Looking North from 116th and Amsterdam.
An unidentified Hispanic man has hit by a black Lincoln Town Car on Wednesday night around 9:30 p.m. as he crossed Amsterdam Avenue around 116th street.
The man, who is in his 20’s or 30’s, suffered a serious head injury and is in critical condition at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital, Councilman Mark Levine tells us.
“It could go either way as to whether he survives,” he said.
The man, who was not carrying identification, was apparently crossing the street against the light (he had a Don’t Walk sign) when he was hit by the car, which police do not believe was speeding. The driver stopped and waited at the scene and the man was taken away in an ambulance.
“I saw the guy on the ground. I could see blood coming out of his head,” one witness told the Columbia Spectator.
A Columbia security guard was also hit by a car around the same spot on August 10. “Lawrence Humphrey was hit near 116th Street by a Nissan Maxima headed south on Amsterdam Avenue at about 11 p.m. on Aug. 10, according to police,” the Spectator reported.
Levine says he wants the DOT to study that street, because part of Amsterdam is shaded by an overpass just north of 116th, and lighting there isn’t very good. Also, the green lights are in synch from 110th to 125th.
“It almost encourages speeding because people want to catch all the green lights.”
If the lights are in sync, wouldn’t that discourage speeding as you’d speed up to a light that hasn’t turned green yet? Driving the speed limit should allow one to catch all the lights. Or is it that they all turn green at exactly the same time?
Anyway, that overpass is fugly. Seems like a product of ’60s and ’70s urban design.
Horrible. So sad, both these incidents. Speed cameras and a pedestrian island seem like a good idea. The speed limit is 25 here, right? But I look at the photo of the street design and I’d probably drive closer to 40, without different design and speed enforcement.
Will everyone now ask for one traffic lane in each direction? I hope not. This is a super wide avenue. Taxi and car service drivers don’t care about rules or the law. At least the driver stopped. Yet again, I would never jay walk up there. Amsredam slopes downward dramatically going north around that point, and if the town car was traveling southbound, the pedestrian may not have seen it coming,