Eyes on the Street: Cab Crash in Midtown

34th__Street_7th_and_Broadway_accident.JPG

A tipster sends this shot from 34th Street near Seventh Avenue, taken this morning. The photographer says he heard that the driver and a pedestrian were injured, though we could find no media reports on the crash.

We’d like to chalk this one up to coincidence, but it was really just a matter of time.

Update: According to the NYPD, the cab’s accelerator became stuck and the driver crashed into the curb, hitting a planter which in turn knocked a street sign into a pedestrian. Both the driver and the pedestrian refused medical attention. 

  • PaulCJr

    Cabbies need to be put on a shorter chain. They run lights, creep into the cross walk to jump on the light,and drive too fast. When is someone going to start enforcing the traffic laws in this city and on cabs. It seems like they can kill people and cause traffic accidents and get away with it.

  • Let this be a reminder of the destructive power of cars, the need for traffic calming in pedestrian-rich areas, and the desirability of creating new car-free zones along 34th and in many other areas.

  • I say curbside bollards everywhere. Shelter the pedestrians and let the motorists have their demolition derby.

  • kaja

    “My accelerator is stuck” is the new “my dog ate my homework”.

  • Niccolo Machiavelli

    What do you think it is with the cabbies, bad people?

    I think it is the system they live in. It is full of perverse incentives. All the anti-union MTA work rule criticism is turned on its head with regards to taxis and trucking. Who does all the killing in transportation anyway? Do any of you drive a cab? Maybe the difference between getting your kid’s teeth fixed or not is driving too fast. Figure it out.

  • It’s nice that the NYPD can so quickly determine that it was stuck accelerator. I mean, it took investigators and engineers a week or more to reconstruct a recent Toyota crash in New Jersey — finding, of course, that the claim of a stuck accelerator was to cover up driver error.

    The NYPD should be rewarded for their superhuman ability to determine that drivers are not really responsible. (Unless, of course, it was simply reported that the driver claimed stuck accelerator, rather than the “According to the NYPD” as written above.)

  • PaulC

    Ya I guess if hitting or killining pedestrians or cyclist is the cost I must bare to get my kids teeth fixed, then it’s ok.

  • Ian Turner

    Evidence that planters are effective bollards?

  • Brooklyn

    Agreed Ian, if that planter weren’t there we’d be reading about a multiple-fatality sidewalk-jump.

    As cluttered as some of those things seem for a pedestrian walking by, this is a reminder that traffic in this town is a wild animal that must stay caged at every turn.

  • lee

    where’s marty markowitz when you need some “balance”

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