A 31-year-old man was pinned under the wheels of a tractor-trailer on Amsterdam Avenue on Monday, and sustained severe injuries. The man had been running alongside the truck on Amsterdam a little before 1 a.m. when he crossed the avenue at 106th Street, running right into the vehicle, police told the Daily News.
“The panicked driver slowed down but couldn’t come to a full stop before the man, who had slid under the truck, got pinned under the back wheels,” the newspaper reported. The man was taken to Mt. Sinai with severe injuries to his legs and upper body. The driver was not charged.
Streetsblog called the police account “victim-blaming” and questions why the NYPD didn’t press charges.
“A Daily News photo indicates that the truck exceeds the 55-foot limit for legal operation on NYC surface streets. Trucks over 55 feet long are allowed only when carrying non-divisible loads, like construction beams, and have a DOT permit. There is no permit for a truck carrying boxes or other divisible cargo in an enclosed 53-foot trailer, such as the one involved in Monday’s crash.”
A man is fighting for his life after getting pinned under a tractor-trailer in Manhattan https://t.co/9bpwpulSNb pic.twitter.com/seYccdXbVM
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) January 22, 2018
The anonymous quotes in the News article make -no- sense whatsoever, and it’s embarrassing that law enforcement isn’t disciplined when they spew BS like this. It’s incredibly harmful to the victims.
That said, we all see trucks speeding up Amsterdam and blowing straight through red lights, multiple times every day, and particularly overnight. The police story is so nonsensical I wonder if the officer needs to be drug-tested, or at the very least BACK UP THE IMPLAUSIBLE STORY WITH SOME, um, EVIDENCE, but a truck blowing through a red light is my guess what happened. It’s awful.
The truck is illegal on city streets and should be impounded. Ideally law enforcement would start focusing on this asap.
The police are wasting their time harassing delivery guys on e bikes and do nothing when an ILLEGAL vehicle actually kills someone. Why aren’t the police seizing this vehicle?
That’s because it’s easier to pick on low wage immigrant workers.
I’m sorry that this guy was hurt but it sounds like he is culpable. Jogging at 01:00 on Amsterdam Ave, not on the sidewalk but in the street, when he runs into the side of the truck? As for the length of the truck, if it where in fact over 55 feet the driver would have been summons on the spot, He was not. My fellow readers here should be aware that Streetsblog is the webpage of Transportation Alterities, they are a powerful anti anything but bikers lobbying group. They say they are looking out for peds as well but they always come down on the side of bikers. Example when the city put temp barriers on the west side green way (bike & walking/jogging parts) after the terror attack this past Oct. they complained that they were interfering with their rides
Yes, peds have the right of way except when they do something that endangers themselves. I.E. jogging in the street at night instead of on the sidewalk. The fact that the jogger reportedly “ran into the side of the truck” not the other way around, speaks volumes.
How does one “run into the side of a truck” and end up pinned under its rear wheels when it finally manages to stop 10 seconds later? And how does a driver 50 feet forward know a runner has done that? More plausible is the truck hit the runner if the only witness was the driver.
IF (and I say if, because I wasn’t there and don’t know) he ran into the side of the truck – let’s say he was jogging along, with his earphones in, on the side of the road, in the zone, stepped a bit out of line, hit the truck – he would fall, and might well fall in a way that gets him sufficiently under the truck to get pulled in further by the wheels, of which there are many.
I don’t know whether this is what happened (and you don’t know that it isn’t either). I do see people doing crazy things like this, thinking that the pedestrian always has the right of way – and, of course, we don’t, and even if we did, arguing with a car, much less a tractor-trailer, is very foolish.
I do hope this guy recovers; what he is going through sounds terrible. I do also hope that we all are careful walking and jogging in the city, at any time of day. We all have to share the streets.
Preach!
“Jogging at 01:00 on Amsterdam Ave, not on the sidewalk but in the street, when he runs into the side of the truck?”
