By Gus Saltonstall
A woman riding an electric scooter was hit and killed Thursday morning in an Upper West Side traffic collision, a police spokesperson confirmed to West Side Rag.
The 49-year-old woman was riding northbound on Amsterdam and West 60th Street around 10:35 a.m, when a Tesla traveling westbound on West 60th Street collided with her, police said.
Medics rushed the woman to Mount Sinai Morningside in critical condition, where she was pronounced dead, police said.
The 34-year-old man driving the car remained at the scene, and there have been no arrests, police said. The investigation remains ongoing.
West Side Rag will update this story when more details are available.
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There was also a 17 yo boy on an illegal “eBike” killed today at the exit from the Brooklyn Bridge. Not the UWS so not covered here but something has to be done to prevent more accidents.
No details on this particular incident, but “something has to be done” typically doesn’t lead to enforcing the rules already on the books, having people take more responsibility in their actions, and using a motor vehicle safely and within its limits. What needs to be done is enforce the rules on the books, hold people accountable for their behavior, and ensure cars and bikes (e- or otherwise) observe and practice the rules of the road.
It was reportedly a high-speed ebike/mini-cycle.
Also he was not wearing helmet
helmet does not really help you if you are hit by a car. If you fall off your own at a speed of a normal bicycle like 20 mph or less it will help you if you hit your head on the ground
He wasn’t hit by a car. He hit the car in the side.
He died of head injuries.
Sad result. There’s a non-zero chance that the biker (or scooter, if that’s what the mysterious two-wheeled vehicle was) didn’t stop at a light. Not that a biker would ever do such a thing in Manhattan.
Blaming the victim without even knowing the facts? Geez, Pockets, what’s your problem?
I hope next time a pedestrian gets hit by a car or a bike, you remember to blame the victim, too, since I don’t know ANY pedestrians who don’t cross streets against the light. Myself included, I may add.
There is also a very, very high chance the driver was speeding. How many cars in NYC are driving at 25mph? Not many.
There’s also a non-zero chance the driver was running the light. Maybe lets wait for the NYPD to do their investigation instead of speculating. It’s tragic either way.
Teslas see red lights and a warning would sound —
at the least.
This is horrible.
I’m sure my is not popular with some, but I have to say it anyway – this city is not fit for bicycles. More bike lanes without any enforcement will endanger both bicyclists and pedestrians.
How about it’s not fit for cars, unless they have some compelling need to be there. Makes more sense.
You’re backwards: This city is not fit for cars. It literally does not fit how cars work.
I have a car and a bike. In the car, I wish I was driving anywhere else. NYC is an absolutely horrible place to drive!
Let’s not resort to the language like that. This is my opinion and I’m not “backwards” because of that.
I was born here, I enjoy riding a non-electric pedal bike, and I fully agree with this–the risk is just too high. Whether the driver or biker makes a trivial mistake, the reality is it can end a life. European cities have built out the infrastructure for bike culture, but NYC has not (blame Robert Moses?) and pretending you’re biking under ideal circumstances when your not isn’t worth it.
So we should ban bikes? No, we should change our systems. Bikes are in many many ways much better than cars, for the user, for traffic flow, for the environment, for pedestrians (how many are killed by cars in NYC?), for noise levels, for pollution levels, for fitness, I could go on.
New York is more suited for bicycles than modern cars. It’s not a driver’s city, period
This also has nothing to do with bicycles. E-scooters are motor vehicles
It is not a driver’s city? Really?
A better post would have been “we have to make the city more fit for cycles and scooters”. I’m lucky enough to have just returned from Paris, which appears to now be as cycle friendly as Amsterdam, which wasn’t at all the case even five years ago. We can do it, and no one is going to convince me that we’re better off with more cars and fewer bikes on the road.
Let me help you with that: We need to make the operators of cycles and scooters more fit for New York City by ensuring that they’re licensed, insured, trained, and law-abiding.
Paris is NOTHING like New York! They’ve had a bike culture for decades. And the cars are minuscule compared to ours as are the streets. The riders in Paris are 100% better than ours. And they stop for everyone in a crosswalk. Two different cultures entirely. I know as I am there for business 3-4 months every year.
AnDee,
Amsterdam is a lovely city – but it is not easy for pedestrians.
