Driver Flips Car Where Neighbors Have Waited a Year for DOT Speed Hump

A driver who neighbors say was speeding flipped his vehicle Sunday evening on a Bronx street that's been waiting over a year for a speed hump as part of the Norwood neighborhood Slow Zone.

“We were home making dinner and we just heard a loud bang and a crunch and another loud bang and a crunch, two of them, because he had ricocheted off cars," said Elisabeth von Uhl, who lives on Hull Avenue between E. 207th Street and E. 209th Street. Von Uhl's husband and a neighbor went outside to deflate the airbag and pull the driver from the passenger side of the black van at approximately 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

On a typical weekend evening, the street is busy with children playing, but most were inside because of the rain, von Uhl said. “Our three year-old is always out on the sidewalk either with sidewalk chalk or out on his scooter, and we always have neighborhood kids join us," she said. “We just kind of sit on our stoops and let the kids play.”

The driver was transported to St. Barnabas Hospital with minor injuries. “It didn’t amount to any collision investigation or anything like that," said an NYPD spokesperson. The driver was not arrested and did not receive a moving violation. “There was no criminality involved. Vehicle looks like it just crashed and rolled over," he said. "It’s just a vehicle accident.”

“Wow, not even a ticket for speeding," von Uhl said when she learned that there would be no consequences for the driver.

The street is part of the Norwood neighborhood Slow Zone, which was installed last year to calm traffic and reduce the speed limit to 20 mph. After a street receives speed humps, injury crashes drop by 40 percent and speeding falls 20 percent, according to DOT. Pedestrians struck by drivers going 20 mph are four times less likely to die than those driving 30 mph [PDF].

DOT says it installed two other speed humps last April on Hull Avenue, between E. Gun Hill Road and E. 209th Street and between E. 205th Street and E. 207th Street. But neighbors on von Uhl's block are still waiting. DOT installed signage, but not the speed hump itself, because of ongoing work by the School Construction Authority at PS 56.

"DOT has been in constant contact with officials, including the School Construction Authority, regarding the construction project at PS 56 and will continue to do so," said a DOT spokesperson. "Speed hump installations cannot happen while active construction is in progress."

Von Uhl said she would like to see DOT's Bronx office be more flexible. "My question is, can it be relocated? Because it’s a long street and construction is only on part of the street," she said. "There has to be a protocol for this, like a temporary speed bump or something, because I can’t believe this is the first time in New York City history that they had to install a speed hump with construction going on."

“We’re grateful for the school construction and the work that DOT has done with the Norwood Slow Zone. We just really need a speed bump there," she said. "The drivers do speed up on our block because we’re the one that doesn’t have a speed hump. We just have the sign."