Right? People keep trying to blame the truck for being “too long” but are forgetting that this guy ran into the trailer. Meaning he missed the cab, the gap, and the front of the trailer.
Why did you run into the road so close to a vehicle?
If this vehicle was so big, red, and white… how did you not see it? Why were you not running on the sidewalk?
You can’t just run out into the street randomly and into the side of a bus that is moving and say.. HEY, WHY IS THERE A BUS DRIVING IN THE STREET!? Because that’s where they’re supposed to be and, from our childhoods, that’s where we expect them to be.
I hope the guy pulls through and all, but I’m baffled at all these people saying he did nothing wrong. This could’ve been 10,000% avoided.
I think you’re missing the point: There are no witness accounts other than a police source that is based only on the driver’s account.
Yes there are/were other witness. Remember this article is only based on one twitter article from the Daily News
Well said Rob. But as you probably already know, expect some backlash. GL
Adapted and Overcome many times in my life let alone on this website.
Does this story make any sense to you? A jogger “ran into the side of a tractor trailer”? We should be more skeptical of what the NYPD reports in these situations. This is especially true because as you correctly point out, a 55’ truck should have received an immediate summons. There’s no question that a trailer is 53’ long plus the length of truck that is pulling it. They come in standardized sizes – there’s no debate about how long this is. Now the question is, why does the NYPD ignore these deadly, loud, polluting, illegal trucks in our neighborhood? People need to call Helen Rosenthal, show up at the next community board meeting, call de Blasio, and vote.
Unfortunately you’re poorly informed about Streetsblog and Transportation Alternatives.
The barriers on the Greenway were so badly located that they were funneling riders into a head-on situation far more dangerous than you would know.
Let me ask you, did you measure the rig in question? Were you there to know what exactly happened? So what if the jogger was out at 1:00 am?
Unfortunately I deal with these folks on a weekly basis and he been in and seen much more about agenda and fundraising tactics for our local and citywide elect’ed’s. Three are a lot of meetings that are not open to the public and not on peoples public schedules where public policy is discussed and much more importantly decided.
My comment were about the jogger being in the STREET not on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. Meaning that it was dark and harder to see the jogger not to mention the driver would not expect to have some in the street, where they are not supposed to be by law.
Robert, following up, the city and state on 53 foot trailers. They are illegal here.
https://www.dot.ny.gov/about-nysdot/faq/are-53-foot-long-trailers-allowed-in-nyc
https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/vehdimen.pdf
Robert, the photo has a big 53′ on the trailer. Do you see it? NYC law is 55 feet including trailer and cab. I believe that cab is more than 2′ long. Yeah? So the line that because NYPD didn’t write a summons, there is no violation – what?! Obviously the truck is over 55 feet.
I don’t know why someone who claims to be connected to the 24th Precinct is so reliable in pedestrian-blaming comments like this. It is problematic.
Here is a link to what happens in the aftermath when NYPD too quickly blames pedestrians and cyclists who can’t give their testimony. It’s really sad. https://medium.com/@danielle.k.davis8/how-the-nypd-the-dot-and-the-justice-system-have-failed-my-sister-part-one-b54b355d6faf
Blow up the photo the trailer has two numbers on it 492 and 53. Neither one of them has a ‘ near them. These numbers could or could mean the number of feet. I checked with contacts at
DOT and they mentioned that any “oversize” (by length or height) would have a stick mounted on them written backwards so they could always been seen in the drivers mirror at all times as a reminder to him.
A 53’ trailer that wasn’t specially permitted in advance by DOT is illegal here. NYC law isn’t ambiguous.
I guess you’re saying the trailer with a 53 on it might be shorter than 53 feet? Sure, Jan.
In all seriousness, if you’re speaking for the official investigation, this isn’t funny. The consequences are grave for the man crushed under the truck. His family has the right to a professional investigation and they have a huge amount at stake in the police getting this right.
