NYC: ‘die-in’ against automotive terror

Bill Weinberg

New York City street safety advocates staged a "die-in" outside City Hall on Aug. 26, demanding that the city take action amid a spike in bicyclist and pedestrian deaths. Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets are calling for a plan to protect New Yorkers from reckless motorists. The protest was called after four people were killed in hit-and-run "collisions" (sic) in the span of five days, three of them on bikes.

Two cyclists were killed Aug. 18. Angelo Camara, a father of five, was killed in the Bronx when a BMW sped through a red light and caused a chain-reaction collision. That same day, Paulina Tee Choc was struck and killed by a pick-up truck as she rode through Brooklyn. On Aug. 20, Mamadou Diallo was likewise riding his bike in Brooklyn when he was killed by a BMW. And on Aug. 23, pedestrian Destiny Murrell, just 22, was killed as she crossed Washington Place in the West Village. In all cases, the motorists fled the scene. (amNY)

Advocates say Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a "Vision Zero crisis," a reference to the city's Vision Zero policy for reducing traffic deaths. Mamdani has been criticized for gestures such as giving out bicycle helmets, dismissed as "turning a collective problem into an individual one." (Gothamist, Streetsblog)

In related news…

Three young men were killed in a high-speed collision on Brooklyn's Belt Parkway Aug. 25. (amNY) 

Police are searching for a US Postal Service truck driver after a 66-year-old man was struck and killed in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen area on Aug. 8. The man proved to be Chet Mazur, a longtime icon of the downtown punk rock scene. (ABC7, Daily News, W42St)

An unnamed 49-year-old woman riding an electric scooter was killed when she was struck by a Tesla on Amsterdam Ave. July 30. (W42St)

On May 25, Memorial Day, Cara Trager, 71, was killed in a chain-reaction crash as she crossed Francis Lewis Boulevard in Queens on foot with her husband. The husband was injured but survived. The motorist evidently at fault, Dawood Faisal, attempted to flee his Prius on foot after the collision, and reportedly tried to use a tree branch as a weapon against good Samaritans who tackled him until police arrived. He was indicted for manslaughter. It was only later that the Trager family learned Faisal was also wanted on hate crime charges in connection with a vandalism attack on a kosher bagel shop in Fresh Meadows. (QNS, amNY)

See our last report in the ongoing automotive terror in New York City. 

Photo: NYC Public Advocate via Facebook

  1. More automotive terror in Brooklyn

    A 58-year-old man was mowed down by a hit-and-run MTA bus driver after he stepped off a Brooklyn curb Sept. 5. The 43-year-old bus driver, unaware that she hit a pedestrian, kept driving, the NYPD said.  The victim’s pal told News 12 that he was a “well known” figure in the Flatbush neighborhood. (NYP)

  2. Jiayi Zheng: say her name

    A hit-and-run driver struck a nurse Aug. 29 on a notoriously dangerous roadway in Sunset Park—marking the ninth time that month that a driver killed a New Yorker and fled.

    The latest victim, Jiayi Zheng, a 28-year-old nurse at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, was struck by the driver of a Cadillac sedan on Third Avenue and 55th Street, just a few blocks from the medical center where she worked—grimly, the same facility to which EMTs transported her and where she died. (Streetsblog)

  3. Automotive terror in Chinatown

    From amNY, Sept. 10:

    Tragedy struck Chinatown on Thursday when the driver of a flatbed truck came careening off the Manhattan Bridge and struck three people—killing one of them.

    According to police sources, the shocking incident happened at around 10:20 a.m. on Sept. 10 on Canal Street as the 66-year-old driver of a flatbed truck overloaded with wooden pallets came zooming westbound off the bridge and mounted the sidewalk outside of the Mahayana Buddhist Temple.

    Video observed by amNewYork showed the overhanging wooden pallets clipped a man and two women as they walked down the street, sending them hurtling through the air. The driver and truck continued hurtling toward Bowery and Hester Street, where it collided with a van…

    A 77-year-old man was pronounced dead; his identity is pending proper family notification. The two women, ages 71 (believed to be the dead man’s wife) and 52, were listed in stable condition.

    The 47-year-old driver of the van was also hospitalized and is in stable condtion.

    A follow-up from amNY the next day:

    Advocates with the groups Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets called on the city Department of Transportation (DOT) to expedite its planned redesign of Canal Street east of Broadway following the crash. They slammed the agency for prioritizing the west-of-Broadway stretch of Canal in its redesign, addressing that section this year while leaving the deadlier eastern portion for next year.

    The groups also urged DOT to lower the speed limit on the Manhattan Bridge, which currently stands at 35 miles per hour, to 25 mph and add speed cameras on the crossing to enforce it.

    Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Ben Furnas accused the city of delaying making critical safety improvements on Canal "over and over again" for many years.

    "We are heartbroken and furious to learn that a driver has hit three New Yorkers, killing one, this morning on Canal Street," Furnas said in a Thursday statement. "We won’t pretend this crash was anything but inevitable — if the city continues to delay critical safety upgrades on Canal Street, more New Yorkers will die."

