Multiple people appear to have been injured in a dramatic crash on Central Park West near the Museum of Natural History on Tuesday night at around 8:40 p.m., according to a witness.
Update: Police are saying the SUV blew through a light; one woman severely injured.
Witness Jenifer Silverman was walking by the scene with her children when the crash occurred and said she saw “people on the sidewalk hurt.” She sent the following account:
“There was a speeding SUV going north on CPW which ran into a taxi at 81st. That taxi crashed into a tree at the 81st st. entrance to the park and it either hit a pedestrian there or as someone had commented there may have been a man on the roof of one of the cars. I didn’t see that. The SUV kept going and before it got to 82nd crashed into a bus. Two tri-wheeled cop cars were behind the speeding SUV (possibly chasing) and within minutes, another 5 cops and a few ambulances responded.”
We are attempting to get more information from FDNY and NYPD. If you have info please contact us at westsiderag at gmail dot com.
Photo by Michael Silverman.
I bike through the intersection twice every day. It is a disaster waiting to happen… Well, not anymore. It’s happened at last. 🙁 The intersection is too big and too complex, with more than one set of “left only” green lights. W81 needs to be a one-way street, and left turns can’t happen. Bad road design strikes again, and again, and again.
As someone else has pointed out, this accident doesn’t have anything to do with traffic patterns or bad road signs. Tri-wheeled cops chasing a SUV? That would have been a sight!
Totally agree that there should be no left turn at 81st street and CPW. There should also be a four way stop for pedestrian crossing.
Hope everyone is ok. I was running in the park when that happened and saw police cars driving through the park with their lights and sirens on. 🙁
This has nothing to do with traffic patterns on CPW! Come on; police were in pursuit… Read the article! Keep your politics to yourself!
What pursuit? I can’t find anything about it.
It was clearly a car chase and has nothing to do with traffic patterns. The only thing that makes traffic patterns worse in NYC are bike lanes and the dividers that randomly pop up. Either the SUV was stolen or the driver was reluctant to pull over for some reason. The fact that it hit the taxi and kept going, the fact that police were chasing him, the fact that he was speeding…all point to this being a car chase. Hard to imagine a car chase in NYC ending in anything but an accident of some sort.
I was there with a friend when it happened. We ran for our lives. Does anyone have any updates on the condition of the woman who was seriously injured? We are praying for her recovery.