Also bicycles have the right of way.
NYC is much bigger among other differences.
Also in NYC bicycling does not reduce cars – bicyclists are former mass transit users. Bicycling siphons from mass transit.
Amazingly, if you go back a couple of decades, even Amsterdam was extremely car-centric. It is 100% possible to turn car centric cities into ones that work better for pedestrians and cyclists. I will also mention that when streets are adapted not to prioritize cars, it becomes easier, rather than harder, for bikes and pedestrians to co-exist.
We need to get private automobile use out of NYC. We have excellent public transportation! And, we are a pedestrian-able city.
Gina, where are you from? Have you ever been to Staten Island, eastern Queens or the northern parts of the Bronx the anti car lobby is really helpful to the Republican Party.
Not all of NYC, actually. But dense areas – much or all of Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn.
And not all cars, most personal cars. They are obviously essential for some users.
We do have excellent public transportation and I use it all the time when traveling wothin NYC. But if you need to go elsewhere — NJ, Long Island, Westchester or further — it really isn’t an option. While I could take a bus or train to a town in Jersey, once I get off I need a car. So it is faster and more economical for me to get in my car near my apartment. This means I am on city streets for a bit.
The reverse is also true for the workers and business owners who also cannot afford to pay market rate prices on the UWS. So a UWS resident can have their car to go drive to a town in New Jersey, but there are UWS residents that don’t want the person from New Jersey on “their” streets and to rely on a bus or train that they themselves don’t want to.
Cars aren’t an option to get to NJ, Long Island, etc? An awful lot of us get there routinely without owning cars. If you are on vacation once in a while, rent a car, either from Manhattan or once you arrive. The money you save on owning that car and parking it (since you should be paying for street parking if you use it) is likely to be much less than you’d spend renting a car.
Of course your situation might be different, you could live in Manhattan and commute to a job in rural NJ, though that seems improbable. But if you can afford that, you can afford to keep a car in NJ parked near the train stop.
Yes and the train schedules are not the most frequent either. People need their space and you can’t force everyone to live on the UWS and abide by the same culture you do.
If I rent a car every time I leave the city I am still driving on city streets. This does nothing to reduce car traffic. I park my car in a garage that I pay for. And I need drive out of the city at least once a week, sometimes more. I could possibly keep a car in NJ but I would also need to keep one in other locations. Maybe your solutions work for you, they don’t work for me.
That’s ridiculous. Not everyone can use public transportation.
VERY POPULAR! We are the silenced MAJORITY!
Why do you have to wear a helmet to ride a motorcycle but not to ride a bike, eBike, or scooter? Your head doesn’t know the difference when it hits the pavement.
Because bikes, eBikes and scooters don’t require the owner to have a registration and license — which makes enforcing any helmet law difficult.
And also that there is no helmet law covering cyclists.
Why did they rush her to Mt. Sinai Morningside when there is a Mt. Sinai 2 blocks from there?
Morningside is a trauma center Roosevelt is not.
Mt. Sinai West doesn’t have the specialized (so called Level II) trauma center but they can still deal with traumas in their ER unit. I used their ER and there were plenty of patients with traumas (from gun wounds to broken bones).
They have a trauma unit.
Mt. Sinai Morningside is the closest trauma center. I know this from the comments on the recent story about the stabbing at 70th and WEA
It’s also notoriously a TERIBBLE hospital.
It’s a horrible emergency room-a nightmare.
Not that level of trauma
I’m am very sorry to hear this. Very sad. Eager for more information when it is available. I will not speculate or place blame but this is yet another reason why I would not ride a bike of any form except in Riverside Park. This city was not built to commute or travel by bike and contrary to the opinion of the bike-obsessed car haters (I do not own a car), I do not think that streets should be redesigned for bikes. Ride the subway or bus. Very simple.
Why is it referred to as a “two-wheeled vehicle?” This is very odd phrasing. Is it because the author is not sure what it was (bike, scooter, e-bike)? If so, say that.
The police refered to it as a 2 wheeled vehicle. Other news stories did the same. It was an electric scooter and the Rag has updated the story.
