WHY WE FIGHT

Bill Weinberg

From Gothamist, Aug. 11:

Cobble Hill Locals Mourn Death of
Beloved Oriental Pastry & Grocery Co-Owner
Cobble Hill shopkeepers and local residents are reeling from the sudden death of Muyassar Moustapha, who was fatally run over on Atlantic Avenue on Sunday night. Moustapha, 66, was a neighborhood fixture who for decades operated the Oriental Pastry & Grocery on Atlantic, just steps from where he was struck by a Mercedes driver after picking up ice cream at the Key Food across the street.

Moustapha's storefront remained closed yesterday, with its metal gate down and daily deliveries piling up on the sidewalk. The shop, which sells a wide variety of spices, snacks, and other Middle Eastern staples, has been a family-run business since it changed hands over 60 years ago, shortly after the Moustapha family immigrated from Syria to Bay Ridge. Muyassar was the middle of three brothers, Anis and Gary, who have a reputation for their neighborly generosity.

According to longtime Cobble Hill resident Al Shaia, a frequent patron of Oriental Pastry & Grocery, Moustapha was returning from a routine errand at Key Food when he was hit while crossing Atlantic Avenue. "He had heart trouble two years ago, so he always crossed at the light and he was always careful, even yelling at other people to use the crosswalk," said Shaia of Moustapha's alleged decision to jaywalk around 8:25 p.m. on Sunday.

A police source tells the Daily News that Moustapha was not in the crosswalk when he was struck, but an NYPD spokesman would not confirm that during a brief interview with Gothamist. The spokesman said no arrests have been made, but the investigation is ongoing.

Yanece Cotto remembers the Moustapha family's constant presence during her Muslim-American upbringing in the neighborhood. She now works at the Urban Outfitters next to Oriental Pastry & Grocery, and recalls Muyassar Moustapha as a "beautiful, wonderful person who would help you with whatever you needed."

The brothers who run Sahadi Imports across Atlantic Avenue, Charlie and Bob Sahadi, describe themselves as "very friendly competitors" with the Moustaphas. Though neither had heard news of the tragedy until they arrived at work on Monday morning, the owners were quick to share fond memories of the late Moustapha brother, who they said "was always right there for us whenever something came up, like if we needed to borrow something." Noting that both stores share a long history on this stretch of Atlantic Avenue, the Sahadis believe that "this is a wonderful street to be on, because everyone gives a damn about the other guy," citing Moustapha's particular role in fostering a neighborly climate on their block.

"I don't agree with some of the things Mayor de Blasio came up with, but if that car was driving at 25 miles per hour, this gentleman would not be dead today," said Charlie Sahadi when asked about the deadly traffic on Atlantic Avenue. "Everyone has their moments when they're in a hurry to get somewhere," added Bob, the younger Sahadi brother, "but then you ask yourself if it was really worth it, and the answer is that it definitely wasn't."

We will put it more forthrightly. Yet another hard-working New Yorker and pillar of his community senselessly gone forever because some self-centered idiot put saving a few seconds of precious goddam drive-time ahead of his life. Further evidence that the actual function of our automotive transport system is to cheapen the value of human life and turn people into flaming assholes.

See more reasons WHY WE FIGHT

  1. WHY WE FIGHT

    From The Villager, Aug. 6:

    With tree memorial, keeping son's memory alive
    A tree grows as a memorial in Union Square, near E. 17 St. and Broadway.

    The well-tended tree and blooming bed commemorates Kyle Larson, a 20-year-old New York University student who was rushing to turn in a term paper when he was fatally hit by a delivery truck in November 2012.

    For his parents, Nancy and Robert Larson, making the journey every weekend from their home in Manhasset, Long Island, to the city to take care of the tree and the memorial has become a way to keep their son's memory alive.

    "We come in on Sunday mornings because it gives us a chance just to remember him for a few quiet moments," Nancy Larson said on Sun., Aug. 2, seated with her husband at the new pedestrian plaza near where the accident happened. "He's always in our thoughts — there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think of him countless times."

    The Larsons chose this particular tree, in front of McDonald's and the former Heartland Brewery, because a few days after the accident, the NY Longboard Association held an event to honor Kyle, an avid skateboarder, who had been riding his longboard the day of the crash.

    The association designated that tree because it had been the closest to where the incident occurred. The Larsons had found out about the memorial through Facebook.

    "We almost weren’t going to come," Nancy recalled. "It was really cold that day. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and we came in. We were blown away. So many people showed up — there were at least 100 people. None of them knew him — they just knew that he was a skateboarder that had been involved in an accident."

  2. WHY WE FIGHT

    From Gothamist, Aug. 18:

    24-Year-Old Woman Dies One Week After Being Pinned To Light Pole By Midtown Driver

    A young woman who was struck and pinned against a light pole by a driver in Midtown East earlier this month has died, according to police.

    Authorities have confirmed Mallory Weisbrod, 24, died on Sunday. She was struck by a driver at 2nd Avenue and East 49th Street on the afternoon of August 10th, and suffered serious leg injuries. The 64-year-old driver, who was operating a Mercedes-Benz, mounted a curb while heading southbound on 2nd Avenue. He also struck a 23-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman—the former was treated at Bellevue Hospital and is expected to survive, while the latter refused medical treatment.

    Weisbrod lived only a few blocks from where she was fatally struck. No arrests have been made but the NYPD says the investigation is ongoing.

  3. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the NY Times, Oct. 31:

    Three people were killed on Saturday, including a 10-year-old girl, after a car swerved off a road in the Bronx and ran onto a sidewalk, crashing into a group of children and adults who were trick-or-treating, the police said.

    The crash, which happened just before 5 p.m. on Morris Park Avenue, near Bogart Avenue, injured four others, including a 3-year-old girl and the driver, the authorities said.

    The police said that the driver was a 52-year-old man in a sedan. He was driving westbound when he bumped another car and then swerved onto the sidewalk. The car came to a stop at 936 Morris Park Avenue.

  4. WHY WE FIGHT

    From 69 News, Allentown, PA:

    Allentown crash knocks out power to thousands on Halloween night

    Officials say a car crashed into a PPL [Pennsylvania Power and Light] Electric and Utilities substation on East Columbia Street in Allentown around 7:30 PM and went up in flames. Fire officials said Saturday night that they were not able to extinguish the flames until they received permission from PPL Corporation officials hours after the crash.

    Witnesses say flames could be seen shooting up into the air as high as 20 to 30 feet. Crews worked throughout the night to put out the fire and restore power to the surrounding area. Over 6,000 people were affected by the outage. Allentown police say the driver of the vehicle was arrested for DUI. In addition to a DUI charge, the driver is also charged with recklessly endangering another person and driving with a suspended license – which was the result of a separate DUI offense.

  5. Contradiction in struggle against NYC auto-cracy

    First the good news. The Daily News reports Nov. 10 that Public Advocate Letitia James will introduce a bill making it legal for pedestrians to cross while the light is blinking (Outragroues that it isn't!) But simultanesouly, DNAInfo tells us that the NYPD is about to begin a "Jaywalking Ticketing Blitz in Queens." Perversely, this is portrayed as for pedestrians' "own protection" (Sic!) We are told: "The change comes days after an elderly woman was struck and killed by a bus while walking mid-block near Main Street and Kissena Boulevard—whose death was the catalyst for the meeting at the [109th] precinct, officials said." Fuck this Orwellian blame-the-victim bullshit. We continue to assert: Jaywalking is a human right. NOT ONE INCH TO THE TYRANNY OF THE AUTOMOBILE!!!

  6. WHY WE FIGHT

    From Gothamist, Dec. 7:

    SUV Driver Kills 30-Year-Old Woman On Fort Greene Sidewalk

    A woman walking on a Brooklyn sidewalk with her boyfriend was fatally struck by a driver last night. Apparently an SUV driver jumped the sidewalk because he wanted to avoid hitting a bus.

    According to the police, the incident occurred just before 5:30 p.m.: A 2004 Chevrolet Suburban was heading eastbound on Fulton Street in Fort Greene when, at South Portland Street, the driver "swerved to the right in order to avoid hitting the vehicle in front it." The 5,300-6,100 pounds vehicle barreled into Victoria Nicodemus, 30; her 37-year-old boyfriend; and another 75-year-old female pedestrian.

    Nicodemus was pronounced dead at Brooklyn Hospital; her boyfriend and the other pedestrian are in stable condition…

    Police arrested the SUV's driver, Marlon Sewell, charging him with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, operating a motor vehicle without insurance and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.

  7. WHY WE FIGHT

    Gothamist on Dec. 17 runs the utterly maddening story of Christen Conyers who was sent to jail for six months for riding his bicycle on the streets of New York. He was leaving his Harlem housing project to break his Ramadan fast at a local chicken joint back in June when he ran into a Black Lives Matter protest. "They told me to get on the sidewalk, but I was on my bike so that would have been illegal," Conyers told reporters during visiting hours at the Manhattan Detention Complex. "I wasn't part of the protest, although if I was that would have been my legal right." He was busted on a string of ludicrous charges: felony assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, two counts of disorderly conduct, obstructing vehicular traffic, and harassment in the second degree. These were reduced at his arraignment to disorderly conduct, but he was still sent up the river for six months for violating conditions of his parole on a prior. What utter bullshit.

  8. WHY WE FIGHT

    Here we go again. New York's PIX reports :

    HOMECREST, Brooklyn — A city bus driver has been arrested after he struck a 62-year-old pedestrian in Brooklyn, killing her, police said Monday.

    Wayne Alman, 52, faces a charge of failure to yield to a pedestrian, according to NYPD.

    Investigators said Alman was behind the wheel of a B36 bus the evening of Dec. 14 when he made a left turn on East 17th Street from Avenue Z and slammed into Eleanora Shulkina as she crossed the street.

    When officers arrived at the scene, they found the 62-year-old victim unconscious and unresponsive. She was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead, police said.

    Alman remained at the scene, police said.

    But the headline was "MTA bus driver arrested in deadly Brooklyn crash." This was not a crash. This was an eldery pedestrian getting squashed like a bug.

  9. WHY WE FIGHT

    An apparently homeless woman with a toddler in her car plowed into pedestrians on the crowded Las Vegas Strip Dec. 20, killing one and injuring dozens. The driver, Lakeisha Holloway, was said to be a drifter who had arrived in Las Vegas days earlier. (NBC)

    Meanwhile, the youth in the so-called "affluenza" case, Ethan Couch, is reported to have fled the country with his mother—just before a scheduled court hearing that could have transferred his case to adult court, possibly resulting in prison time. Couch came under fire this month after a video surfaced on Twitter that appeared to show him playing drinking games, which would violate his 10-year probation sentence. When his probation officer came around to check in on him, the house was abandoned. (NYT, Dec. 22)

    We asked when Couch received probation despite having killed four if his too-rich-to-know-better defense would inspire a too-poor-to-know-better defense. Let's see what happens to Lakeisha Holloway. The psychological pressures of being a homeless single mom strike us as a far more legitimate defense than being a spoilt brat.

  10. Cannabis behind Staten Island traffic fatality? Um, no…

    But the latest in New York City's workaday traffic fatalities (there were 242 in 2015, according to the Mean Streets blog) is the case of middle-aged Stanley Marshall, who was riding his bike on Staten Island's Richmond Ave. when he was run down by a motorist who pulled out of a parking lot. The headline in the Daily News reads: "Man, 59, killed while riding bicycle by stoned driver on Staten Island." The motorist, Lisa Martini, admitted to police: "I was just pulling out from getting my food and I guess I hit something. I smoked a little bit of weed around 2:30."

    But in the next paragraph down is a continuation of the quote: “I take buspirone for my anxiety problem and sometimes Xanax,” she added. Martini was swaying, and had bloodshot eyes, body tremors and poor coordination, the complaint said.

    Now, pot, as we all know, can cause bloodshot eyes. But body tremors and poor coordination? Every toker knows that is not part of the cannabis high. However, RxList website informs us side effects of Xanax include "dizziness" and "poor balance or coordination." And buspirone? Expect "dizziness… nervousness, lightheadedness, drowsiness, blurred vision," according to RxList.

    Martini is a 9-11 widow (her husband was an FDNY lieutenant killed in the Twin Towers collapse), so we're not here to give her a hard time over her substance use. But let's not allow this incident to become more fodder for anti-cannabis propaganda. However counterintuitive it may seem (for people who don't actually use cannabis), a 2011 study found a reduction in traffic fatalities in states that had legalized medical marijuana. The conjecture was folks were turning to legal cannabis instead of alcohol. The study's authors were quick to emphasize that their research doesn't "prove" that cannabis impairs driving less than alcohol. But anybody who has used both knows that is the case. And we'll bet the same can be said of pot as compared to Xanax and buspirone .

