Two cabs and an SUV were involved in a crash at 96th street and West End Avenue on Saturday afternoon, and three people were taken to the hospital, according to a witness. The crash occurred at 12:37, according to FDNY, and three people were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital with “pretty minor injuries,” a spokesman said.
Paul, who sent in the photos above and below, wrote that the people in the SUV were injured.
“They loaded 3 people into ambulances, all from the SUV. One appeared to be the driver, a male, as well as 2 passengers, a male and female. The female was the only one who was able to walk to an ambulance, she was holding her arm. Took at almost 10 minutes for any help to arrive. All this with horns were blaring the whole time from impatient drivers trying to cross the intersection!”
Accident at 96 St. and West End Ave. Involving this car and a taxi.@westsiderag pic.twitter.com/LZseDomjGC
— KAT NYC (@Kat_NYC) May 21, 2016
I’m shocked! A crash at 96 St.and West End Ave…how could such a thing happen???????????
Not much to see here I suppose. The much bigger issue is the traffic on WEA between 106th and 96th heading south. It’s now a full-time parking lot every day except Sunday. Thank Bill de Blasio and his ingenious plan to repurpose the left lane.
scott please email me at westendavenuenoise at gmail Ive been to CB7 with video and now have meeting with CO at 24th precinct and with Helen Rosenthal. This has to stop
96th St. and West End Avenue is the closest I have come across that fits the definition of “Kill Zone” as defined in the Army Training Manual for the Viet Nam War (I still have a copy).
While I do mind that honking and traffic coming down to my corner, it’s the death and injury that seem a waste.
Thank you to Officer Rivas at the 24 th who pointed out the many injuries in this atea.However the only wa to avoid it as a pedestrian is hail a taxi .And that’s possibly a bigger risk.
Perhaps a tendency for the dramatic? A kill zone? Really?
A preteen boy was killed at 97 and West End the same evening an older man was dragged and struck by a bus-also killed due to this traffic situation we have. Add a public school on that corner. And another death last summer of another innocent victim-a woman just crossing the street. I would say a kill zone is appropriate.
No doubt it is a very dangerous corner which has caused multiple deaths. But to reference a “Vietnam” manual is beyond the pale, don’t you think?
What about installing speed bumps? And why don’t these drivers lose their licenses to drive. Perhaps that will cause drivers to think twice about reckless speeding.
I intentionally chose to write a dramatic comment as the more tempered have been ignored. I have previously repeatedly written here that the intersection is unnecessarily dangerous. I have toured the intersection with Rosenthal, who preferred to broadcast propoganda rather than listen. I have talked with the spokesperson for the DOT, who responded about the improved safety.
Evidently I am not totally incorrect on this, however my Comments above are responded to with “Not much to see here I suppose. The much bigger issue is the traffic” and “I have a lot of destinations I could suggest you travel to”.
Oh well, let’s just accept the staus quo. I mean, why not?
I have a lot of destinations I could suggest you travel to if you think 96/WEA is a kill zone.
Thank you for extending kindness. Kinda just too bad about our dead and hurt neighbors though?
Re: “All this with horns blaring the whole time from impatient drivers trying to cross the intersection!”
OF COURSE!! What ELSE might one expect from our “Me First!”/”I’m SO important so get the %^*#$& OUTTA MY WAY !!” society.
P.S.: a shout-out to the two oblivious UWS mommies who could NOT CARE ENOUGH to get their entitled super-noisy little brats to USE THEIR ‘INDOOR VOICES’ while dining at a Thai restaurant last night (restaurant NOT being named as IT was not at fault):
YES, they are just children, BUT YOU ARE ADULTS! And it is the adult’s DUTY to teach children to BEHAVE RESPECTABLY IN PUBLIC and to display what once was called GOOD MANNERS, something you obviously never heard of.
Had either of you been driving past 96th and West End yesterday during that accident you probably would have been the first to blast your horns at the “inconvenience”.
Ever since they let that liberal LaGuardia take over in ’34 there are no manners anymore. This city is a modern Sodom & Gomorrah and the main culprits are families with children who think it’s ok to speak before being spoken to. Back in my day, children were seen, not heard and there were no Thai restaurants with their Commie spices.
I hate to stray from the topic at hand, but any chance Scooter Stan that you spoke to the mothers or asked the management to tell the mothers to tell their children to quiet down? Just curious, because it usually works. As for it not being the management’s fault, well, yes it is if they want to keep the rest of their customers happy (and coming back).
