CounterVortex

From the NY Daily News, June 17:

91-year-old Brooklyn man Milton Levine killed in hit-and-run
A callous driver struck a 91-year-old man on a Brooklyn street Thursday – and sped away after he saw the victim hit the ground, sources said.

Milton Levine was crossing Avenue Y in Sheepshead Bay when the gray Nissan Pathfinder, turning onto Nostrand Ave., clipped him about 3:30 p.m., cops said.

The driver spotted Levine lying on the street, but sped off as a woman driving a 2010 Nissan Murano ran over the elderly man, sources said.

The woman stopped and found Levine’s body sprawled on the asphalt between her front and rear tires, witnesses said.

“I heard a screech and a thump,” said Levine’s friend Alvin Hirschberg, 72, who was standing nearby.

Levine – who lived three blocks from the crash – was rushed to Lutheran Hospital, where he died two hours later.

“He was probably picking up the doughnuts and bread that they give him from 7-Eleven,” said his neighbor Elisa Davis Martinez, 54.

Levine brought the treats to the Shore Park Jewish Center on Avenue Y five mornings a week, she said.

Levine also volunteered at the Kings Bay Senior Center.

From Long Island Newsday, June 16:

Man killed in Hempstead Tpke. hit-run
A 22-year-old jogger was struck and killed early Thursday by a suspected hit and run driver on Hempstead Turnpike in the second fatal pedestrian accident on the Nassau roadway this month.

The busy turnpike is the deadliest road for pedestrians in the tri-state area, according to a transportation advocacy group.

We missed these back in March. From the New Jersey Star-Ledger, March 16:

Tour bus company in fatal N.J. Turnpike crash has among worst U.S. driver safety records
EAST BRUNSWICK — Super Luxury Tours, the company whose bus crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike on Monday night, killing two people and injuring 40, has compiled one of the worst driver safety records in the country, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Over the past two years, Super Luxury Tours’ 16 drivers were involved in four accidents, two of them with injuries, according to the DOT. Drivers were cited six times for speeding and three times for failure to obey traffic signals. On four occasions, drivers were unable to understand or answer basic commands in English. (It is not clear from the records whether any driver was cited more than once for poor driving.)

In fact, as of last month, the driver safety record of the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., company was worse than 99.6 percent of all other bus companies in the country, the DOT said.
Yet buses from Super Luxury Tours continue to roam the highways, clocking more than 2.2 million miles on U.S. roads last year, mostly shuttling passengers between East Coast cities at budget prices.

Monday night’s crash occurred just south of Exit 9 in Middlesex County as the Super Luxury Tours bus was traveling from New York’s Chinatown neighborhood to Philadelphia. It was the second deadly bus wreck in three days. On Saturday, a bus returning to Chinatown from the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut crashed in the Bronx, killing 15.

From the Daily News, March 14:

Death toll climbs to 15 in horrific Bronx bus crash
Another passenger of the doomed discount bus that crashed in the Bronx has died, bringing the death toll in the horrific highway wreck to 15, police said Monday.

The fifteenth victim, a 70-year-old man, died of his injuries shortly after 7 a.m.

A police source confirmed to the Daily News that a fifteenth victim died, but could not provide further details. None of the victims have been identified.

Federal agents probing the cause of the Bronx crash were poring over the coach’s “black box” and onboard videotape Sunday night.

Investigators said the black box will reveal if the driver, Ophadell Williams, was speeding and video should indicate if he fell asleep at the wheel – or support his initial claim he was sideswiped by a big rig.

A truck driver contacted state police Sunday, but claimed he was behind the bus, not alongside it and saw it weaving and then swerve off southbound lanes of Interstate 95.

Never forget: It’s a proven fact. Cars are worse than terrorism.

See our last post on the global car culture, and more reasons WHY WE FIGHT.