    More to the point: It is the domination of the city's streets by toxin-belching death machines that is really responsible for traffic fatalities—and everyone accepts that as completely "normal." You've got to give New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio credit for his Vision Zero program that at least aspires to get the human roadkill down to nothing before he leaves office. But what is the critical issue here? That Lisa Martini was high on ‪‎cannabis‬? Or that she was driving an automobile? If anyone asks me, I say: ban cars‬, legalize pot!

    From Global Ganja Report

    1. Cultural reactionaries make political hay of road carnage

      In 2015, the number of traffic fatalities in the US rose to 38,300—after years of declining due to high oil prices and the recession (which meant fewer motorists on the roads). The increase is obviously linked to current depressed oil prices. But anti-freedom forces are scapegoating cannabis legalization initiatives for this carnage. See full story at Global Ganja Report…

  11. Google self-driving car strikes bus on California street

    In a charming convergence of two of the most sinister trends on the planet—car culture and robotocracy—AP reported Feb. 29: "A self-driving car being tested by Google struck a public bus on a Silicon Valley street, a fender-bender that appears to be the first time one of the tech company's vehicles caused a crash during testing." Gee, we can hardly wait for self-driving cars to become ubiquitous….

    1. Uber retreats… for the moment

      Following a March 18 crash in Tempe, Ariz., in which an Uber car "operating in autonomous mode" struck and killed a pedestrian, the company has suspended its driverless car testing in Tempe, Pittsburgh, Toronto and San Francisco, the four cities where it operates the cars. (SF Chron) The family of the woman killed in Tempe has apparently reached a settlement with Uber. (AP)

      And yet you still have fools crowing about how "autonomous" cars are going to be safer in the long run. Fortunately, this pseudo-scientific claim is shot down by Peter Hancock of the University of Central Florida in The Conversation, a piece happily picked up by Scientific American.  

      But making the conversation entiely about "safety" misses the larger issue of this technology ultimately making the human race redundant. And there's just been a retreat for humanity on that front. The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on March 27 rejected  a claim by Philadelphia taxi companies and the Philadelphia Taxi Association that Uber Technologies is violating anti-trust laws. (Jurist)

  12. WHY WE FIGHT

    From CBS New York, Feb. 28:

    3 Dead, 2 Others Injured In 5 Separate Hit-And-Runs Across NYC
    NEW YORK  — Police are searching for several drivers after five hit-and-runs were reported in four boroughs overnight.

    Three people were killed and two others were injured over the course of several hours early Sunday.

    A spokesperson from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office said the NYPD is "aggressively" investigating each case.

    "Investigators are examining video footage from the area of each crash to identify those responsible to hold them accountable," said Wiley Norvell, with the Office of the Mayor.

  13. WHY WE FIGHT

    From Lower Hudson Journal News, Feb. 27:

    Oil spill leaks up to 600 gallons into Bronx River
    YONKERS – As much as 600 gallons of oil drained into the Bronx River Saturday as hazmat crews scrambled to clean up a large oil spill.

    "It's a major cleanup operation," said Yonkers Fire Department Chief of Operations Robert Capurso.

    The truck, carrying 6,000 gallons of home-heating oil, was en route to Glendale Gardens, an apartment building at 125 Bronx River Road, around 8:30 a.m., Battalion Chief Timothy Fitzpatrick said. As the truck pulled into a driveway to make the delivery, oil began leaking out of the truck.

    The truck's oil tank was divided into three sections, and the driver managed to contain the oil in two of them as the third section leaked.

    Up to 2,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the roadway in front of the apartment building, Fitzpatrick said.

    Up to 600 gallons of oil made it to a storm drain on the road and emptied into the Bronx River.

  14. The car century was a mistake. It’s time to move on.

    That's actually the encouraging title of a Feb. 29 opinion piece in the Washington Post by J H Crawford, author of Carfree Cities and Carfree Design Manual, and publisher of Carfree.com. The opening paragraphs:

    We must first remember that all cities were car-free little more than a century ago. Not all cities responded to the advent of automobiles with the same enthusiasm as the cities of the United States. In fact, some cities never did adopt the car. Venice was unwilling to destroy itself in order to build streets wide enough for cars, and therefore has never had them except in a sliver near the mainland. The same situation exists in the Medina of Fez, Morocco, and several other North African cities. These districts are usually the most vibrant parts of their cities.

    Cars were never necessary in cities, and in many respects they worked against the fundamental purpose of cities: to bring many people together in a space where social, cultural and economic synergies could develop. Because cars require so much space for movement and parking, they work against this objective — they cause cities to expand in order to provide the land cars need. Removing cars from cities would help to improve the quality of urban life.

    At least such ideas are no longer completely taboo…

  15. WHY WE FIGHT

    Talk about a license to kill. Gothamist on March 18 reports on the maddening case of Cindy Klumb, a Pratt Institute art instructor who was critically injured in a hit-and-run—and says cops let the assailant go after he flashed his badge. Klumb and her lawyer have yet to get the NYPD to turn over its footage from nearby surveillance cameras.

  16. WHY WE FIGHT

    From AP, March 19:

    NEW YORK  — Police say a woman was fatally struck by a taxi in Manhattan and the taxi kept going. The accident happened shortly after 3:30 a.m. Saturday on First Avenue near East 16th Street. Police say the woman was lying in the roadway when she was hit by a yellow cab. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was identified as 44-year-old Kenya Flores, of the Bronx. Police are seeking the taxi driver.

  17. WHY WE FIGHT

    This just gets worse and worse. School-teacher Felix Coss, 61, was killed by police van while crossing a street in Williamsburg in July 2013. The officer who struck him, Paula Medrano, was never charged, and his family sued the city. Now Gothamist reports that the city is arguing that Coss "voluntarily…assumed the risk" of crossing the street—this despite the fact that he had the signal! Worse yet, witnesses say Medrano was talking on her cell phone when she ran down Coss. 

    And Bill "Vision Zero" de Blasio is going along with this shit?

  18. WHY WE FIGHT

    And worse still! Undercover police arrested and roughly treated a mailman who was doing his rounds in Crown Heights after they nearly sideswiped him in their car and he cursed them out for it. (Now This, March 25; Gothamist, March 23) OK, even assuming that cops are above the law and we are subject to arrest if we give 'em some lip over their lawless behavior… are we supposed to use our fucking ESP to determine who are the undercovers? And people wonder why we say ‪#‎FuckDaPolice‬…

  19. WHY WE FIGHT

    So Allen Bullock, 19, who pleaded guilty to smashing the windshield of a police car during last April's Baltimore riots following the police slaying of Freddie Gray, is sentenced to 12 years—although all but six months is likely to be suspended. (CBS Baltimore, March 29) But former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship gets one year for responsibility in the Upper Big Branch coal-mine disaster that left 29 dead in West Virginia in 2010. After pleading not guilty, and arrogantly declaring in court: "I didn't break any laws." As a Lexington Herald Leader commentary notes, that's 12.5 days for each miner's life.

    #BlackLivesMatter? Easy to see what matters in this world. Cars (especially police cars) and fossil fuels.

    1. And to make it even worse…

      "Affluenza Teen" Ethan Couch is likely to get 180 days in jail, NPR informs us. The same six months that Allen Bullock is going to serve—but for killing four people. (His mother, who absconded with him to Mexico, may be in bigger trouble, possibly facing years in the clink for "hindering apprehension of a criminal.")

    2. Protesters blocking road? ‘Run them down’

      A nice one from the San Jose Mercury News' Silicon Beat:

      When USA Today "Instapundit" columnist Glenn Reynolds tweeted "Run them down" with a news item about protesters blocking a roadway after the recent police shooting of a black man in North Carolina, he didn't mean people should run them down out of spite. And certainly not out of racism.

      Nope, he was offering that advice because it's just not safe to stop in the vicinity of protesters, Reynolds says.

      "I wouldn't actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn't stop because I'd fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would," he wrote on his website. “"Run them down’ perhaps didn't capture this fully, but it’s Twitter, where character limits stand in the way of nuance."

      Now, Reynolds’ dubious backpedaling may be entertaining, but when it came to his original tweet, Twitter was not amused. The San Francisco firm shut down his account.

      According to a subsequent tweet from Reynolds, Twitter only agreed to unblock his account if he deleted the tweet. He did so, he said in a tweet — a tweet that also included a link to the original tweet. Ha, take that, Twitter! That's what you get for trying to put a sock in the gob of a guy advocating the kind of violence that recalls the Nice terror-by-truck attack. Oh, wait, that’s right, he wasn't advocating violence, it was self-protection he was promoting.

  20. Freakonomics on murder by car

    From the Cyclelicious blog:

    Last week’s episode of the Freakonomics Podcast discussed the "perfect crime." Stephen Dubner examines the best way to kill somebody and get away with it.

    His shocking discovery? Do it with your car. You're all so surprised, right?

    Dubner’s podcast touches many of the themes so familiar to advocates of active transportation. Namely:

    Homicide by car is very rarely punished as a crime.

    American legal system makes vehicular manslaughter prosecution very difficult.

    "It's just an accident."

    Comparing accidental shootings…with accidental traffic deaths. Anything else is heavily prosecuted. Traffic "accidents" are ignored by the justice system.

    The dehumanization of anybody who doesn’t drive a car. The only people who matter are people who drive autos…

    According to police reports, it's the pedestrians' fault, because they’re doing something wrong. Get off the road!

    We don’t really know who’s at fault because the only witness is the surviving driver. Responding officer hears only one side of the story…

    Oh that poor, traumatized, innocent driver who was just minding her own business when *wham* that pedestrian came out of nowhere to ruin her day!

    Is the death penalty really warranted if a pedestrian does something wrong?

    Who are the roads for?

    Et cetera. The problem is that Dubner (at least in the promos for the broadcast aired on WNYC) comes across as a sociopath boasting of how to commit the perfect murder and get away with it… Run someone over in a car. Now, he seems to be making a "point" I agree with… that a diver's license is a license to kill. But his whole attitude is like, Hey what fun! Let's mow down pedestrians! Aren't we bad boys!

    And this when there is a wave of hit-and-run "accidents" (sic) going on in the city….

  21. WHY WE FIGHT

    An NYPD cop was caught on video telling a motorist he pulled over in the Bronx that it’s Mayor de Blasio’s fault he’s getting a ticket. “Mayor de Blasio wants us to give out summonses Okay? Alright?” the cop tells the driver, who appears to be holding a ticket in his hand while the camera rolls. (NY Post, April 11)

    Just great. The NYPD playing to reckless motorists to get their licks in at de Blaz. And people wonder why we say ‪#‎FuckDaPolice‬…

  22. Glimmer of hope

    From CityLab, April 6:

    The number of America's youngest drivers just hit a record low, according to newly published data from the Federal Highway Administration. Roughly 8.5 million people ages 19 and younger had their licenses in 2014, and of those, just a little more than one million were 16 and younger—the lowest number since the 1960s.

    Nationally, teen driving has been curving downwards for years, as automakers and transit advocates will inform you with respective consternation and glee. Why teens aren’t scrambling to the DMV as they did in decades past is a matter of debate. One explanation is the recession, which hit young people particularly hard… There may also be an attitude shift the air: Kids today may not place as much value on automobiles as previous generations did, and may be more open to other forms of transportation (including their parents' backseats, presumably).

  23. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, April 17:

    Verizon lawyer accused of hitting protesters with Porsche
    A Verizon Communications lawyer has been accused of hitting two of the company's striking workers with his Porsche.

    The Communications Workers of America, who led roughly 40,000 East Coast employees in walking off the job Wednesday, said that a pair had been hit by the unidentified attorney in Gaithersburg, Md.

    "That says it all, doesn't it?" the union said next to a photo they said showed police investigating the incident.

    One of the workers was reportedly taken to the hospital.

    1. WHY WE FIGHT

      From ABC-NY, April 19:

      Two Hit in Verizon Lot on Long Island
      Two people were struck by a car in a Long Island Verizon lot Thursday, and a company security guard was allegedly behind the wheel.

      The two appear to have been hit intentionally Thursday morning outside a building on Knickerbocker Avenue in Bohemia.

      Police said the driver of a Mercedes-Benz struck the workers.

      The suspect is Curtis Duncan of West Babylon, a private security worker for Verizon, who was arrested down the street after workers called police.

      Kevin Travers says he couldn't believe the car actually hit him. He went to the hospital. He just has a sore leg.

      "I don't know what to think. It's crazy to think that someone would use a car like a weapon like that," said Travers…

      [Duncan is] being charged with one count of reckless endangerment. A spokesman for Verizon says picketers are being encouraged to physically block and obstruct vehicles.

      He says in this case the workers were taunting Duncan. The spokesman said in a statement to Eyewitness News: "This is what happens when picketers admittedly taunt and harass our employees and others who are doing nothing more than trying to serve our customers."

