By Carol Tannenhauser
A man driving a hyundai sedan struck a traffic-light post on the northeast corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 96th Street at around 9:10 Sunday morning, knocking it down, police said. Complaining of back pain, the driver was taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai West hospital in stable condition. The traffic light was down for the count. No one else was injured. (Thanks to Adam and Sarahy for the tips.)
Wow. Very lucky no one else was hurt. How do you do that? That seems like some form of reckless driving.
I agree. Not sure why others find this amusing. It is very scary and sad. The driver is very lucky they did not kill anyone. I hope they are no longer allowed to drive.
The pole was fundamentally sound defensively by taking the charge.
Guess one can say that he had the light.
I’m sure he just didn’t see the light post. Those things just come out of nowhere! He tried to avoid it when it darted out into his path, but he just wasn’t fast enough. But he, uh, had the green?
I hope he gets a ticket!
This is a prime example of why I roll my eyes when people complain about automated camera tickets or the upcoming Congestion Pricing. The common refrain is “drivers already pay so much in taxes and fees and registration”. The reality is that those amounts do not remotely cover the real costs of vehicle road use. The driver will not be charged to fix this light post (nor am I suggesting they should) but the fact remains that this incident DOES cost money and drivers should contribute to these expenses, especially when they violate the law by speeding or running red lights.
The City could seek reimbursement from the driver, so your argument is specious.
“The driver will not be charged to fix this light post.” For goodness sake, why not? He damaged city property.
A friend of mine crashed into a highway barrier in NYC back in, err, well, let’s simply say way back. Fortunately uninjured but yes, she did get a bill for repair of that piece of “ribbon”. I don’t know if this is still done or, for that matter, if this might have been a NYS highway vs. local NYC street issue. But yeah.
I was close by 15 minutes earlier and waiting for the bus. Terrible.
When I saw the headline before reading the story, I groaned at what I thought was a misused apostrophe in “Light’s”, only to discover when I read the story that the apostrophe is right where it belongs. Nice play on words, WSR, I should have known your punctuation is impeccable.
I just missed the accident as I left Key Food on the SE corner of Amsterdam Ave and W.96th St. All traffic lights were out, and a lot of cops and squad cars were there but no one was directing traffic. Fences were up to stop traffic
flow north on Amsterdam Ave above 96th St.
Pedestrians took their lives in the hands just to cross a street and head home. I had a shopping cart I was pulling with one hand. An elderly woman and her dog tried to cross but scurried back to safety as cars, taxis, trucks and buses went blithely through the intersection with no one directing them. A lot of debris was in the street but the driver who caused the mess had apparently been taken away by ambulance.
Everything in the path of that SUV was destroyed, But why were pedestrians ignored? There were enough NYPD POs to stop traffic and help pedestrians across the intersection safely. I just managed to cross because I use a cane and a large vehicle stopped to let me get across. NO TRAFFIC LIGHTS. Where were the POs when WE needed them?
Must have been going pretty fast to snap all the base bolts holding the post’s plinth to the base.
When a decayed plinth fails, one can see holes in it, but not here.
So more evidence of the NYPD not going after reckless drivers.
If he was speeding over 36+ mph, maybe he will get a ticket from one of those wicked speed cameras that are just taxes on drivers (even though they only trigger when you are going 11pm over the speed limit, which in most cases is an increase of 44% over the speed limit. But the city just uses them to get money because I guess it is expected that we drivers will not follow the laws of the road so we shouldn’t get tickets just for exceeding the speed limit by 44% from these evil, immoral cameras.
Notice, how I didn’t simply say speeding, I specified “reckless driving”.
Don’t see how the speed cameras are “immoral”, but do understand they do next to nothing about reckless driving, which includes many motorcycles, yes, ones with plates too, running reds at speed.
Right, the City uses the cameras as an excuse to do little about speeding, and far more dangerous driving than going 36 MPH in a 25 zone.
Sorry, I thought the sarcasm in my comment was clear.
36 in a 25 is not actually considered reckless driving in and of itself. I was looking at my insurance paperwork today as it is time for renewal, and I happened to notice that the insurance company doesn’t even up my rates unless I get a ticket for greater than 15 mph over the posted speed limit!
But hitting a pedestrian at 36mph has a far greater chance of causing death (more than double if I remember correct) than at 25mph. Then I think 20mph halves that still.
According to NYC data, most vehicles do not get more than one camera issued speeding ticket. So this does show improvement of behaviors. It does absolutely nothing to a driver with no plate, a fake plate, or a blocked plate. Most of these delivery motorcycles around – if they have a plate, look closely. You will probably see a piece of tape covering one of the digits on the plate.
People who drive unplated motorcycles or motorcycles (big or small) with obscured plates seem to forget that it’s quite easy given access to the disc brakes to immobilize these machines without damaging them,
The drivers of e-bikes are ignorant of this fact too.
Before all the anti car, he must have been speeding, as he was in a car lets find out the facts.
Did he have a medical issue, was he speeding, was he cut off etc.
We should not be making comments without all the info.
Any chance of a photo or other report with the license plate number so we can run it and see how many tickets this car had?
My father had a stroke while driving and mowed over a mailbox as he had an accident. We are grateful that it was only a mailbox. He was having a medical emergency and likely slurring his speech due to the stroke. Sadly, the people whose house it was and their neighbors assumed he was drunk driving and said this in front of him. I am just as angry about reckless driving in our neighborhood as anyone else, but perhaps we should wait for more information here.
No excuses for the driver but that intersection is too complicated which is why there’s so much honking and confusion there. Counting the bike lane and the two turn lanes there are SIX lanes of active traffic going north that pedestrians have to cross. Each of those turn lanes has its own signal as does the bike lane. Someone at DOT tried to make this spot safer and didn’t do a good job.