tickets a day.

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According to the most recent NYPD collision statistics, a total of 254 people died in motor vehicle accidents in New York City last year. Among them were 108 pedestrians, 15 cyclists, 33 vehicle passengers and 98 motor vehicle drivers.  Before Vision Zero started in  2014, 286 people died in auto accidents in 2013. Then the number of deaths went down to 250 in 2014, 235 in 2015, 223 in 2016. It reached its lowest in 2018 with 199 traffic accident fatalities and then gradually increased to 214 deaths in 2019 and 239 in 2020.

While pedestrians remain the category of road users recording the highest number of deaths of all road users with 108 of them dying last year, the numbers that caused the total traffic fatalities in New York City to be so high last year were the record number of motorists and passengers fatalities. 98 motorists died and 33 passengers were killed in car accidents last year compared to 84 and 23 in 2013 before Vision Zero started. Distracted driving, speeding and recklessness are the causes of most of these fatalities.

car accident fatalities NYC 2021
Traffic accidents injuries remain lower than usual but however a little bit higher than last year with a total of 50,617 people injured in car accidents in 2021 compared to respectively 43,601, 60,234, 60,646, 58,990, 58,526, 51,255, 50,886 and 54,818 in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013. A diminution of the day to day activity in the city because of the ongoing Covid19 crisis may be a factor behind these lower than usual numbers.

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Oriental Boulevard99 year old Jack Mikulincer was crossing the street in his electric wheelchair when he was fatally struck by a car. Mikulincer who survived two wars, the Nazi invasion of Hungary and the Holocaust was mowed down by one of his neighbors as he was taking his weekly trip to the synagogue.  The driver who was identified as 52 year old Pyotr Yadgarov, was driving his BMW SUV west on Oriental Boulevard in Manhattan Beach when he struck Jack Mikulincer who was crossing north near Coleridge Street, right next to his house.

The area is residential and the BMW driver lives just four blocks away from the victim. In such areas in NYC, the speed limit is 25 MPH.

Yadgarov who was not charged, has a history of speeding and recklessness. The plates of the car show a total of 10 speed camera tickets and 4 other tickets for running red lights since 2016. Last year only, the car was caught 6 times speeding in school zones.  Additionnally there are no pedestrian crosswalks on Oriental Boulevard, making it  even more dangerous for pedestrians to get to the other side of the Boulevard.

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Queensborough bridgeEvery day pedestrians and cyclists are risking dangerous collisions on the narrow share two-way lane on the Queensboro Bridge. De Blasio promised the bridge would be fixed and pedestrians and cyclists would be completely separated and share each a side of the bridge by the end of 2022.  This promise will not be kept as the DOT announced yesterday that the work will not be completed until the end of 2023.  The news raised a lot of outrage as, since the pandemic hit and New Yorkers changed the way they are commuting, the pedestrian and bicyclist traffic was 26 times more heavier than during pre-pandemic era according to  statistics from last September.  Near misses occur daily and crashes resulting in injuries are common on the narrow path where pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders and an influx of faster moped riders who despite knowing that they are illegally using the path, find it safer than riding among cars on the bridge.

Pedestrians and cyclists feel like they have been tricked

The DOT did not provide any explanation as to why the work was delayed except that it was related to the fabrication of the new deck. However pedestrians and cyclists advocates feel like they are taking advantage of. De Blasio promised the South outer roadway would be converted to a pedestrian path starting late 2021 and would be completed this year. Now the DOT says they can not do that because the South outer roadway need to be open to cars during the bridge renovation project.

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OSHA logoAfter a hard hat fatally fell 60 feet during demolition work on one of its construction sites, Richmond Construction, based in Queens, NYC, was hit by a $374,603 OSHA fine. This is the second highest OSHA fine for the last quarter of  2021.

Last May, a 49 year old worker hired by Richmond Construction was working on the demolition of the Flatbush Bank Building in Brooklyn. He had just finished breaking apart a section of the roof with a jackhammer and was  walking on the top of the exposed side when a piece of concrete on which he was standing broke apart. The man fell 60 feet down to the ground and died. The worker was not using proper safety equipment and had no training to execute such a dangerous job.

The OSHA investigators found that Richmond Construction failed to provide lifesaving fall protection and did not train employees to recognize and avoid fall hazards. The contractor was cited for 9 willful, repeat and serious violations including:

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Caption Description File URL: https://www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneysblog.com/files/2022/02/dangerous-road-conditions-NYC-scaled.jpg Copy URL to clipboard ATTACHMENT DISPLAY SETTINGS Alignment None Link To Media File URL https://www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneysblog.com/files/2022/02/dangerous-road-conditions-NYC-scaled.jpg Size Full Size – 2383 × 2560 Selected media actions 1 item selected Clear Insert into postA Brooklyn woman is the 12th pedestrian to die in a car accident in New York City since the beginning of this year. In a very graphic video the 64 year old pedestrian is seen walking West on the North sidewalk of Foster Avenue. As she arrives at the intersection of East 17th Avenue, she waits for the light to turn green and then proceeds to walk on the snowy street. At the same time, the driver of a grey Chevy makes a right turn from Foster onto 17th Street, does not yield  or slows down and slams into the pedestrian.

The driver, a 57 year old woman,  stayed at the scene of the accident and so far was not charged. The victim was rushed to the hospital where she died.

While the video clearly shows that the driver did not yield to the pedestrian, the snow that had not been proprely removed from the intersection made the area even more dangerous to navigate for pedestrians and vehicles.

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