      More blame-the-victim propaganda. Meanwhile, Fortune reports that representatives from the Communications Workers of America visting workers from a Verizon call center in Manila were threatened by armed goons…

  24. WHY WE FIGHT

    From StreetsBlog, May 17:

    NYPD and Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark have not charged the driver who struck and killed 3-year-old Mariam Dansoko in a crosswalk near Yankee Stadium Monday.

    Mariam, her mother, and a 2-year-old sibling in a stroller were crossing E. 164th Street at Gerard Avenue north to south when a 21-year-old man hit Mariam with a 2014 Nissan while turning left from Gerard, which is northbound, onto E. 164th, according to NYPD and published reports. DNAinfo reported that Mariam was on her way to preschool when the crash occurred, at around 8 a.m.

    “There’s no charges at this point,” an NYPD spokesperson told Streetsblog. True to NYPD protocol when a motorist kills a pedestrian and is not charged or ticketed, police shielded the driver’s identity.

    License to kill.

  25. WHY WE FIGHT

    From Michigan's WZZM, June 8:

    COOPER TOWNSHIP, MICH. – Five bicyclists were killed and four others seriously injured when they were struck by a pickup truck Tuesday evening on a road in Cooper Township, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said.

    In the half-hour before the bicyclists were struck, law enforcement in three jurisdictions received calls about a blue pickup truck driving erratically, Getting told reporters in a late-night news conference Tuesday night.

    Fuck 'em. That's what they get for riding bicyles. Unpatriotic losers. If we don't use lots of oil every day, all those kids we sent to Iraq died in vain and the terrorists win.

    1. Murder charge in Kalamazoo car-nage

      Pich me, I must be dreaming. The motorist in the above Kalamzoo atrocity is actually being charged—with murder. Michigan is also moving forward with a bill authorizing harsher criminal penalties for drivers who harm cyclists. (Bicycling, June 10)

      Could the tide be turning, at last?

  26. More blame-the-victim auto-cracy

    From the Village Voice, July 5:

    Matthew Von Ohlen was riding in the bike lane in Williamsburg on Saturday when, according to police, a motorist intentionally slammed into him. Von Ohlen was killed and the driver fled the scene. The NYPD responded the following morning by issuing summonses to cyclists on the same block for running red lights.

    According to the NYPD and video footage of the crash, Von Ohlen did nothing wrong. "He was killed like a dog in the street," a neighbor told the Daily News. Yet officers from the 90th Precinct were out the next day summonsing cyclists and passing out pamphlets about their obligations and responsibilities.

    "This is a particularly egregious example of the NYPD's skewed priorities when it comes to traffic enforcement, and of the victim-blaming mentality that pervades the department," said Paul Steely White, the director of Transportation Alternatives, in a statement today.

  27. WHY WE FIGHT

    From The Villager, July 13:

    In memoriam: After hit-and-run death in BPC, city DOT aiming to make greenway crossing safer

    The city says it will study ways to make a deadly Battery Park City intersection safer after a cyclist was killed by a hit-and-run run driver last month.

    Upper West Side resident Olga Cook was fatally struck by an allegedly intoxicated driver on the Hudson River Greenway at Chambers St. on June 11, leading Community Board 1 to call on the city’s Department of Transportation to install better signaling at the intersection, which is notorious among locals.

    Cook was an avid cyclist and triathlete, who cycled along the greenway bike path as part of her daily training regimen. That someone so accustomed to cycling in that area could be struck by a driver highlights how dangerous that intersection truly is, according to her husband.

    "If it could happen to her, it could happen to anybody," said Travis Maclean. "She is the most intelligent woman I ever met."

    Cook was heading northbound on the greenway—which parallels the West Side Highway—at 7:52 PM on June 11 when, as she crossed Chambers St., a driver heading southbound on the West Side Highway turned right and slammed into her. As Cook lay bleeding on the street, the driver fled, only to be spotted three blocks away by an off-duty MTA police officer, who promptly arrested the suspect.
    Cook was pronounced dead little more than a half hour later at Bellevue Hospital.

    The light pole nearest the accident is now covered with a shrine of stuffed animals, love letters, and bouquets of fresh sunflowers—Cook's favorite—which are replaced daily by her family as well as by a nearby Chamber St. resident who has taken it upon herself to honor a woman she never met, in part because she feels Cook's death represents the danger faced by everyone at that infamous intersection.

    "I just feel like it could have been me," said Rossella Livraga. "It could have been my son. It could have been anybody."

  28. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, July 17:

    Drunken off-duty NYPD cop plows SUV onto Brooklyn sidewalk, killing a pedestrian

    Bystanders corralled a drunken off-duty cop after his speeding SUV killed a Brooklyn pedestrian and horribly injured three of his college pals in a gruesome wreck, cops and eyewitnesses said.

    Officer Nicholas Batka’s vehicle was seen swerving in the seconds before impact. His runaway SUV tore the leg off one victim and left another impaled on a fence, witnesses said.

    "The EMTs had to get a saw to remove the man impaled on the railing," said witness Jaminah Kang, 35. "Another man (looked) like he took a chain saw to the knee."

    The inebriated second-year cop flashed his badge and slipped into his SUV’s passenger’s seat about 3 AM. Saturday as the mangled victims writhed in agony on a bloodstained sidewalk in Williamsburg.

    A cell phone video captured a man in a red shirt wagging a menacing finger at Batka, keeping the SUV door shut tight and the off-duty cop pinned inside.

    "Don't let him get out!" someone else shouted. "He's going to run away!"

    The sloshed cop was trapped inside the SUV — on the driver's side by a utility pole he crashed into and on the passenger side by the enraged onlookers…

    Prosecutors identified the victim as Andrew Esquivel in charging documents… Batka was charged with manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, three counts of assault, driving while intoxicated, driving with impaired ability and driving on a sidewalk.

  29. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the New York Times, Aug. 19:

    Two New Jersey Transit buses collided in Newark during the early morning commute on Friday, killing one driver and a passenger and injuring at least 17 other people, the authorities said…

    Images shared online suggested that one of the buses had slammed into the midsection of the other in a "T-bone" crash.

    The collision left a scene of police officers and emergency workers swarming over a site strewn with twisted metal, and local media reports said injured passengers were trapped after one bus was tipped over at an angle

  30. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the NY Daily News, Aug. 22:

    A 10-year-old boy died Sunday on the way to his own birthday party in a horrific Long Island Expressway crash that also killed his father and three others.

    One of the victims of the three-car wreck was Scott Martella, a 29-year-old former aide to Gov. Cuomo who was set to marry his high school sweetheart.

    Young Christopher Pinales turned 10 last week and was on his way to the Splish Splash water park in Calverton, L.I., to celebrate, when his father, Carmelo, lost control of his Subaru Outback as he drove east on the highway by Exit 68 in Manorville shortly after 9:30 a.m.

    Police are looking into whether Pinales was speeding before the Subaru crossed a grassy median and went airborne, slamming into a Honda and a BMW going in the opposite direction.

  31. WHY WE FIGHT

    Well, this one hits a perfect trifecta of American pathologies… Car culture, gun-fetishism and racism… A white motorist in the Cleveland area ran a red light, causing an accident—then pulled out his AK-47 and shot to death the motorist in the car that he hit:  Deborah Pearl, a 53-year-old Black woman who had her hands up. Matthew Desha, 29, has been charged with murder. (Daily News, Aug. 29)

  32. WHY WE FIGHT

    The New York Times Sept. 4 reports of an effort by police in Colorado to crack down on a new menace on America's roads: diesel truck drivers who soup up their engines and remove their emissions controls to "roll coal," or belch black smoke, at pedestrians, cyclists and unsuspecting Prius drivers.

  33. WHY WE FIGHT

    Several were injured when counter-protesters in a pick-up truck menaced and finally drove into a group of Native Americans holding a demonstration against Columbus Day in Reno, Nev. The driver and passneger were questioned by police, but no charges were filed. (KOLO, Reno, AJ+, Oct. 10)

  34. WHY WE FIGHT

    From ABC News, Nov. 22:

    The school bus driver charged in connection with a crash that killed five children in Tennessee on Monday was involved in a separate bus collision two months ago, ABC News has learned.

    Johnthony Walker, 24, was driving a bus for Durham School Services — the same as in the fatal crash — when he sideswiped an oncoming Kia Soul in September after crossing into oncoming traffic while attempting to negotiate a "blind curve," according to the crash report.

    There were no injuries, according to the crash report, and children were seated in the rear rows.

    No charges were filed in that incident, but a citation for failure to yield was issued. It was unclear if Durham took any action against Walker after that collision.

  35. Glimmer of hope in Copenhagen

    Bicycles now outnumber cars in Copenhagen’s traffic, according to new figures released by the city authorities of Denmark’s capital.The latest traffic count conducted by the city indicates that 265,700 bicycles entered the centre Copenhagen in a 24-hour period, compared to 252,600 cars—the first time that has happened since records began in 1970. (Road.cc, Nov. 10)

  36. No anti-car backlash after Ohio State attack

    So 11 are injured as one  Abdul Razak Ali Artan, supposedly inspired by ISIS, rammed his car into a group of people on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus before being shot down by police. (CNN) The right-wing media are aghast at a perceived relcutance to call the attack "terrorism." But nobody seems to be identifying car culture as a culprit.

    Did you ever ask yourself—Why is that?

    We do get tired of having to ask the same question over and over.

  37. WHY WE FIGHT

     From BBC News, Dec. 19:

    A three-year-old boy being taken out shopping by his grandmother has been killed in a road rage shooting in Little Rock, Arkansas, US police say. Their vehicle was fired upon by another driver who thought the woman had not driven quickly enough through a stop sign, police said. The grandmother drove away but the boy later died in hospital.

    Police are hunting for a black Chevrolet Impala but gave few details of the man driving it. Authorities identified the grandmother as 47-year-old Kim King-Macon and the boy as Acen King, according to local media reports.

  38. US traffic deaths rise for second straight year

    From the New York Times, Feb. 15:

    Over the last decade, new cars have gotten electronic stability control systems to prevent skids, rearview cameras to prevent fender benders and more airbags to protect occupants in collisions. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on campaigns to remind the public of the dangers of drunken driving, failing to buckle up and texting while on the go.

    Despite all that, more Americans are dying on roads and highways than in years, and the sudden and sharp increase has alarmed safety advocates.

    The latest batch of bad news arrived Wednesday in traffic fatality estimates released by the National Safety Council, a nonprofit organization that works closely with federal auto-safety regulators. According to its estimates, 40,200 people died in accidents involving motor vehicles in 2016, a 6 percent rise from the year before.

    If the estimates are confirmed, it will be the first time since 2007 that more than 40,000 people have died in motor vehicle accidents in a single year. The 2016 total comes after a 7 percent rise in 2015 and means the two-year increase — 14 percent — is the largest in more than a half a century.

    "Why are we O.K. with this?" Deborah Hersman, the National Safety Council president and chief executive, said at a news conference. "Complacency is killing us."

    Part of the increase is believed to stem from the improving economy, which has led Americans to drive more miles for both work and pleasure. But safety advocates say that explains only part of the trend because the number of deaths as a percentage of miles driven is also increasing.

    They also point to data suggesting an increase in distracted driving. While cars and phones now offer advanced voice controls and other features intended to keep drivers’ eyes on the road, apps like Facebook, Google Maps, Snapchat and others have created new temptations that drivers and passengers find hard to resist.

    "It's not just talking on the phone that’s a problem today," said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “You now have all these other apps that people can use on their phones."

    We predicted in 2010… a year or two from now, they'lll be lecturing us about the dangers of watching porn videos while driving. Welcome to the dystopian future.

  39. WHY WE FIGHT

    From AP, Feb. 25:

    Dozens hurt after 'drunk' driver plows into Mardi Gras crowd
    NEW ORLEANS — A suspect is in custody after 28 people were injured Saturday when a vehicle plowed into a crowd watching the Krewe of Endymion parade in the Mid-City section of New Orleans, police said.

    Police Chief Michael Harrison said the suspect is being investigated for driving while intoxicated. Harrison was asked twice by the media if terrorism was suspected. While he didn't say "No" he did say it looks like a case of DWI.

    "We suspect that that subject was highly intoxicated," he said.

    Twenty-one people were hospitalized after the crash with five victims in guarded condition.

  40. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, Feb. 26:

    Bronx woman to file $150M lawsuit accusing NYPD of hit-and-run 'coverup'
    A Bronx woman plans to sue the city for $150 million, claiming cops “covered up” a hit-and-run that left her with serious injuries.

    Tishira Japa, 21, charges in a notice of claim filed with city Controller Scott Stringer’s office that cops knowingly issued a false accident report about the incident on W. Fordham Road at 4:05 a.m. on Dec. 17.

    A video of the crash shows a white minivan slam into Japa as she stood on a double-yellow line waiting to cross, sending her rolling down the snowy road about 40 feet.