Those spindly stand-up scooters scare me for their riders and for pedestrians. They appear unstable at any speed, riders seem vulnerable to being thrown off by potholes or uneven streets as well as to being hit by another vehicle. And they’re harder for cars to see in traffic than a larger, higher bicycle. Many of the riders use scooters as sidewalk vehicles, endangering pedestrians, and they’re often seen zooming diagonally across lanes of traffic on the street.
A poor alternative to walking, to my mind.
Just to be clear: it is illegal to ride scooters on the sidewalk. Everyone should make these scofflaws aware of it when they see it.
You are in for some serious abuse if you dare tell anyone not to ride their scooter, bike or moped on the sidewalk. Ask me how I know!
This is terrible. My condolences to the woman’s family and friends.
Can we please stop promoting bikes until we have proper infrastructure and enforcement in place? And by proper infrastructure, I don’t mean a two-way bike lane on 72nd Street. More importantly, we need clear rules and actual enforcement.
These recent accident, often fatal for both bicyclists and pedestrians, are the direct result of feckless urbanist dreams pushed by affluent transplants who recently moved to the city.
People shouldn’t have to die for someone else’s utopian vision.
No, we will not stop promoting bikes. The city will never built the infrastructure if there aren’t a lot of cyclists out there riding and calling for change. And reducing pollution, noise, climate change, traffic for others (either on public transit or on the street) at the same time.
Maybe this is exactly why Manhattan shouldn’t be the commercial, cultural and economic center of NYC. The city and state (and NJ/CT) will never improve public transportation outside of Manhattan meaningfully unless Manhattan residents like those on the UWS are forced to rely on LIRR, NJ Transit or Metro-North or commuter express buses regularly.
But people are dying for other’s Utopian Visions and the co-opting of the DOT. And so many of us as a result have had terrible and life altering injuries. Two of them happened in Central Park in the last 3 weeks. Both women with traumatic brain injuries hit by reckless e-bike riders who shouldn’t even be there but for more pressure from the bike lobby and complicity of the Central Park Conservancy to put them there. It seems that the large majority of the injured are women! They might be alive but those lives are mainly shattered.
I cannot call this urban vision . I call it urban fatalism. This group shilling for billion dollar delivery apps and bike share/car shares would have you believe that what is not good for most people is really great for you! No it is not.
I rode a Bianchi for years in this city but mostly in Europe without bike lanes. I would never ride that bike here now with bike lanes.
I feel sorry for this terrible tragic incident. Condolences to her friends and family.
If you truly care about pedestrian safety, please consider advocating for lowering citywide speed limits to 20mph. This change will make much more difference than any restrictions on bikes or e-bikes.
We need this and also photo enforcement of the speed limit throughout the city. In DC this has drastically brought down the speed of cars.
You could lower it to 5mph. Without enforcement, it’s useless.
The only person who died was the scooter rider, so that’s an extremely weird reaction to this news article.
The solution is what Tish James is doing now – threaten every manufacturer/seller of an over powered e-moto or scooter with significant criminal penalties. This worked to stop Amazon from selling these devices in CA. The next step is for the cops to impound these devices and crush them, but they need the right equipment – they do this in the EU and it is very effective.
The 3rd step is to ban Class 3 bikes in NY and get them off the road as well – no bikes or scooters above 20mph (and no one wheels, etc.)
Hmm, maybe not the equipment they have in the EU, but we ‘are’ able to crush them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWaeb2fB1zw
I don’t think the bike thing is promoted only by affluent transplants who recently moved to the city. It is also promoted by companies that make money off delivery: DoorDash et al. Those companies do not want any regulation of bikes, esp. E-bikes. Some of their supporters may talk about enforcement’s falling disproportionately on immigrants and people of color, but the driving issue is those companies’ making money while using deliveristas who are immigrants of color.
Door Dash et al. Stop buying from businesses that use bikes, and you eliminate the problem.
devastating. i am looking forward to the campaign to shut amsterdam avenue to cars; there are plenty of places you can play with your car on columbus, west end, CPW, and riverside, and as many people have said here before, nobody deserves to die because they got off the sidewalk.
It was an e-scooter. Right in front of our building. Tragic.
Very sad.
Other media reported this was a stand-up scooter.
Sad to say but I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Probably will. I see e vehicles racing at what seems 40 mph with reckless drivers helmetlessig ignoring lights and people and common sense. Something must be done. I’m going to say it falls on the mayor and police to step in. Focus on the city not the world.