  4. Ting Jun Ye: say his name

    From the Daily News, Sept. 12:

    Chinatown senior killed by truck on Canal St. leaves behind wife of more than 50 years

    A 77-year-old man killed when he was struck by a flatbed truck on Canal St. in Chinatown leaves behind his wife of more than 50 years, heartbroken relatives said Saturday.
    Three days after Thursday’s stunning crash, Ting Jun Ye’s children are trying to cope with his loss, care for their grieving mother, and keep a hospital vigil for Ye’s daughter Yong Wong, who was also struck by the flatbed truck and suffered a severe spinal injury.
    The truck driver, Milton Williams, was coming off the Manhattan Bridge at Canal St. when his truck, which was overloaded with wooden pallets, jumped the curb and hit Ye and Wong at about 10 a.m.
    The force of the impact sent father and daughter flying down the sidewalk, where they struck a 71-year-old woman as Williams veered back into the street and onto Bowery, where he struck a van and a box truck.
    "It's very difficult. There's nothing we can do," Ye's daughter Yong Li Hu, 50, told the Daily News. "I can do nothing to change this. All we can do is take care of our mother."
    "It's very hard for (her)," she said about her mom. "They were married for over 50 years."

  5. Automotive terror in the East Village

    A 15-year-old girl was killed and a 13-year-old girl hospitalized Sept. 18 when a commercial truck driver ran down the CitiBike they were riding together on 14th Street in the East Village. Police said the driver remained at the scene but no charges have been filed against him. (amNY)

  6. More automotive terror in Manhattan

    A 51-year-old woman rising an ebike was killed on West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan Sept. 28 in a horrific hit-and-run collision with a dump truck driver that left the victim mangled beyond recognition. (amNY)

    Meanwhile, a pedestrian who was struck by a pedal cyclist in Central Park on Sept. 23 has died, the family of victim Richie O'Brien announced. The bicyclist, whose name was not released by police, remained on the scene with minor injuries that were treated without hospitalization. (Streetsblog)

    O'Brien's death is another "man bites dog" that (count on it) will be avidly exploited for propaganda purposes by the anti-bike backlash.

  7. More automotive terror in the Bronx

    Two women are dead and another was critically injured after they were struck by a car that went through an intersection in the Bronx. It happened near Allerton and Holland avenues on Oct. 9. The motorist stayed on the scene, but no arrests were made. (ABC7)

  8. More automotive terror in Queens

    A Queens pedestrian is fighting for his life after being struck by a hit-and-run driver on Jamaica Ave. Oct. 11. The investigation remains ongoing by the NYPD Highway District Investigation Squad. (amNY)

  9. More automotive terror in Brooklyn

    An e-bike rider is clinging to life after he was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Nostrand Ave. in Crown Heights on Oct. 20.  (NYP)

  10. Automotive terror on GW Bridge

    A Con Edison worker found shot in the middle of the George Washington Bridge the night of Oct. 20 in a possible road rage incident has died of his injuries. A suspect is in custody, law enforcement said. (AMNY)

  11. Hit-and-run drivers have license to kill

    First, 26-year-old Vijay Bharadwaj was run down by a driver. But the real indignity came later.

    The pedestrian who was struck and nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver in Midtown in June learned later, after weeks of silence, that the NYPD had closed the case three months later —the latest evidence that the department’s elite team of collision investigation detectives doesn’t even try to hold drivers accountable in the tens of thousands of non-fatal crashes every year.  (Streetsblog)

     

  13. Automotive terror in Westchester

    A former NYPD sergeant convicted of driving drunk the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway and killing a Peekskill man was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison. Family members of slain Manuel Boitel had been pushing for a maximum sentence. (Gothamist)

  14. More automotive terror in Brooklyn

    Siobhan Lynch, a 30-year-old woman, was struck and killed by a city Sanitation Department truck on Oct. 28 at the intersection of Bay Parkway and Cropsey Ave. in Brooklyn. (amNY)

  15. Study blasts NYPD automotive terror

    The NYPD’s decision to increase high-speed vehicle pursuits under Mayor Eric Adams led to more crashes, injuries and deaths—and didn’t even drive down crime, according to a new study.

    The department increased its pursuits 25-fold in 2022, from around eight pursuits per month to 200. The increase had no tangible impact on crime beyond larger national trends — but it did cause roughly 675 more collisions, 355 additional injuries and seven additional fatalities, according to the researchers.

    “It’s a lot of innocent lives,” said Justin Nix, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and co-author of the study, “The Fast and the Spurious—A Causal Evaluation of NYPD’s Pursuit Policy, 2022–2025.”

    “One-third of the people who are getting injured or killed are other people—drivers, pedestrians—who didn’t even decide to flee [police].” (Streetsblog)

  16. Queens street named for hit-and-run victim Jael Zhinin

    Council Member Julie Won joined friends and family of hit-and-run victim Jael Zhinin in Woodside on Nov. 2, to co-name the street corner where she died in her honor on what would have been her 19th birthday.

    On June 26, 2024, on the last day of the school year, 16-year-old Jael and her 8-year-old sister Leslie were hit by a delivery truck while crossing 46th Street outside I.S. 125Q at 47th Avenue. Both girls were in the crosswalk and had a walk signal when they were struck by a truck turning left onto 46th Street from 47th Avenue. Jael died at the scene, while her younger sister was hospitalized with serious injuries.

    Driver Boubacar Barry was indicted by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz on 11 counts one month later, including a charge of negligent homicide. Barry allegedly sped away from the scene before he was stopped by police officers a block away. (QNS)

     

  17. Arrest in Brooklyn automotive terror

    Police have charged the city Sanitation truck driver who struck and killed a Brooklyn pedestrian last week. Timothy Mcvey, 41, of Staten Island, was taken into custody following an investigation that found that he allegedly mowed down 30-year-old Siobhan Lynch while she had the right of way to cross the street (see above). The arrest comes days after she was laid to rest. (amNY)