    The driver, identified as Mene Mpeke, who could not be reached by the Daily News, then gets out of the van for a minute before getting back behind the wheel and driving away. The police report on the crash inaccurately states that Japa spoke with police and that the driver didn’t leave the scene, the notice of claim charges…

    An NYPD spokesman said the driver left the scene because he feared for his safety. That is not noted in the accident report.

    Investigators failed to follow proper protocol for such a serious crash, Sanders said.

    Japa suffered seven fractures in her pelvis that could affect her for the rest of her life, papers charge.

  41. WHY WE FIGHT

    In 2014, the typical urban commuter spent 42 hours stuck in traffic, up from 20 hours in 1984. Americans consumed over three billion gallons of gas as they sat in grid­lock for almost seven billion hours, at a cost of $160 billion in wasted fuel and time. (Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. 2016)

  42. WHY WE FIGHT

    A Bedford-Stuyvesant couple is two and a half years into what looks like a losing legal battle over a stack of tickets they got for allegedly running a series of red lights in the neighborhood, to the tune of over $4,600. The cops evidently followed the couple, watching them run four red lights to jack up the total they could be slapped with. Perversely, the cops invoked "Vision Zero" in writing the tickets. (Gothamist, March 31)

    And, as we've noted, there is a very good case for allowing bicycles to run red ligts, treating them essentially the way motorists (theoretically) treat stop signs. Idaho has already adopted this policy.

  43. WHY WE FIGHT

    So Lower East Side woman Kelly Hurley, hit by a box truck while bicycling (with the right of way) at E. Ninth St. and First Ave., dies of her injuries a week later. The driver has not been charged—but in the wake of the killing, cyclists and safe-streets advocates have criticized the NYPD for apparently cracking down on cyclists, not motorists, in the area where Hurley was hit. (Gothamist, Villager, Village Voice)

    1. Kelly Hurley: say her name

      A truck driver was arrested in the killing of Kelly Hurley, charged with  failure to yield for a pedestrian, failure to exercise due care and improper left turn on a one-way road. (The Villager, June 29)

  44. WHY WE FIGHT

    From The Villager, March 30:

    Careening cab plants itself in Jefferson Market Garden
    Spring came into the Jefferson Market Garden with a roar — no, not of a lion…but an out-of-control, speeding yellow taxi.

    The cab went wildly crashing through the garden’s metal fence early Sunday morning.

    George Paulos, the chairperson of the garden, at Sixth and Greenwich Aves., said that, according to the police report, the taxi slammed into the green oasis at 2:30 a.m. It knocked out the bars in four sections of the fence, though the trellis on top somehow remarkably remained intact.

  45. WHY WE FIGHT

    One person was killed and at least 22 were injured when a car struck pedestrians in New York’s Times Square. The driver of the Honda, Richard Rojas, 26, a Navy veteran from the Bronx, had a history of arrests for drunken driving, said officials. "Based on information we have at this moment, there is no indication that this was an act of terrorism,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at a news conference near the scene of the rampage. (NYT, May 18)

    Not to worry, this isn't "terrorism." As long as it is apolitical mowing down of pedestrians…. no prob!

  46. WHY WE FIGHT

    From The Villager, May 18:

    Woman is killed by garbage truck on Sixth Ave.
    A 60-year-old woman died after being mowed down by a private sanitation truck at the intersection of W. Eighth St. and Greenwich and Sixth Aves. on Tues., May 16, around 11:40 p.m. According to police, the woman was crossing from the north to the south side of the street and the truck was traveling eastbound from Greenwich Ave. Police found the victim lying in the street, unconscious and unresponsive, with severe body trauma. E.M.S. transported her to Lenox Health Greenwich Village, at W. 12th St. and Seventh Ave., in life-threatening condition, where she was pronounced dead. Police are not releasing the woman’s identity yet, pending family notification. The garbage truck was operated by M&M Sanitation Corp. Its 46-year-old driver remained at the scene. As of Wed., May 17, there were no arrests and no charges filed against the driver. A spokesperson for M&M Sanitation said the truck was only going 4 miles per hour when it struck the woman. A Police Department spokesperson said she could not definitively answer how fast the truck was going at the time of the incident, and that the department’s Collision Investigation Squad was still investigating.

    1. Fern B. Jones: say her name

      Kudos to The Villager for providing a profile of Fern B. Jones, the women killed by a garbage truck in Greenwich Village on May 16. She was an Ivy League-educated financial adviser and broker and a founding member of the W. Eighth St. Block Association. "We remember Fern as a good friend and valued community member, who worked hard to improve the quality of life on our block,” the Block Association said in a statement. "She will be greatly missed here."

      Do not let the victims of quotidian car-nage be nameless and faceless statistics.

  47. WHY WE FIGHT

    From The Villager, May 25:

    Flatiron bike fatal
    A 74-year-old Lower East Side cyclist died 10 days after being “doored” by a taxi in the Flatiron District and then possibly fatally struck by an Uber car.

    Police said that on Thurs., May 4, around 6 p.m., Xin Kang Wang was biking eastbound on E. 20th St. between Broaday and Park Ave. South in the bike lane, when a rear passenger-side door of a 2016 Toyota Camry swung open and Wang struck it. He bounced into the lane of moving traffic and fell in front of a second 2016 Toyota, an Uber.

    Responding to a 911 call, police found the victim lying in the street with body trauma. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died from his injuries on Sun., May 14. Both drivers remained at the scene. There were no arrests. The investigation is ongoing.

    Wang lived at 77 Columbia St. in Masaryk Towers, a Mitchell-Lama affordable housing development.

    The Daily News reported that the first car had New Jersey license plates and pulled into the bike lane right in front of Wang, and that the passenger threw open the rear door without checking for cyclists, according to cops. Its driver was reportedly given a summons for discharging a passenger in a bike lane. There were conflicting accounts of whether the second car, the Uber, struck the fallen cyclist.

  48. NYC bus drivers have license to kill?

    From the New York Times, June 18:

    For the 2nd Time in a Week, a Cyclist Is Killed by a Bus in Chelsea
    An 80-year-old man on a bicycle was struck and killed on Saturday by a charter bus in the Chelsea section of Manhattan — the second time in a week that a cyclist has died in a bus accident in the neighborhood.

    The latest victim, Michael Mamoukakis, was hit by the bus shortly after 1:30 p.m. while riding near the intersection of West 29th Street and Seventh Avenue. According to the police, both Mr. Mamoukakis and the bus, which was registered to Buckeye Limousine and Charters Corporation of Ohio, were traveling south on Seventh Avenue; the bus struck him as it tried to make a right turn onto West 29th Street.

    Mr. Mamoukakis was the sixth person killed on a bicycle in New York this year, according to city statistics.

    Last Monday, Dan Hanegby, a 36-year-old investment banker, was riding a Citi Bike east along 26th Street — his usual commute to work — when, after passing Eighth Avenue, he was struck and killed by a charter bus, becoming the first fatality in the four years of New York's Citi Bike program. The bus that killed Mr. Hanegby was registered to Hudson Transit Lines in Chester, N.Y.

    Neither of the bus companies responded to phone calls on Sunday seeking comment.

    Mr. Mamoukakis, who was born on Crete, was a lifelong cobbler, learning his craft at age 14 and later opening Mike's Shoe Repair on Dey Street in the financial district, a business that he ran for more than 25 years. He closed the shop, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, his family said on Sunday.

    At that point Mr. Mamoukakis was 65, according to his relatives, and after he retired, he turned his attention to hobbies like hiking, cooking and cycling. He biked almost every day in good weather, they said, enjoying rides along the West Side Highway, in Riverside Park and at Union Square where he would linger over the art booths and shop for fresh produce.

    "Biking was his pleasure," his brother George Mamoukakis said. "He loved his bike."

    The Manhattan district attorney's office investigates all traffic fatalities in the borough to determine if criminal charges are warranted. The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has brought charges in several similar cases under a relatively new city statute, and the bus drivers in both of the deaths could face charges if prosecutors find they were at fault.

  49. Islamophobia or ‘road rage’?

    From AP, June 19: 

    FAIRFAX, Va. — A man charged with murder in the death of a Muslim Virginia teen who was attacked near her mosque became "enraged" by a traffic argument with one of the girl's friends and hit her with a baseball bat before abducting her, police said Monday.

    Though the slaying of Nabra Hassanen — whose body was found in a pond — raised concerns that she was targeted because she was Muslim, Fairfax County police spokeswoman Julie Parker said at a news conference that police have no reason to believe that the killing was a hate crime.

    "Nothing indicates that this was motivated by race or by religion. It appears the suspect became so enraged over this traffic argument that it escalated into deadly violence," Parker said.

    Hassanen, 17, was with a group of as many as 15 teens who had left their Sterling-area mosque between Ramadan prayers to get food at a McDonald's, Parker said.

    They were making their way back to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society between 3 and 4 a.m. Sunday, some walking and some riding bikes, when the suspect drove up to the group and began to argue with a male teen, Parker said.

    The suspect, 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres, drove up onto a curb and the group scattered, Parker said. Martinez Torres caught up with them in a nearby parking lot, got out of his car armed with a baseball bat and began chasing the group, she said.

    "His anger over that earlier encounter then led to violence when he hit Nabra with a baseball bat," Parker said. She said he took the girl with him in his car to a nearby location, where she was assaulted a second time.

    Authorities later found her body in a pond. An autopsy revealed she died of blunt force trauma to the upper body, Parker said.

    Now's where the righties get to say it was "only" (sic!!!) "road rage," and lefties get to insist no it wasn't, it was an Islamophic attack—as if these were mutually exclusive theses, and as if OPPRESSION of pedestrians and bicyclists by motorists were not a POLITICAL QUESTION that urgently needs to be included in our understanding of "intersectionality."

  50. WHY WE FIGHT

    Police in California are asking for witnesses to come forward after a motorcyclist kicked a car while traveling at a high speed along a freeway in Santa Clarita. This caused a pile-up which damaged the first car and flipped another, leaving one person injured. It was all caught on a dashboard camera by a motorist. (The Guardian)

  51. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily Mail:

    Executed for changing lane: Hunt for white driver who killed African-American 18-year-old girl with one bullet to the head in a fit of road rage when they both merged into the same lane
    Police are hunting for a man who shot and killed a teenage girl in a road rage attack after the two merged into the same lane on a highway in Pennsylvania.

    Bianca Nikol Roberson, 18, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, was driving southbound late Wednesday afternoon when she and a man in a red pickup truck jostled for position on the road, reported NBC 10.

    The truck's driver became enraged and pulled out his gun, shooting Roberson directly in the head before fleeing the scene down the highway, according to police.

    Roberson's car then lost control and crashed into a wooded area near West Goshen. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

    Racism, ageism or a manifestation of pathological gun culture, or pathological car culture? ALL FOUR. #Intersectionality

  52. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, June 26:

    Bicyclist hit by wrong-way driver fleeing police in Midtown Manhattan
    A wrong-way driver trying to outrun police near Penn Station slammed into a bicyclist and then hit other cars Sunday night, cops and witnesses said.

    The road menace was driving a dark Infiniti recklessly in a parking garage on W. 34th St., between Eighth and Ninth Aves. in Midtown at about 7:30 p.m. when police tried to rein him in on Eighth, cops said.

    Instead the driver sped off, turning onto Seventh Ave. and hitting a man on a bicycle, said a food cart worker who saw the horrible accident unfold.

    "The guy on the bike flew up and hit the windshield of the car so hard. The whole windshield is broken. But the car just kept going," said the worker, who declined to give his name. "He hit other cars because he was still going the wrong way, he was just driving through them."

    The driver jumped out of the car and ran off, but was caught on W. 35th St. by Seventh Ave, said police, who also took a passenger into custody.

    Medics took the cyclist to Bellevue Hospital in serious but stable condition, an FDNY spokeswoman said.

  53. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, July 3:

    Delrawn Small's widow and mom of his kids file 2 lawsuits against cop in road rage killing
    The road rage killing of a man shot in Brooklyn last year by an off-duty police officer sparked two lawsuits Monday, the eve of the anniversary of Delrawn Small's death.

    Small's widow filed a wrongful death suit, while the mother of the victim’s three children filed a federal claim blaming the NYPD for allowing off-duty officers to carry firearms.

    Small, 37, was shot and killed after a July 4 confrontation in East New York with off-duty officer Wayne Isaacs, 38, who was later charged with second-degree murder.

    Small's widow, Wenona Small, who is not the mother of his children, is filing the wrongful death suit, and the mom, Zaquanna Albert, is filing the federal claim, according to their lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein..

    Friends and family members held a vigil in Small's honor Monday night at the intersection where he died.

    A witness said the early morning confrontation began last July 4 when Isaacs' car cut off Small’s 2016 Kia shortly after the cop’s 4 p.m.-midnight shift ended.

    Police said Small, of Cypress Hills, chased Isaacs' vehicle.

    A surveillance video captured Small, who was two cars behind Isaacs, exiting his vehicle when both reached a red light.