I’m not speaking “for” any official investigation. I’m merely pointing out that the information on the T/A website, must likely, selectively left out some of the facts and their article was written to make must people that read it make a snap judgement based on their wording. T/A is quite good on hitting their talking points in ways that make you think that the article is giving you all of the facts and not just the ones that support their agenda. Politicians do this everyday, it’s called spin, or in layman’s terms – oh look at the bright shinny object in my left hand so you don’t bother to look at what’s in the right hand
Also, in response to your comment about the size of the truck – there is no reason whatsoever to assume that the police would have given this driver a summons for an illegally sized truck, as such trucks are regularly seen on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn and are almost never challenged.
You can tell by the uniform that the officers were from the highway unit and/or accident squad. If they could they would have ticketed it for being oversized. They would be in a great deal of hot water if they did not when the case went to court. Also we are don’t know if the truck did or did not have an oversize
There is nothing in any of the reporting on it
There is absolutely nothing – NOTHING – to support the NYPD’s claim that the jogger suddenly “ran into the side of the truck.” In fact this account almost certainly came from the truck driver, who has every incentive to blame the victim. The NYPD has been caught time and time again victim blaming based on driver accounts, only for them to be proven wrong when subsequent evidence (like camera footage) has been uncovered. They never learn their lesson, ever, and continue to sign off on collision investigations by blaming the victim simply because it drastically reduces their workload.
Note that lazy, incompetent rags like the Daily News never question these NYPD accounts and print them as if they were establish fact. If it eventually turns out that the victim was not to blame, they won’t publish a retraction, they never do. Furthermore, in cases previous to this, the NYPD has been caught perpetuating the erroneous version of events in court statements and reports even after it has been established that the driver was to blame. This is all well documented on sites like Streetsblog and others, but never reported by the increasingly irrelevant mainstream media.
Except for the other witness statements made to the police that night. Don’t forget all the cameras on buildings in the area
I must agree with the previous reader. At 1 am on a Monday, Amsterdam Ave, is pretty clear to run on the side walk. I must add the truck driver could’ve been careful if he was aware that someone was running “alongside” the truck. I must also note that even if a truck that length is “illegal” in the city, we have delivery trucks that are just as long blocking our avenues on a daily basis several times daily and no one is saying a hoot about those.
I hope the jogger recovers and stays on the sidewalk from now on.
If the DOT limit is 55 feet and the truck was 53 then that wouldn’t be an issue, yes?
The 55’ limit is cab + trailer.
Are 53-foot long trailers allowed to make pick-ups or deliveries in New York City?
Per Section 385 of the Vehicle & Traffic Law, a 53-foot trailer is allowed only limited travel through New York City to reach destinations on Long Island, using the following routes:
I-95 – from Bronx/Westchester County line to I-295;
I-295 – from I-95 to Throgs Neck Bridge to the Long Island Expressway (I-495)
I-495 – from I-295 to Queens/Nassau County line
53-foot long trailers are not allowed to make pick ups or deliveries in any of the boroughs of New York City.
A complete list of traffic rules and designated truck routes is on New York City DOT’s web site.
https://www.dot.ny.gov/about-nysdot/faq/are-53-foot-long-trailers-allowed-in-nyc
Driver “not guilty”???? Same for bus drivers. And cab drivers. I was riding my bike down Amsterdam, when a cab, without warning, wildly zipped in front of me, slammed on brakes and driver opened his door. I had full-body bruises for 4 mos. Police let him go and reprimanded ME (for not watching out for insane cabbies pulling illegal maneuvers). So this trucker running over a jogger and NOT being held accountable is, unfortunately, SOP for NYC. NYPD aren’t doing their jobs correctly, and need to held accountable. Watch them closely.
Listen you guys want to know the true story I work in that area and the guy that got hit wasn’t jogging he was a homeless guy and to my knowledge ,I think it was on purpose because i seen another homeless guy that hangs out with the guy that got hit pretending he got hit off his wheelchair earlier that day. ambulance came and helped him up. These guys are just trying to get money.