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.

Articles Tagged with car accident nyc

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location of the two houses destroyed in the crash6 people were injured and two houses were destroyed after a car driver lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a residential building in Staten Island. The driver, identified as 38-year-old Mark Robles, was initially pulled over by the police for a broken brake light. One of the officers said he  saw a crack pipe in the car and the police attempted to get the man out of the car. Robles did not comply and sped away behind the wheels of his 2007 Jeep Patriot and the police started to chase him.

Residents were sleeping when the jeep crashed in their house

The chase took place at 3:30 am on Thursday morning during a rainstorm. Robles sped down on St Pauls Avenue, hit a patch of water, skidded, rotated 360 degrees and ended crashing into two houses located at the intersection of St Pauls and Van Duzer Street. 6 people suffered minor injuries.

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Reckless driving  and speeding caused 6 people to die and several to be injured in multiple car accidents all over the city. On Monday early morning, around 2:00 am, a black BMW landed on the Amtrak tracks below the Henry Hudson parkway around 183rd Street. The driver lost control of the vehicle and went over the barriers of the highway. When the car landed on the tracks it exploded, killing the driver and the passenger. The police was seen at the scene investigating the accident while Amtrak published a service advisory signaling delays for the trains travelling between Pen Station and Albany.

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Sara-Perez18 year old Sara Perez was fatally struck by a by a 16 year old driver in Queens NYC. The accident occurred last Thursday in front of the Northern Lube and Tire Shop at 106 Northern Boulevard near 107th street.  A video  shows the pedestrian on the sidewalk  waiting for the pick up truck to back out of the garage. After the truck moved out of the way, the young woman proceeded to walk again. As she was doing so, the driver of the pick up truck suddenly reversed into drive, accelerated and crashed into her at a high rate speed. She was crushed against a fence in front of several horrified witnesses. One of them got so upset that he  opened the door of the truck, pulled the driver out and pinned his hand behind his back.

When EMS arrived Sara was unresponsive. She was rushed to the hospital but she could not be saved and was pronounced dead. The young woman was heading home after buying some food for her 10 kittens. She lived just a block away. Sara was fostering stray cats kittens so they could be adopted. She was planning on becoming a veterinarian. She loved animals. The family of Sara set up a gofundme  (picture) to help with the funeral costs and other bills related to the accident.

The driver of the Ford F-150 pickup truck stayed at the scene of the accident. So far he has not been charged or arrested.  It seemed that the young man  backed the car out into the heavy traffic of Northern Boulevard, almost hitting another car, panicked, reversed into drive, pressed the gas and slammed into the pedestrian.

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location of the fatal hit and run accidentLast May, a man behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce fatally struck a pedestrian crossing  Bayard Street at the intersection of McGuiness Boulevard and sped away. The pedestrian was 58 year old Matthew  Jensen. He was a beloved teacher at PS 110 and the Greenpoint community was very moved by his death. After the accident (see previous blog). 

The negligent driver is a 30 year old FDNY EMT

The NYPD announced yesterday that they identified the hit-and-run driver as Tariq Witherspoon, a 30 year old FDNY EMT. They arrested him and charged him with speeding, reckless endangerment, leaving the scene of an accident and criminally negligent homicide.

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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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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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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.