Re: “but any chance Scooter Stan that you spoke to the mothers”
YES! We were a party of 4 and, when the continual noise at the next table began to become grating we all turned and said, politely, “could you please keep it down?”.
Quiet-period lasted for maybe 10 minutes. Noise got louder as these 8-or-9-year-olds finished eating and NEVER let up afterwards.
Hey Scooter Stan – Kids are part of the equation here on the UWS. Some may be louder/more/less considerate than others (which probably was the case even in the “good old days” of the UWS 70s and 80s) but isn’t there enough stuff to worry about in this world (i.e. a car accident where people are hurt in an intersection that is a mess) for you to focus on? Put all of your complaining to use and DO SOMETHING about serious issues that matter, rather than moaning and groaning about what the UWS has become. Or find somewhere else to live – everything about this neighborhood clearly bothers you so maybe its time to re-evaluate.
Though probably many people would miss your constant rants on this blog.
You know what, I agree with ScooterStan. But it’s not the kids. It’s the horrible entitled parents who let their kids go nuts and don’t control them. I grew up in this neighborhood and it was never like this. Ever.
Also agree with ScooterStan about car honking. Drivers on that strip are rude and careless. It’s a SCHOOL ZONE.
“i.e. a car accident where people are hurt in an intersection that is a mess” –
Wow! Someone who gets it.
Hey, this occurred when an Uber (the black SUV) taking parents and siblings and friends to a law school graduation party was making a legal left turn with 6 people in the car. It was legally in the middle of the intersection slowly turning left when a taxi that had come off the highway and rear-ended another car at that red light, tried to flee the scene by crossing the double yellow, side-swiping another car and then went faster to speed away running the red light and careened into our right back tire. The impact was so intense it turned the car around and the right-side air bags deployed. All 6 passengers were injured and taken to the hospital. We are all okay now. Much appreciation to the good Samaritans, the NYPD, and the ambulance/medics/doctors/nurses. We are all okay with recoverable injuries and have been told that the drivers are okay as well.
Thank you for letting us know! I’m glad the news is good (considering).
Happy that your injuries are not as serious as they appeared!
Thank you for posting an update, and more importantly I’m glad to hear you’re all ok considering what all of you went through.
Glad you’re okay!
Glad to hear you’re all ok, that’s great news!
Obviously, we should demolish the school and gas station at that intersection and build floor-through condos to ease the congestion at that intersection.
Don’t joke about getting rid of the gas station. I’ve seen so many near accidents happen due to cars backing out of the gas pumps into traffic. It’s insane. What they can do to lessen accidents is to add a red light in the middle of the block between Broadway and WEA. They do this on other high volume blocks.
You all know that the huge HESS station on 10th Ave bet. 45-46 Street is history, don’t you? Major gas stations are being sold because their owners can realize huge winnings by selling to real estate speculators. If this continues, Manhattan will eventually be gas-station-free. I guess we’ll all start to look like Beijing in the morning: thousands upon thousands of bicycles in single lanes moving lock step toward their Kafkaesque work stations – even the real estate speculators. What fun! And then, if even one biker unexpectedly stops, mile after mile of bikers will collide and tumble down like dominoes.
Stu, that’s an interesting idea. That block (which I happen to live on) has become an noisy, honking mess in the last few years, with traffic stacked end-to-end from Broadway to WEA much of the day. I would love to see how a red light would play out in the computer models.
That’s a start. The Redesign work concentrated on West End Avenue and ignored that the real trouble is 96 St and the neighboring Streets.
Better a moment lost in life than a life lost in a moment.
@Stu: They could also ticket cars speeding, running the light, and blocking the intersection. We’re lucky it was an SUV sitting there, rather than pedestrians crossing the street.
Despite all the complaints, most pedestrians are killed in crosswalks where they have the right of way. The ones who are “jaywalking” are usually careful and look both ways.
Why are the 96th Street intersections so dangerous? Because they are full of cars driving too and from the highways, in a rush and driving like sub-urbanites.
When you come into the city you have to slow down and drive differently. The closer you get to the highway exits and entrances, however, the more bad, speeding drivers you will see.
Re: “Because they are full of cars driving to and from the highways, in a rush and driving like sub-urbanites.”
EXACTLY !! You have singled-out what is possibly the REAL reason the W. 96th area has become so dangerous! These are people who either:
a). have been delayed on some highway leading INTO the city, are now late for whatever, and are letting their entitled/arrogant/selfish inner-selves do the driving for them in a place they don’t really like very much or they wouldn’t have moved away in the first place; OR
b) have been in the city, have been delayed by normal city congestion (partially caused by similar idiots who think they can drive around NYC as if it were their sad little suburban hamlets) and are now hell-bent on getting onto that dang West Side Highway and “getting oudda heah”!