    Seconds after Small approached Isaacs' car at Atlantic Ave. and Bradford St., the cop is seen shooting the victim from inside his vehicle, the video shows.

    Isaacs initially claimed to police that he opened fire because Small had punched him in the face at least twice — an allegation the video does not support. Small was shot twice in the torso.

    State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is prosecuting Isaacs. Under a new law, the AG acts as a special prosecutor in matters involving police shootings.

    Small's family said they hope the new law results in posthumous justice for the victim.

  54. WHY WE FIGHT

    A harrowing story from Bklyner of July 10. But note the jaundiced terminology. The victim "collided" with the bus? Or the bus hit tje victims? Come on. We remain skeptical about the suicide claim. A rather cumbersome way to do it.

    Woman Killed In Collision With Bus In Prospect-Lefferts Gardens
    A pedestrian was killed on Nostrand Avenue after colliding with an MTA Bus on Saturday, said cops. Multiple eyewitnesses say that they saw the woman heading toward the bus in an apparent suicide, but a police investigation is still underway.

    An MTA bus struck the woman on Nostrand Avenue and Lincoln Road, say cops. Officers found the unidentified woman, who was in her 30s, unconscious with severe trauma to her head and body on Saturday, July 08, just before 3pm.

    Eyewitnesses told multiple news outlets that they saw the woman running toward oncoming traffic, and others say they saw a gruesome decapitation in the immediate aftermath.

    Emergency medical crews pronounced the woman dead at the scene.

    The driver remained on the scene and the investigation is ongoing by the NYPD's Collision Investigation Squad.

    Do the cops have a Vehicular Manslaughter Investigation Squad? And she was "beheaded" but "unconscious"? Huh?

  55. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, July 22:

    Garbage truck kills Brooklyn cyclist in hit-and-run crash
    A garbage truck fatally struck a 27-year-old bicyclist in Brooklyn early Saturday, then rolled on without stopping, police said.

    Neftaly Ramirez was pedaling his mountain bike along Franklin St. near Noble St. in Greenpoint when the green truck with yellow-and-white lettering slammed into him about 12:30 a.m.

    After the truck — which police believe belongs to a private carting company — kept going, horrified witnesses found Ramirez sprawled out on the street suffering from multiple injuries.

    Ramirez, a resident of Alphabet City, died at the scene, police said. His mangled yellow-and-black Hummer bicycle lay just a few paces from his body.

    A tearful woman who identified herself as Ramirez’s grieving mother was too distraught to speak to a reporter Saturday.

    Cops were searching for the truck Saturday, although it was not immediately clear if the driver knew he had hit someone before driving away.

    Ramirez is the 11th bicyclist to be fatally struck in the five boroughs so far this year. By this time last year, 14 bicyclists were struck and killed, police said.

  56. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the New York Post, July 24:

    'I f—king killed my sister': Teen livestreams fatal car crash
    A California teen livestreamed a deadly car crash on Instagram and then filmed her mortally wounded sister in the aftermath.

    Obdulia Sanchez, 18, was filming herself Friday while allegedly driving under the influence on a California highway with two 14-year-old girls in the back seat, according to KSFN-TV.

    The camera suddenly shakes frantically as the girls scream. When the film begins again, a bloody scene unfolds.

    "Jacqueline, please wake up," Obdulia says while trying to shake 14-year-old Jacqueline Sanchez.

    "I f—king killed my sister, OK? I know I’m going to jail for life. I understand that. I don’t f—king care…"

    Even after the crash, she remains addicted to her damn phone.

  57. WHY WE FIGHT

    From The Drive, July 25:

    Driving More Than 2 Hours a Day Makes You Dumber, Report Says
    The experience of sitting in traffic for hours a day can feel like it's sucking your brain away. Researchers are now saying that this isn't just a feeling, but actually true.

    Kishan Bakrania, a medical epidemiologist at the University of Leicester, told The Sunday Times, "We know that regularly driving for more than two to three hours a day is bad for your heart. This research suggests it is bad for your brain, too, perhaps because your mind is less active in those hours."

    The British study focused on 500,000 people between the ages of 37 and 73 who took intelligence and memory tests throughout the five years of the study. Among them, 93,000 drove more than two or three hours per day. At the beginning of the study, their IQ scores were lower than participants who drove very little or not at all. Their scores fell even further throughout the duration of the study.

    "Cognitive decline is measurable over five years because it can happen fast in middle-aged and older people," Bakrania told The Sunday Times. "This is associated with lifestyle factors such as smoking and bad diet—and now with time spent driving."

  58. WHY WE FIGHT

    From PIX, Aug. 2:

    Video shows 62-year-old woman dragged in hit-and-run on Staten Island
    A woman was struck by a car and dragged on a Staten Island street last month, according to video footage released by police Wednesday in an attempt to identify the driver.

    A 62-year-old woman was hit by the car as she crossed Clove Road on Staten Island, the NYPD said.

    The suspect did not stop after hitting the victim, dragging her as the driver continued south on Hylan Boulevard, police said. The incident occurred around 8:05 a.m. on July 14 near Woodlawn Avenue and Clove Road.

    The victim was taken to a nearby hospital.

    The suspect's car is described as a black, two-door Honda Accord with gold New York license plates, police said.

  59. WHY WE FIGHT

    From PIX:

    UPPER WEST SIDE, Manhattan — Two people were injured when a truck crashed another car into a subway stop on the Upper West Side Wednesday morning, the FDNY said.

    A truck crashed head-on into the side of another car, which caused the second vehicle to slam into the nearby subway station entrance, according to the NYPD.

    A man in his 40s was injured when the car collided with the 66th St.-Lincoln Center subway stop, and a passenger in the car suffered minor injuries, police said.

    The victims were taken to a nearby hospital, according to the FDNY.

    The incident happened around 6:10 a.m. at the intersection of West 66th Street and Broadway near Lincoln Center.

    No arrests, apparently.

  60. WHY WE FIGHT

    From Raw Story, Sept. 12:

    Nashville woman shot homeless man who asked her to move her Porsche — then left him to die: police
    A 26-year-old Tennessee woman has been arrested after she shot a homeless man who asked her to move her Porsche, Nashville metro detectives allege.

    The Tennessean reports that 54-year-old homeless man Gerald Melton was critically injured this week when he was shot twice by Katie Quackenbush, who was driving a Porsche SUV near the area where he was trying to sleep.

    Police say Melton asked Quackenbush to move the SUV because its exhaust fumes and loud music were impairing his ability to sleep. The two then got into a loud argument with each other, and then Quackenbush allegedly exited the vehicle holding a gun that she then used to shoot Melton twice, leaving him with a wounded abdomen.

    Police say Quackenbush then got back into her car and fled the scene.

  61. NYPD crack down on cyclists after cyclist is killed

    So out of wack. From DNA.info, Sept. 12:

    Nine cyclists were snagged in a ticketing blitz in the 72 hours after a bike rider was killed by a garbage truck driver in Greenpoint in July, compared with just three truck drivers ticketed during that same time, under a law enforcement tactic that advocates say puts the blame on bicyclists.

    "It's a strategy," said Assistant Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, head of Brooklyn North Patrol… "We don't target victims. We target people who commit violations," he said.

    The hell you don't target victims, Maddrey. Once again, responding to a problem by cracking down on the solution.

    1. NYPD continues crackdown on solution

      From StreetsBlog, Sept. 20:

      NYPD officers arrested 16 kids for biking on Sunday, CBS New York reports. Hundreds of young people took to city streets and highways for a "ride out," which is sort of like Critical Mass for the social media age. Kids organize large group rides, pop wheelies, and post videos of themselves online.

      Videos of Sunday’s ride show the group biking on the Cross-Bronx Expressway. You may see kids taking advantage of safety in numbers to have some fun on city streets over the weekend. NYPD sees a criminal offense. About an hour in, NYPD officers set up a roadblock and began arresting participants.

      In one video of the arrests shared on Instagram, officers hold a young rider against the ground. Other videos posted on the "NYC Social Cycling" Facebook group show helicopters and other police vehicles tailing the group, and one boy with bruises from being knocked off his bike by a police officer riding a moped.

  62. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, Aug. 24. Once again, note the jaundiced terminology.

    Bicyclist dies two months after being struck by car in Chinatown

    A bicyclist struck by a vehicle in Chinatown nearly two months ago has died of his injuries, police said Thursday.

    Edouard Menuau, 59, was pedaling east on Canal St. when he was struck by a 2011 Ford Escape at about 6:40 a.m. on June 26.

    The vehicle was headed north on the Bowery and collided with the bicycle in the intersection, witnesses told police. Menuau had blown through a stop light when he was hit, police said.

    The bicyclist was thrown from his two-wheeler onto the roadway and suffered a massive head injury.

    Medics rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where he died on Aug. 14. Menau lived in the New York City Rescue Mission homeless shelter six blocks from where he was struck, according to cops.

    He was "struck by a vehicle" rather than "run down by a motorist" (as if the vehicle had a mind of its own). The "vehicle collided." This is like saying a fly-swatter "collided" with a fly. And of course no arrest was made—it is assumed that if he ran a red light, the motorist (whose name is not given) had a perfect right to kill him.

    The Lo-Down reports that a memorial for Menuau was held in a Lower East Side community garden.

  63. WHY WE FIGHT

    Reuters, Sept. 18:

    Three dead, at least 16 injured after transit, tour buses collide in New York City

    Three people were killed and at least 16 injured when a New York City transit bus and a tour bus collided early on Monday in the city's borough of Queens, spinning around before slamming into a building, fire officials said…

    One unidentified bystander was pinned beneath the wreckage and died at the scene. The driver of the tour bus and a passenger in one of the buses were later pronounced dead at area hospitals..

    Photos posted online by the fire department showed the two buses had slammed into the corner of a Kennedy Fried Chicken restaurant.

    The tour bus was traveling east on Northern Boulevard when the city bus, which was carrying 15 passengers, tried to make a right turn on the same street, police said. It was not clear how many passengers were on the tour bus.

    1. Right, blame the thermos, not the bus…

      From Gothamist, Feb. 21:

      Thermos Lodged Between Gas & Brakes Cited As Possible Cause For Deadly Queens Bus Crash
      Federal investigators believe that a dropped thermos may have been responsible for the 2017 bus crash that killed three people and injured 16 others in Flushing, Queens.

      According to investigators, Dahlia tour company bus driver Raymond Mong was traveling at 60 miles per hour—more than twice the legal limit—when he ran a red light and slammed into an MTA bus on Northern Boulevard. Mong, who'd previously been fired by the MTA for a drunk driving offense, was killed in the crash, as was pedestrian Henry Wdowiak and a passenger on the city bus, Gregory Liljefors.

      In their final report on Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board cleared Mong of any wrongdoing, saying they'd "found no evidence that the motorcoach driver's experience, training, route familiarity or pre-crash activities were factors in the collision."

      But investigators did note that they'd found a metal thermos near the bus's pedals, which "could not be ruled out as a possible cause" for the fatal collision. In audio recovered from the scene, metal rattling could be heard as the bus gained speed, followed by Mong uttering a "single-word remark."

  64. WHY WE FIGHT

    From CBS News:

    Van strikes multiple people near New York's Penn Station
    NEW YORK — Multiple people were struck by a van on Tuesday near Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, a New York Police Department spokesperson said.

    Two women and one man were injured but their injuries were non-life-threatening. The collision appeared to be an accident, the spokesperson said.

    The crash took place around 5:30 p.m. on Friday near 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue when a red commercial van jumped a curb and struck the pedestrians.

    The motorist, a 68-year-old New York man, told police his floor mat became stuck on top of the gas pedal, causing the car to roll through the intersection.

    Again, note the jaundiced language: "collision"… "accident." Even if the latter is justifiable (his "foot got stuck on top of the gas pedal"? How the hell does that happen?), the prior is certainly not. This was people getting run down. Not a "collision."

    Also note the sheer sloppy reportage. We are told in the first paragraph that this happened "Tuesday," and in the third that it happened "Friday," as it actually did.

  65. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the New York Post, Oct. 7:

    82-year-old woman fatally hit by van just feet from her home
    A elderly woman was fatally struck by a van as she tried to cross Pitman Avenue in The Bronx Friday night — and the driver fled the scene on foot, police said.

    Hilda Arocho, 82, had been crossing the avenue mid-block in Wakefield — just feet from her own front door — when she was struck at 9:11 p.m., police said. She was pronounced dead at Jacobi Hospital.

    The driver was being sought by NYPD.

    WABC reports the motorist has been arrested. Arocho was apparently returning from collecting donations for Puerto Rico hurricane relief when she was killed. 

