By Joy Bergmann
A 51-year-old female pedestrian was struck by a van at 73rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue at 11:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning, causing injuries to her left knee.
According to an NYPD spokesperson, the woman said she was walking westbound with the right of way when the vehicle hit her. The driver, a 50-year-old man, said he was making a right turn when he struck her.
An EMS crew took the pedestrian to Lenox Hill Hospital. NYPD issued a summons to the driver for failure to yield to a pedestrian.
This happens at this spot all the time. Within the last 2 weeks someone was also hit on this spot and taken away by an ambulance. The blood was washed down on the street. The area desperately needs a traffic redesign.
If the NYPD gave a shit about pedestrians there would be an easy way to report all these asshole van drivers in our neighborhood.
Since so many people disregard the “right of way” in crosswalks, can we just discontinue that phrase and concept and go with something more accurate like: “Anything Goes…Beware”
Because if the law is not enforced, it doesn’t exist and it’s unsafe to communicate a false sense of rules and safety.
so many pedestrians also dont look or care about lights as well. In this case maybe the driver was at fault but not every time. Pedestrians just staring at phones all day
“Anything Goes…Beware” goes both ways.
Why do you assume I was victim blaming and not seeking truth? Think about your assumptions before replying next time.
Report from a typical day (today), which is not over yet.
After observing 2 incidents of cars driving through red lights, I came across this enlightening interaction:
Man walking in crosswalk yells to Uber driver who continues to drive through crosswalk, “Hey, there are people walking here!” (A tribute to Dustin Hoffman’s character in Midnight Cowboy.)
“But you know that, being a professional driver”.
Eliciting this eloquent response from the driver: “Fuck You!”
The only thing that will fix this is a four way stop at all intersections.
I hope the pedestrian is OK. It sounds like the driver was clearly at fault here and hopefully will be penalized accordingly.
That being said, some intersections like this one need a turn light for cars. For example, the south side of this intersection could have a steady walk sign when east-west traffic has a green light since you can’t make a left off of 73rd but the north side goes to do not walk earlier so that cars heading west on 73rd who want to turn right onto Amsterdam can do so. There are many intersections in NY that have this, as the steady stream of pedestrians makes it very difficult for cars to turn.
By no means am I excusing the behavior of this driver – he needed to wait, regardless of the situation. But there is also an easy solution to this problem that has also been tested elsewhere.
Except that pedestrians don’t pay attention to THEIR crossing signals and routinely jaywalk making it difficult for vehicles to make turns.
79th and Amsterdam is also a terrible intersection for pedestrians.
New York City drivers are notorious for not turning on a turn signal. It’s almost as if it’s a law that you aren’t supposed to.