Reminds us of the 60/70-ish suburban couple (their free license-plate-holder advertised a Rye, NY auto dealership) yesterday, probably headed for a matinee at Lincoln Center, who scored a free parking spot on W. 69th just off pedestrian-busy Broadway. Exiting her nothing-special middle-class sedan, the woman whined, “Yeah-h-h, this city is always full of a million people!”
YUP, and that’s why we Gotham-ites love it!
More constant enforcement and speed cameras, please. Or, maybe, just close the highway access if people can’t control themselves – treat selfish, socio paths like little kids, make it more inconvenient to drive in the city.
97th and Columbus is the next site for a pedestrian fatality. Cars come flying down 97th in the extra-wide block from CPW to Columbus and then have to merge onto a narrower block at the intersection. Meanwhile the northwest corner of the intersection juts out toward the street and there are tons of people there from Whole Foods. Some day there is going to be a tragedy there.
97th in general is a nightmare. People exit the FDR onto 97th and then trundle west – very slowly on the East Side because of the way the lights are timed. By the time they come out of Central Park, aiming I assume for the West Side Highway, they tend to be, at best, aggressive. I’ve seen people literally run over more than once in the past ten years – once at Broadway/97, by someone who had run the light, while I was with my then small son. A couple of years later he was walking alone and saw a woman dragged and killed (again, 97th).
He knows to be super, super cautious in the West 90s, but not every pedestrian does. And of course even those who are following the law (Jean Chambers and Cooper Stock spring to mind) may not have a chance to save themselves.
Everything in the city is a big mess what we need to do is put in more bike lanes ha ha as most people ride there bikes on the other side of the street, Third world country when it comes to anything in this big mess of a city!
There are lots of reckless drivers on NYC streets. I was nearly run over by a sanitation truck that rounded a corner at breakneck speed on 66th & Amsterdam. Oh and I had the green light! You just can’t reconfigute every traffic if folks don’t drive safely. Even bikers can be a pedestrian hazard!
Install cameras (active or ‘fake’) at every major intersection and see how many drivers ‘just don’t want to take a chance’. Need permission from Albany for this? Just install the cameras and let Cuomo and DeBlasio sort it out.
Problem solved (to an acceptable extend)!
Totally agree!! In addition to writing comments here, concerned citizens should be calling and writing their UWS officials, CB 7, and Gale Brewer. The 96th, 97th Street areas on the West Side should be camera-d at every single block! Things would change. Demand it.
“Smile, you’re on candid camera!”
By the way, how many people know that before Candid Camera, there was a Candid Microphone radio show (with Alan Funt)?
Listen to a “best of” episode from 1947 here
🙂 Thanks for the link!
Love this! Wish it could be done, along with automatic tickets for anyone running a red light via camera snap.
And this still happened after Mayor DeBlasio has done everything he can do to screw up the West End Avenue traffic flow in a flawed attempt to make the lanes safer. All that’s happened is that motorists have lost lane space in which to drive safely. And Amsterdam Avenue? What a horror, all for the sake of bike riders. With double parked trucks to the right and to the left, there is often only a single lane for rush hour traffic to squeeze through. Meanwhile the bike lanes are most often unoccupied. The horrors of Columbus Avenue should have taught someone something. Every time big government gets involved (remember education policy coming from D.C.?), things only get worse.
a quick reminder since this accident involved two taxis,and I was just in a taxi accident: Sometimes we don’t bother to put on our seat-belts because we get lax. If I had been wearing my belt, I would not have wound up as injured as I was. Moms, please…especially with your children!
To Ann’s most worthy exhortation concerning seat belt use, I would add the following:
-Parents who cross recklessly with their children
– Parents who allow their children to skateboard, scooter and bicycle without a helmet
– And all other reckless and irresponsible behavior
Re: Congestion on W. 97th street, etc.: If you think it’s bad now, just imagine what it will be like when JHL builds their new facility there.
See:
https://www.westsiderag.com/2015/03/26/parents-sue-to-stop-nursing-home-costruction-on-97th-street#comment-264446
I have yet to see any actual refutation of the most compelling objections regarding traffic congestion and the dangers that would create. (Nor any convincing argument as to why JHL cannot remain at their current location, renovating and expanding it as necessary.)