    Meanwhile in San Francisco… From SF Weekly, Oct. 5:

    Senior Pedestrian Killed at Fell and Baker
    On Wednesday evening, around 5:15 p.m., 90-year-old David Grinberg crossed the busy intersection of Fell and Baker streets and was hit by a 28-year-old woman driving a car westbound on Fell Street. Grinberg was rushed to the hospital, but his injuries were too severe. He passed away six hours later…

    Grinberg's death is the third pedestrian fatality in the past month, and adds another depressing line of data to the list of seniors killed on San Francisco’s streets. The topic is one we at SF Weekly have discussed in depth before: Seniors make up 15 percent of the city’s population, but they accounted for 44 percent of traffic deaths in 2016. They are also four times more likely than people under 65 to be killed in a traffic collision.

    And meanwhile in London. From the BBC, Oct. 7:

    Natural History Museum crash 'not terror-related'
    A crash outside a London museum that injured 11 people was not terror-related, police have said. A black Toyota Prius hit the people outside the Natural History Museum in Exhibition Road, South Kensington. Video footage that emerged on Twitter showed a man, believed to be the driver, being restrained on the ground. The Metropolitan Police later said the incident was thought to be a "road traffic collision" and a man in his 40s had been arrested at the scene.

    Well, thank goodness it wasn't "terrorism." That would have sucked.

  66. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, Oct. 6:

    Cyclist dies nearly two weeks after unlicensed drunk driver slammed into her NYC tour group
    A 55-year-old bicyclist run over by an unlicensed drunk driver in Brooklyn has died of her injuries, police said Friday.

    Nancy Pease, of Greenpoint, died on Sept. 22 — 12 days after she was struck by Abel Antonio Pina-Morocho during the Brooklyn leg of the NYC Century Bike Tour.

    Pease was stopped at a light on 12th Ave. near 39th St. in Borough Park with several other bicyclists when Pina—Morocho rammed into them about 9 a.m. on Sept. 10.

    When first responders arrived, Pease was unconscious underneath Pina-Morocho's Dodge Caravan, cops said.

    She was rushed to Maimonides Medical Center with a head injury, lacerations to her liver and intra-abdominal bleeding. She lapsed into a coma and doctors had to remove her spleen, according to court papers.

    Pina-Morocho was looking for a parking spot when he struck another car and rammed into the peddling group. He injured a total of five people. Cops nabbed him at the scene.

    He admitted that he had no license and had spent the night getting wasted on margaritas and Coors Light, according to prosecutors. His blood alcohol level was .266 — over three times the legal limit, according to prosecutors.

    Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Joseph McCormick ordered Pina-Morocho held on $250,000 bail on charges of drunk driving, vehicular assault and driving without a license.

    Charges are expected to be upgraded now that Pease has died, officials said.

  67. Edwin Ajacalon. Say his name.

    From the Daily News, Nov. 26:

    A 14-year-old delivery boy who was fatally struck while pedaling across a Brooklyn street had come to the U.S. alone and dreamed of seeing his Guatemalan parents again, his devastated uncle told the Daily News on Sunday.

    “He was new here. He only came a year ago,” Estuardo Vicente said. “But he wanted to help his parents. He sent them money whenever he could.”

    Edwin Ajacalon was biking across 23rd St. when the driver of a gray 2017 BMW sedan flew southbound through a green light at Fifth Ave. in Sunset Park — hitting and killing the immigrant teenager about 5:45 p.m. Saturday, cops said…

    Cops on Sunday said it was likely the 19-year-old driver of the BMW would face charges. According to witness Rafeal Eustuiqio, 51, the panic-stricken motorist attempted to speed away from the tragic scene, but was stopped by an off-duty police officer who lived in the area and maneuvered his vehicle to block the BMW.

    But the headline was "Teen killed in bike crash hoped to return to family in Guatemala." This was not a crash. This was a 14-year-old delivery boy getting mowed down by a BMW. Another Daily News story shows harrowing video of Ajacalon being dragged for half a block as the motorist attempted to flee the scene.

  68. Richardo Chatergoon. Say his name.

    From WABC TV, New York:

    Police: Parking dispute led to stabbing, deadly hit-and-run in Richmond Hill, Queens
    Police say a man angry over a parking dispute stabbed two people and then struck a group of others with his car in Queens early Sunday.

    According to the NYPD, the dispute involving two vehicles began at about 4:30 AM in front of a hookah bar on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill.

    The driver of a white Hyundai sedan exited the vehicle and stabbed two men inside a BMW in the torso.

    After a crowd of people argued with the driver of the white car, he drove up the sidewalk where they had begun walking away and struck six of them.

    Richardo Chatergoon, 23, from Far Rockaway was killed, and five others were injured.

    Among the injured was one of the men in the BMW who had previously been stabbed. The 29-year-old is in critical condition.

    All the victims were taken to Jamaica Hospital.

    The 22-year-old driver of the white car later walked into the hospital with a cut to the hand, and the injured already there identified him as the suspect.

    He is now in police custody. The car was found parked near the hospital.

    Investigators are reviewing video that may have captured the incident.

    There is no known nexus to terrorism, according to the NYPD.

    The injured include a 29-year-old man with a head injury, a 27-year-old man with a leg injury, a 29-year-old man with a broken pelvis, and a 20-year-old woman with a broken leg.

    It says nothing about charges against the perp, nor even his name. But hey, at least this wasn't "terrorism."

  69. Not a ‘crash,’ dammit!

    So six were injured when the driver of a Lincoln Continental rammed into another car and then jumped the curb, mowing down pedestrians—all apparently intentionally. And both ABC 7 and PIX 11 are calling this a "crash"! How many times do we have to say it? This was not a crash. It was an assault.

  70. A good thing this wasn’t terrorism. That would have sucked.

    From TeleSur, Jan. 18:

    Speeding Car Plows onto Brazil's Copacabana Beach, Kills Baby
    A speeding car plowed through evening strollers on a crowded sidewalk of Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana beach on Thursday in an apparent accident, killing an eight-month-old baby and injuring 15 people, police said.

    Injured pedestrians lay sprawled out on the sidewalk, recalling recent terrorist attacks by vehicles mowing down pedestrians, but there was no indication that the Copacabana incident was deliberate, Reuters reports.

    The G1 news website reported that the driver, who fled the scene but was quickly arrested by police, said he had an epileptic fit. Medicine for epilepsy was found in the car.

  71. Support Arminta Jeffryes! Jaywalking is a human right!

    From the Daily News, Jan. 25:

    Black Lives Matter activist battles NYPD over jaywalking bust
    A Black Lives Matter activist went on trial Thursday for jaywalking during a protest, even as she’s suing to stop the NYPD from prosecuting the case against her.

    Arminta Jeffryes was in a Midtown Community Court room as an NYPD captain opened the trial with an account of how Jeffryes walked against a light on the Lower East Side March 7, 2016.

    Jeffryes was "warned several times to obey the traffic rules" but ignored police and walked into a crosswalk on Houston Street near the FDR Drive "when there was a steady red light," according to NYPD attorney Neil Fenton.

    Jeffryes' attorney balked at the charges, saying police regularly ignore jaywalking and that she was singled out as an organizer of the rally.

    1. BLM activist must pay in jaywalking case

      From the Daily News, Feb. 1:

      Black Lives Matter activist made to pay $88 in jaywalking bust
      A Black Lives Matter activist who tried to fight a jaywalking summons was convicted by a community court judge Thursday.

      Arminta Jeffryes was sentenced by Judge Charlotte Davidson to time served and an $88 surcharge.

      Jeffryes' lawyer, Martin Stolar, argued that NYPD Captain Paul Lanot abused his authority and improperly detained his client at Houston St. and the FDR Drive during a March 2016 protest.

      "He's gotta send a message to this group, and the way he does this, is he picks the leader and puts her in handcuffs," Stolar said.

  72. Adrian Blanc. Say his name.

    From The Villager, Jan. 11:

    Hit-and-run bust
    A suspect has been arrested in the Nov. 14 hit-and-run in Union Square that left a young chef dead. According to the Daily News, police said that Xavier Ward, 23, was collared Tues., Jan. 9, for running over Adrian Blanc and fleeing the seen.

    Ward had reportedly been turning left onto Union Square East from E. 14th St. He was driving a rented Zip Car, later found ditched in a Brooklyn parking lot, cops said.

    Blanc, 34, an executive chef at Hill and Bay, at E. 32nd St. and Second Ave., succumbed to his injuries the next day. The Venezuelan immigrant, who lived in Brooklyn, had recently become a U.S. citizen and planned to marry soon.

    In addition to leaving the scene of an accident, Ward was charged with driving without a license.

  73. A good thing this wasn’t terrorism. That would have sucked.

    From NYT, Feb. 1:

    Shanghai Van Crash Caused by Smoking Driver, Police Say
    A smoking driver ignited a fire inside a van carrying fuel canisters, causing him to lose control and slam into pedestrians on a sidewalk outside a Starbucks in Shanghai on Friday, the police said. At least 18 people were injured.

    The crash occurred just before 9 a.m. on Nanjing Road West, near People's Park in the heart of the city, the authorities said.

    The Shanghai police said the driver, a 40-year-old man surnamed Chen, worked for a metalware company in Shanghai and had no criminal history. He "lost control and drove onto the sidewalk," injuring 17 pedestrians and himself. All 18 were taken to hospitals, and none of the injured pedestrians were in mortal danger, the police said.

    Witnesses said the van had been carrying fuel canisters. The police said that the driver had been smoking in the vehicle, setting off a fire inside, and that he was suspected of "illegally transporting dangerous substances."

    So nice to China embracing modernity.

  74. NYC motorists still have license to kill

    Here we go again. Thirs homicide is called a "crash" (sic!), and there is no word that anyone was arrested. From the NY Times, March 5:

    2 Children Killed by Driver in Brooklyn Intersection
    A 20-month-old boy and a 4-year-old girl were killed in a Brooklyn intersection on Monday, struck by a car that slammed into them and the girl's pregnant mother.

    Details of the crash and how it occurred were still emerging, officials said. But the Police Department’s chief spokesman said the crash did not appear to be an intentional act.

    "It doesn’t look like anything deliberate at this point, but we have to figure it out," said the spokesman, Stephen P. Davis. "It is terrible."

    The 44-year-old woman who was driving the car that hit the people did not flee, Mr. Davis said. She suffered minor injuries, officials said, after her 2012 Volvo continued onward after hitting the pedestrians until it struck some parked cars.

    Eyewitnesses described the crash, in the Park Slope neighborhood, and the chaotic aftermath as the injured mother of the girl cried, "My baby! My child!" as she sat bloodied on a curb.

  75. Colombian bicyclists get a martyr

    A young participant in a late-night mass bicycle ride in the Colombian city of Cali was shot dead by an assailant who got away, according to a March 22 report on the Entérate Cali websit. The report does not give the name of the deceased, but states that he was a victim of "intolerance." The mentality appears to be: Death to bicyclists. They should all be shot on sight for not driving cars like normal people.

    We noted a similar case in Quito five years ago…

    1. Open season on Colombian bicyclists worldwide?

      Colombian professional racing cyclist Daniel Martínez has been hospitalized in Tuscany after being attacked by a motorist while training. "I was training in Italy and a car almost killed us. We protested and he went crazy. He got out and attacked me. He punched me on the jaw and knocked me out. He broke another guy's lip and then ran away," he told Bogotá's El Tiempo March 27.

  76. Patricia Clare O’Grady: say her name

    From The Villager, March 22:

    Killed by car

    An 84-year-old Village woman who was hit by a car on Sixth at W. 13th St. died three days later.

    Police said that on Mon., March 12, around 10:30 a.m., Patricia Clare O'Grady, of 498 Sixth Ave., was hit by a Ford Sedan just a block from her home. Responding officers found her lying in the street with body trauma. She was transported to Bellevue Hospital but pronounced dead on March 15.

    The Police Department's Collision Investigation Squad determined that the car, driven by a 36-year-old man, was traveling northbound when the victim entered the roadway, trying to cross near the crosswalk. The driver operator remained at the scene. There were no arrests and the investigation remains ongoing.

  77. Stephen Livecchi: say his name

    From QNS.com, March 27:

    Police and MTA officials are investigating a deadly accident at the College Point Bus Depot on Tuesday morning that claimed the life of a 59-year-old employee from Middle Village.

    According to law enforcement sources, a 56-year-old female bus driver was driving a bus in reverse inside the depot on 28th Avenue between Ulmer Street and College Point Boulevard at about 10:20 a.m. on March 27, just as a 59-year-old Stephen Livecchi was changing tires on a nearby vehicle.

  78. Giovanni Ampuero: say his name

    From amNewYork:

    Jackson Heights hit-and-run kills 9-year-old boy, police say
    A 9-year-old boy was struck and killed in broad daylight while crossing the street in Jackson Heights with his mother on Saturday afternoon, according to the NYPD.

    Just before 1:30 pm, the boy, Giovanni Ampuero, and his mother were crossing Northern Boulevard at 70th Street when a Jeep made a left turn onto Northern Boulevard, striking them both and causing severe trauma to Giovanni's head, police said.