Blaming a dead woman for being hit by an SUV: talk about taking cheap shots and escalating conflict. This woman’s body isn’t yet cold, and some heartless folks cannot help but try to score points for their entrenched agenda: that’s veering into ideological warfare if I ever saw it. Shameful.
She was my aunt. Reading these comments really hurts to see. I knew her since I was born you people are sick.
Plaheeze! Maybe she was maybe she wasn’t but waiting til her body is cold doesn’t change a single fact.
Why wasn’t she taken to mt sinani West, which was much closer!
As has been pointed out in this comment section, she was taken there due to their trauma center.
Terrible incident. Sorry for the woman’s family. If she was going north at the intersection and the Tesla that hit her was going west it seems to me one of them ran the light. Not two point fingers, but these E bicycles and a scooters are terrors on the street. Besides running red lights, they are menaces on the sidewalk as well.
I pass dozens of e-bikes, scooters, mopeds going right through red lights as if they weren’t even there. Very few e-vehicles obey the laws. I suspect one of them, the car or the scooter ran the red light.
Speeding cars rushing through red lights are a much bigger menace. We need more red light cameras and lower speed limits.
Every red light should have a camera, it’s just ridiculous Albany has put an arbitrary limit to only 600 intersections across the whole city. Drivers running red lights is rampant and there is no enforcement
Awful accident. If the accident happened at 60th & Amsterdam why was she taken to Mount Sinai Morningside when Mount Sinai Roosevelt is right there?!
What compels any one to use an e-scooter? Drivers aren’t hard wired to watch out for them. They don’t have the mass of cars. No mass at all in fact. Makes them easy to not see and hit.
They’re as fast as a car, but far cheaper plus they don’t require insurance or a license.
So many geniuses figuring how, what, and where, the accident occurred.
How about expressing sympathies for the family, friends and concern about other accidents that will occur due to the same circumstances, whatever they were.
Mt. Sinai West is not a level one trauma center. It is also not designated as cardiac. Ambulances will not go to closest hospitals, they are required to go to designated hospitals.
I’m always confused by the description of the vehicle as an electric scooter. They can be foot powered, ride on or mobility scooter. Mobility scooters are not two-wheeled so we can eliminate that type in this instance.
I feel the problem is motorized bikes, and scooters, not just plain bikes and scooters. Cars and people can’t estimate how fast they’re going. The City should be a people-oriented city and not an automobile, truck, motorized bike, and motorized scooter city.
Somebody went through a red light- and I am sure it wasn’t the car! Why not the car? Because they bear license plates and are therefore accountable! Make everyone obey the law!
Accountability now!
So tragic! I also ride my bike northbound on Amsterdam. I’m gonna be super vigilant on that corner now. Can you be specific about which corner? Amsterdam doesn’t start until 72nd. You mean 60th and 10th ave?
Amsterdam starts at 60th. 59th and below is 10th. It’s the corner that has Emmy’s Pizza.
I was a molecule away from being hit by a teenagd boy on Columbus Ave. and 72nd street, which would have been catastrophic du to my severe osteoporosis. He was racing on the sidewalk at high speed on a skateboard. He did stop to on the sidewalk? apologize, which I appreciated, but is it legal to ride a skateboard on the sidewalk?? I have enough trouble just crossing the street without getting hit by a bike, or any mode of electric transportation. They frighten me far more than cars!
Good question: Is it legal to ride a skateboard on the sidewalk?
sorry for typos
“due” and”teenage”
Not sure this link will work but it seems there is a traffic camera at Amsterdam and W60th. So, while it might not have caught the accident, maybe it has something useful. I just searched for Amsterdam Ave and then selected W60th
https://webcams.nyctmc.org/cameras-list
I was there after the accident and saw her on the floor. I took 2 pictures if the family want to see. The ambulance was so slow until he came. She received a very severe blow to the head.
My sincere condolences to the victim’s loved ones. This is tragic. Speculation of fault or advancing agendas in this comment section is, while permitted due to free speech, also dehumanizing and so sad to read. Let’s step back and instead take a moment to respect and honor the victim and her loved ones. After we do that, let’s come together to enact change that values human life, on all sides of the equation. We as a community and a city can do better than become entrenched in polarized views that divide rather than unite us.