Carnage

In Deadly Week for Pedestrians, No Consequences for Drivers

This has been a deadly week for New York City pedestrians, with three New Yorkers losing their lives in traffic collisions in three days, and another in critical condition.

By Noah Kazis

1:34 PM EDT on September 16, 2010

This has been a deadly week for New York City pedestrians, with three New Yorkers losing their lives in traffic collisions in three days, and another in critical condition.

On Monday, an SUV driver hit and killed two-year-old Shamira Zaman in Queens Village as she crossed the street to greet an uncle. The NYPD told reporters that no criminality is suspected.

On Tuesday, a school bus driver hit a Gravesend woman who had the light when she started crossing Ocean Parkway, according to accounts in the Post. NYPD told Streetsblog that she is in critical condition at Lutheran Hospital, and that police suspect no criminality. (Ocean Parkway is slated to receive some of the 1,500 pedestrian countdown timers that DOT is installing across the city, according to a press release put out today by City Council members Brad Lander and Sara Gonzalez.)

Yesterday, a van collided with an ambulance in Elmhurst and then flipped into 75-year-old Rashid Muhammad, killing him. Neither driver has been charged with anything yet, said the NYPD.

In addition, 29-year-old Joydeep Sarkar was hit and killed yesterday at 2:22 a.m. on the northbound side of the FDR Drive, near 72nd Street, according to the NYPD. No criminality is suspected, despite a WPIX report that the crash was a hit-and-run.

Noah Kazis

Noah joined Streetsblog as a New York City reporter at the start of 2010. When he was a kid, he collected subway paraphernalia in a Vignelli-map shoebox. Before coming to Streetsblog, he blogged at TheCityFix DC and worked as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Toledo, Ohio. Noah graduated from Yale University, where he wrote his senior thesis on the class politics of transportation reform in New York City. He lives in Morningside Heights.

Carnage | Street Safety

Streetsblog has migrated to a new comment system. New commenters can register directly in the comments section of any article. Returning commenters: your previous comments and display name have been preserved, but you'll need to reclaim your account by clicking "Forgot your password?" on the sign-in form, entering your email, and following the verification link to set a new password — this is required because passwords could not be carried over during the migration. For questions, contact tips@streetsblog.org.