    The driver of the Jeep kept going, but he was tracked down a short distance away and arrested, police said.

    The NYPD later identified the driver as Juan B. Jimenez, 86, of Morningside.
    He has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident, failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care, police said.

    At his arraignment, the judge set his bail at $10,000 cash or $20,000 bond, according to court documents.

    He's currently being held at the Vernon C. Bain Center jail in the Bronx, according to the city's Department of Correction. He's due back in court on May 11.

  79. Motorist faces jail for killing tots

    Finally, prosecutors are starting to to treat pedestrians as human beings and and not roadkill. Imagine. From the New York Post:

    Woman who ran over kids in Park Slope facing 15 years in prison
    The seizure-prone Staten Island woman who fatally mowed down two Park Slope kids in a crosswalk had been instructed by a doctor not to drive weeks before the tragedy, prosecutors said Thursday.

    Dorothy Bruns, 44, was arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court on a 10-count indictment on charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, assault, and reckless driving related to the March 5 crash that killed Joshua Lew, 1, and Abigail Blumenstein, 4…

    Bruns, who was also hit with a red light violation, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top charge…

    According to prosecutors, Bruns, who has multiple sclerosis, had a medical episode while driving on Staten Island and "lost sensation to the left side of her body," causing her to crash into a parked car on Jan. 8.

    She was hospitalized for two days – during which time she suffered a seizure.

    Bruns was instructed not to drive for one year due to her medical condition upon her discharge and again during follow-up appointments…

    The young children were crossing the busy Brooklyn intersection of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue with their pal moms, Tony Award-winning actress Ruthie Ann Miles – the mother of Abigail – and Lauren Lew, the mom of Joshua, when Bruns struck all four of them and another person.

    The Broadway actress, who won a Tony Award in 2015 for her role in "The King and I," was pregnant at the time of the crash. Her unborn child was not harmed.

    Bruns told cops at the time she suffered a seizure that caused her to run a red light and lose control of her white Volvo sedan.

  80. Mow down pedestrian, lie to cops: all in a day’s work

    A private carting truck struck and killed a man "jaywalking" in the Bronx on April 27. The river was later caught lying to police about the details of an earlier incident in which he ran down two people also in the Bronx, killing one. He told cops that an off-the-books worker who was helping on his route was a crazed homeless man who suddenly jumped on the side of his rig. (Daily News, May 5; Daily News, April 28)

  81. Jennifer Marie Williamson: say her name

    From NorthJersey.com, May 17:

    A much-anticipated class adventure to a historic park became a nightmarish, deadly ride for Paramus fifth-graders Thursday when their school bus and a dump truck collided on Route 80 in western Morris County, killing one student and a teacher and injuring 43 others.

    The teacher who died was identified by a family member Thursday night as Jennifer Marie Williamson, a veteran educator of more than 20 years…

    From NorthJersey.com, later on May 17:

    The dump truck involved in Thursday’s horrific crash with a school bus on Route 80 is apparently owned by a Belleville company that has logged 247 violations — and eight crashes — in the past 24 months.

  82. Pablo Avendano: say his name

    From the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 19:

    At 'ghost bike' memorial for lost rider, tears, love, and anger
    Now there’s a new one, a memorial "ghost bike," the wheels, frame, and handlebars painted a flat white and set into place Saturday evening at the Spring Garden intersection where courier Pablo Avendano was struck and killed last weekend.

    In a steady rain, scores of friends, family, and fellow riders christened the site with tears, songs, and curses. The crowd was so large it shut down the eastbound lanes of Spring Garden Street.

    Speaker after speaker blamed Avendano's death on an American economy that assigns little value to workers and, for couriers, pushes them onto the streets for low wages and at dangerous risk.

    "I'm so … angry he died," his girlfriend, Anne Marie Drolet, told the crowd, her voice amplified through a bullhorn. "He cared about what was happening in the world."

    The two had dreams of moving to Spain and becoming teachers, she said, of maybe even having a child together. Now that’s gone.

    Avendano, 34, died last Saturday, struck by an SUV on Spring Garden near 10th while working for a food-delivery service, Caviar, police and friends said.

    His public memorial was held in a city where biker-driver relations can be contentious, and the day after an 11-year-old boy on a bicycle was hit and killed by an SUV in South Philadelphia. Last year, Emily Fredricks, a 24-year-old pastry chef, was killed in a bike lane at Spruce and 11th Streets while on her way to work, leading protesters to form a human bike-lane barrier and call for more protections for bicyclists.

    In March, Mayor Kenney announced the city would create some parking-protected bike lanes — a physical barrier separates the lane — in Center City. He entered office saying he wanted to create 30 miles of protected lanes.

    Currently, Philadelphia has about 200 miles of bike lanes, but only about 2.5 miles are protected.

  83. Aaron Padwee: say his name.

    Aaron Padwee, 45, a professional woodworker and enthusiast for mountain-climbing, was killed in Long Island City May 28 when a motorist opened her door causing him to flip into the roadway, where he was was run over by a truck. (Daily News)

  84. Shaena Sinclair: say her name

    #LicenseToKill. From StreetsBlog, June 13:

    Two motorists collided at an intersection in Canarsie last night, sending a car onto the sidewalk where people were waiting for a bus.

    Shaena Sinclair, 33, was killed. Her son, 6-year-old Jayvon Williams, was hospitalized in critical condition with a head injury. NYPD filed no charges and issued no tickets.

    Some pedestrian advocates are suporting a measure now pending in Albany that would expand the number of NYC school zones allowed to have speed safety cameras. (AMNY)

    OK, here's where I get to be my usual ultra-dissident self and point out how the ROOT PROBLEM of domination of public space by the private automobile helps lubricate furtheer expansion of the surveillance state. I hate security cameras ALMOST as much as I hate cars. Techno-fix solutions inevitably bring new problems of their own, a phenomenon that was once dubbed "technoflex" (before that actually became the name of a fucking corporation). I say we ultimately have to BAN CARS.

    Not that the surveillance cameras aren;t already ubiquitous. Sigh…

  85. Luz Gonzalez: say her name

    We just noticed the case of Luz Gonzalez, a four-year-old girl struck by an SUV while she was was putting her shoe back on after it had fallen off outside a laundromat in Bushwick, Brooklyn, June 24. Gothamist reports that her parents did not attend her funeral in her native Mexico out of fear of being unable to return to the United States.

  86. Guns and cars…. the two great American pathologies.

    From Slate, July 21:

    A 47-year-old man in Clearwater, Florida who shot and killed a father of three during a heated dispute over a parking space will not face any criminal charges. Even though there is surveillance video that clearly shows how Michael Drejka, 47, shot Markeis McGlockton, 28, in the chest the gunman is protected by the state’s "stand your ground" law, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.

  87. WHY WE FIGHT

    From WABC, July 30:

    At least four people were injured when a car slammed into a business in Manhattan Monday afternoon.

    The crash happened just after 2:30 p.m. at Sixth Avenue and 17th Street in Chelsea.

    The SUV jumped a curb and slammed into the front of Gogi Grill, a Korean BBQ restaurant. The Lincoln Navigator also did some damage to the T-Mobile store next door….

    Officials said four people with minor injuries were taken to Bellevue Hospital.

  88. Madeline Sershin: say her name

    From the Queens Courier, July 31: 

    Hundreds gathered for a rally in Whitestone on July 30 to call for senior driver reform in the wake of Madeline Sershen’s untimely death.

    The family and friends of the 17-year-old student were joined by elected officials and supporters at the corner of Utopia Parkway and 16th Avenue, the site of the June 25 crash, to advocate for changes to better assess New York's current driver laws for senior citizens. Many held signs bearing Sershen’s face with words that plead for reform.

    "Through all the pain, tears and heartache for Maddie’s death, one thing was abundantly clear: there are individuals on the road who should not be driving. This is not age discrimination, it is simply about ability," said Rita Barravecchio, Sershen's aunt.

    "We are not gonna stop until change is made. So DMV, you better watch out," Barravecchio said.

    Last month, Sershen was struck by 88-year-old Sheila Kahn Prager, who blew through a red light and crashed into the teen. The teen's tragic death added to the pattern of older drivers killing pedestrians, including 9-year-old Giovanni Ampuero who died this past April.

  89. Madison Jane Lyden: say her name

    A bicyclist was fatally struck by a private garbage truck near Central Park Aug. 10 when she swerved to avoid hitting a livery cab that suddenly pulled out into the bike lane. Madison Jane Lyden of Australia was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. Mayor Bill de Blasio said: "It is just disgusting what happened here, a 23-year-old in the bike lane. This is another example from my point of view of the danger of reckless driving." But there was no word of any arrest in the incident. An nvestigation is said to be underway by the NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad. Transportation Alternatives said the incident was "a crash waiting to happen" because "lazy and entitled drivers" are parking, dropping people off and idling in bike lanes. (PIX, AP)

    1. Stop blaming cyclists for their deaths: Daily News

      Jim Knipfel writes in the Daily News: 

      In a shocking turn of events, Felipe Chairez was arrested Friday after fatally striking Madison Jane Lyden, a 23-year-old Australian tourist riding a bike near Central Park. Less shocking, when Chairez was arraigned the next day, he was charged with DWI.

      Had he not been drunk when arrested — he told cops he had had two beers — he likely would have faced no charges at all.

      Four years after the launch of Mayor de Blasio's Vision Zero project, you can still run over anyone you like and face few if any repercussions…

      This past January, de Blasio was crowing that 2017 saw the lowest number of traffic fatalities in city history. In June, he further touted statistics for the first half of 2018 that registered a record-low number of all fatalities in a six-month period with a mere 81, or only three or four people a week being killed by drivers.

      But more than 5,000 people were struck and injured by hit-and-run drivers in 2017, a 14% increase over 2016. And precious few of the drivers in question were ever charged, let alone convicted…

      [P]erhaps most disturbing is the tendency on the part of judges and the NYPD to blame the victims for getting themselves run over.

      When the story of her death first broke, the NYPD effectively declared Lyden culpable, saying she had ridden her bike into the truck. This ignored the fact she’d been forced into traffic when she veered to avoid a livery cab blocking the bike lane. Others pointed out that Lyden wasn’t wearing a helmet, which, though foolish, doesn’t excuse fatally irresponsible behavior by people driving large and heavy vehicles.

      The story changed later, but this is the standard default explanation: It’s the bicyclist’s fault. New Yorkers, for some reason, really hate bicyclists.

      Our only dissent is the sop to automotive tyranny by declaring riding helmet-free "foolish."

  90. Marlene Aron: say her name

    From the San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 22:

    A San Francisco artist who friends described as loving, giving and a fervent supporter of the arts has been identified as the woman struck and killed by a truck in Bernal Heights last week.

    Marlene Aron, 75, was walking at the intersection of Cortland Avenue and Ellsworth Street s last week, when a flatbed truck towing a trailor struck her at 2:49 PM Wednesday…

    Aron had spent the days leading up to her death hauling soil, mulch and lava rocks into Reclaimed Room, a San Francisco art gallery featuring projects crafted from recycled materials, for a joint exhibit titled "Reflections."

    It was one of dozens of exhibitions she contributed to in her lifetime, including collections at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Francisco Mission Cultural Center and De Galerie Den Haag in the Netherlands…

    "Art was her whole life," said Tom Wishing, Aron's partner. "Sometimes she would go without eating or sleeping in order to support her friends and their art. She was a lover of art and a lover of nature…"

    Aron, a peace activist, had lived in San Francisco for several decades after taking a years-long detour to Europe in the 1960s, where she became an expert on Vincent van Gogh. She most recently lectured Bay Area artists on Impressionism and female artists in the 1800s, years after lecturing at Penn State University and her alma mater, Youngstown State University in Ohio…

  91. Xellea Samonte: say her name

    StreetsBlog is reporting a possible police cover-up in the death of Xellea Samonte, a 23-year-old cyclist slain by a motorist in Astoria, Queens, on July 24. Police who investigated the death "declined to take an account from a witness who would have disputed the NYPD narrative that she caused the collision by running a red light."

  92. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the New York Times, Oct. 7:

    20 Killed in Limo Crash in New York; Deadliest U.S. Accident in 9 Years
    SCHOHARIE, N.Y. — The 17 friends had all piled into a white stretch limousine for what was supposed to have been a birthday celebration at an upstate New York brewery. But they never reached their destination.

    The massive vehicle, speeding downhill on Saturday, approached the intersection of two highways that residents had long warned was notoriously dangerous.

    And in just a few seconds of terror, their worst fears were realized: The limousine lost control, careening through the intersection and striking an empty car.

    The crash killed all 18 occupants of the limousine, including the driver, as well as two pedestrians, in an accident that left deep tire tracks in the ground and the small town about 40 miles west of Albany reeling.

    Four sisters, two brothers and at least three young couples were among the dead.

  93. Nahid Taghinia-Milani: say her name

    From the New York Post, Oct. 5:

    Mom of Chelsea art gallerist fatally struck by SUV
    The 84-year-old mother of a noted Chelsea art gallerist was killed on the Upper East Side on Friday afternoon when an SUV driver jumped the sidewalk and rammed her—and then fretted about the damage to her new car, witnesses and cops said.

    The driver, who had a New Jersey plate and a handicapped placard on her gray Land Rover, was heading north on Madison Avenue and attempting to turn left onto East 79th Street at around 3:20 p.m. when the car mounted the curb and struck Nahid Taghinia-Milani, who lived seven blocks north of the accident.

    Taghinia-Milani's daughter, Leila Heller, runs art galleries under her name in Dubai and in Chelsea.

    1. Ngan Leung: say her name

      We missed this one. From The Villager, Nov. 30:

      Chinatown 'car'-nage as minivan drivers kill two, injure six others
      Drivers of 2015 Toyota Sienna minivans claimed the lives of two people in Chinatown over the past two weeks.

      On Thurs., Nov. 15, around 12:50 p.m., police responded to a 911 call of a pedestrian struck at Bayard St. and Bowery. Upon arrival, they found a 90-year-old woman, Ngan Leung, of 10 Confucius Plaza, conscious and alert complaining of pain.

      E.M.S. medics transported her to Bellevue Hospital Center, where she succumbed to her injuries on Wed., Nov. 21.

      A preliminary investigation revealed a 66-year-old man was driving a 2015 Toyota Sienna eastbound on Bayard St. attempting to make a left turn onto the Bowery, when he struck Leung in the crosswalk.

      The driver remained at the scene and the investigation remains ongoing by the New York Police Department’s Collision Investigation Squad.

  94. M-Din Rajon: say his name

    Three people, including two NYPD officers, were rushed to the hospital after a police cruiser hopped a curb, struck a pedestrian and slammed into a tree while responding to what proved to be a false-alarm call about an active shooter in Brooklyn's East New York. (CBS New York, Dec. 15)

    Police meanwhile say they are investigating a hit-and-run "crash" (sic) also in East New York that left a bicyclist dead. The victim, M-Din Rajon, 21, was delivery worker for a local restaurant. Struck by a truck, he was dragged several feet before the motorist drove off. (WABC, Dec. 14)

  95. Kimberly Greer: say her name

    From The Villager, Dec. 22:

    A woman was fatally struck by a charter bus on Thursday evening at Centre and Leonard Sts. in Lower Manhattan, according to police.

    Kimberly Greer, 28, was crossing the street in the crosswalk at 7:30 p.m. when the bus struck her near a courthouse. She was a law clerk for U.S. Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker.

    Greer was found unconscious at the scene and pronounced dead later at New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital.

    The bus’s driver, Xi Chen, 50, who police said lives on the Lower East Side, has been charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to use due care. The Tennessee-bound bus was operated by Wanda Coach, according to the Daily News, and Chen was rushing after leaving the stop at Allen St. late…

    In a statement released Friday, Judge Parker called Greer "one of the most kind and generous persons I know. Quick to lend a hand to colleagues, bake cookies for interns and mentor students. She was a deeply valued and loved member of my chamber’s family and we are devastated by this tragedy."

  96. ‘Vision Zero,’ eh?

    From the Daily News, Dec. 28:

    Walking around New York City is a bit more dangerous today than it was a year ago. New city data show pedestrian deaths in the city are up 4.7%, from 106 in 2017 to 111 in 2018 as of Dec. 27. A dozen pedestrians have been killed on city streets so far this month. 

    In addition to the case of Kimberly Greer (cited above), the account notes:

    Two people died after separate crashes Dec. 18 — including Waiching Chen, 74, who was struck as she crossed 159th Ave. in Howard Beach, Queens, that afternoon. A motorist was arrested in the crash. That evening, 64-year-old Kim Jong of Fort Lee, N.J. was hit by a car as he crossed E. 72nd St. midblock. He died three days later.

    The month's pedestrian fatalities led city Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg to say "we have much more to do to meet our ambitious goal" of zero traffic fatalities under the city’s Vision Zero program.

    Despite the jump in pedestrian deaths, traffic fatalities in New York City remain at historic lows and are down nearly 12% from 2017, the data show.

    As of Thursday, 196 people had died in vehicle crashes in 2018. If that number holds, traffic deaths will have dropped 11.7% in 2018, from a total of 222 deaths during all of 2017.

    Trottenberg said the decline in traffic deaths is "unparalleled among American cities."

    Mayor de Blasio credited the decline to the Vision Zero program, which has lowered the city’s speed limit to 25 mph, increased traffic rule enforcement and implemented safer street design.

    The rise in pedestrian deaths was more than offset by dramatic drops in the number of cyclists and vehicle passengers and drivers killed in crashes.

    Just 10 cyclists have died on city streets this year, a 58.3% decline from 24 cycling deaths reported in 2017.

    Yeah OK, but we insist that "crash" is the wrong word to use when refering to a car killing a cyclist.

  97. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Daily News, Jan. 1:

    Bicyclist, 26, dies after being "doored" by Brooklyn taxi
    A 26-year-old bicyclist died in a gruesome crash Tuesday morning after a taxi door was flung open in his path, officials said. The victim was pedaling along Third Ave. near 28th St. in Sunset Park when a taxi door swung open in his path about 6:15 a.m., police said.

    The cyclist was thrown from his two-wheeler into the path of another vehicle that ran him over, cops said. Medics rushed him to NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn, where he died. His name was not immediately released.

    Both drivers remained on the scene and no charges were immediately filed.

    Ten bicyclists were killed in crashed in 2018, according to NYPD stats – a nearly 60% drop from the 24 killed in 2017. At the same time, pedestrian fatalities jumped by 7% across the city, from 106 in 2017 to 114 last year. Despite the increase in pedestrian deaths, traffic fatalities overall in the city were at a historic low in 2018 with 200 deaths, down nearly 12% from the year before.

  98. New Years car attack (or ‘accident’) in Queens

    From the Jackson Heights Post:

    Memorial Created After Woman Struck and Killed by Unlicensed Driver
    A small memorial has been set up in Jackson Heights to honor the woman who was fatally struck on New Year’s Eve by an unlicensed driver.

    A sign remembering the victim, along with a small bundle of flowers and a letter, were put up yesterday by Make Queens Safer, a local advocacy group, at the corner of 37th Avenue and 81st Street, where the tragedy occurred Monday.

    Police say the victim, whose identity has yet to be publicly released, was crossing 81st Street at 12:45 p.m. on Dec. 31 when 43-year-old Vitaliana Garcia Gavilan, the driver behind a 2008 Chevy Equinox, plowed into her.

    Garcia Gavilan was traveling westbound on 37th Avenue and hit her while making a right turn onto 81st Street. The victim, identified by some reports as being in her 60s, had the right of way in the crosswalk when she was struck, police said.

    Garcia Gavilan, from Great Neck, then allegedly drove over the victim twice with the front right tire after moving forward and reversing, police said.

    The victim was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

    Garcia Gavilan was arrested and charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, failure to yield, driving with a suspended license, and failure to use due care causing a serious injury.

  99. WHY WE FIGHT

    From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

    Teen driver jumps off Gowanus Expressway after crash
    A 19-year-old man struck an MTA bus traveling toward Manhattan with his car on the Gowanus Expressway, then rear-ended another vehicle before he fled the car, ran several blocks and jumped more than 30 feet to Third Avenue in Sunset Park this morning, police officials said.

    The driver, not yet identified, was rushed to Maimonides Medical Center with what police said was head trauma. He was reported in stable condition, police said.

  100. WHY WE FIGHT

    From PIX-11, Jan. 8:

    Sanitation driver being questioned after woman struck, killed in the Bronx: source
    The driver of a sanitation truck is being questioned by police after a woman was struck and killed in the Bronx, according to a source.

    The sanitation driver, 33, is cooperating with police, a source says. He says he did not know he hit a woman.

    The woman was walking near the intersection of Willis Avenue and East 138th Street in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx at about 6:45 a.m. when she was hit, police said.

    The victim, whose identity was not immediately released, suffered severe body trauma and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police.

    Further investigation determined she was struck by a silver vehicle that fled the scene.

    A source later said the vehicle that struck the woman was a sanitation truck with a plow on the front.

  101. Joseph Chiam: say his name

    From The Villager, Feb. 5:

    East Village cyclist, 72, killed in Midtown hit-and-run
    A senior cyclist from the East Village died Monday after being struck by a hit-and-run truck driver in Midtown, according to police.

    The rider was identified as Joseph Chiam, 72, of 127 First Ave., between E. Seventh St. and St. Mark's Place.

    At 5:52 a.m., on Feb. 4, police responded to a 911 call and found Chiam lying on the ground at W. 45th St. and Eighth Ave. He was conscious and with trauma reported to his body. He was next to his bike, which was mangled from the collision.

    Chiam was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

    Officials said that a 2013 green Western Star truck was headed north on Eighth Ave., then turned left onto W. 45th St. when it hit Chiam. He was reportedly riding his bike in the bicycle lane before the accident.

    The driver left the scene after the collision. Police have reportedly identified the driver but have not yet released that information.

  102. Aurilla Lawrence: say her name

    Aurilla Lawrence, a 25-year-old bicycle messenger, was fatally struck by a truck driver in Williamsburg on Feb. 28. The driver fled the scene, police said. (Gothamist)

  103. WHY WE FIGHT

    From QNS, March 4:

    A man died of his injuries early Monday morning after he was struck by an MTA bus in Jackson Heights early on Monday morning.

    Authorities say that at 2:45 a.m. on March 4, officers from the 115th Precinct responded to a 911 call regarding a man struck by a bus at the intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and 75th Street. Upon their arrival, police found the victim unconscious with trauma to his head and body.

    A preliminary investigation found that the victim had been struck by a Q33 bus that was driving westbound on Roosevelt Avenue near the intersection at 75th Street. The victim was dragged a few feet before the bus came to a stop. The bus driver remained at the scene following the collision.

    The victim was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police withheld his identity, pending family notification.

    The investigation is ongoing.

  104. WHY WE FIGHT

    From QNS, March 4:

    A man died of his injuries early Monday morning after he was struck by an MTA bus in Jackson Heights early on Monday morning.

    Authorities say that at 2:45 a.m. on March 4, officers from the 115th Precinct responded to a 911 call regarding a man struck by a bus at the intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and 75th Street. Upon their arrival, police found the victim unconscious with trauma to his head and body.

    A preliminary investigation found that the victim had been struck by a Q33 bus that was driving westbound on Roosevelt Avenue near the intersection at 75th Street. The victim was dragged a few feet before the bus came to a stop. The bus driver remained at the scene following the collision.

    The victim was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police withheld his identity, pending family notification.

    The investigation is ongoing.

  105. NYPD victim-blaming compounds grief

    Form Gothamist, March 15:

    When Sarah Foster, a 27-year-old middle school teacher, was run over and killed by the driver of an oil truck last month in a Murray Hill crosswalk, those who knew her said the anguish didn’t stop with news that she had died on her way to work. For one close friend and co-worker, the pain was multiplied upon reading about the crash in the paper.

    The New York Post quoted unnamed police sources and witnesses as saying Foster was wearing a hood and headphones when she was struck, a claim that her colleague read as insinuating Foster was, in some way, at fault for her own death…

    While the police and witness accounts weren't wrong in Foster's case, advocates, attorneys, trauma experts, and mourning families say by shifting focus away from drivers and onto those they’ve killed, this kind of language in news reports can compound grief in the wake of traffic deaths. And the problem is only worsened in cases where accounts from unnamed police sources are later disproven.

    Danielle Davis knows this all too well. In 2016, her sister Lauren was killed by a driver while bicycling to work on Classon Avenue in Brooklyn. Unnamed police sources told the press that Lauren was biking against traffic. It took the Davis family months of work, canvassing for witnesses and filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the police department, before the official account was corrected: Lauren was, in fact, riding with traffic.

  106. WHY WE FIGHT

    From Gothamist, March 14:

    A cyclist was fatally struck by the driver of a black sedan this morning while riding on Borden Avenue in Long Island City—a notoriously dangerous corridor where some local residents had recently petitioned the city for a protected bike lane and other pedestrian safety enhancements…

    The Long Island City victim is the sixth cyclist to die while riding in New York City this year, compared to 2018's record low of ten cyclist fatalties.

    None of the drivers involved in the deaths of those cyclists—Chaim Joseph, Susan Moses, Hector Ayala Jr., Hugo Garcia, and Aurilla Lawrence—have been arrested, according to a police spokesperson. In the case of Lawrence, a 25-year-old bike messenger killed in a hit-and-runearlier this month, the driver has not yet been identified, despite police saying they had a lead10 days ago.

    The driver who struck this morning's victim remained on the scene, and was not charged. A police spokesperson told Gothamist, "There is no criminality at this time."