Private Trash Hauler Critically Injures Woman at Essex and Delancey

A boot and bloodstains mark the location of where a private sanitation truck ran over a pedestrian at Essex and Delancey. Photo: Adrian Fussell ##http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2011/05/woman-struck-by-garbage-truck-at-essex-and-delancey.html##via The Lo-Down.##

A private sanitation truck driver hit a pedestrian at the intersection of Essex and Delancey Streets yesterday afternoon, dragging her under the truck. She was transported to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition with severe trauma to her legs, according to the NYPD.

The NYPD press office reported that both the woman and the truck driver were headed eastbound on Delancey at the time of the crash and that the woman was run over by the truck’s rear wheels. The police do not suspect any criminality on the part of the driver, who remained at the scene.

The intersection of Essex and Delancey is one of the most dangerous in New York City. According to Transportation Alternatives, there were 119 crashes injuring pedestrians or cyclists between 1998 and 2008, more than any other intersection on Manhattan’s entire East Side. A pedestrian was killed in a traffic crash at the intersection last April.

This is only the most recent in a series of serious crashes involving private garbage trucks. A private sanitation truck driver killed a pedestrian this March at Broadway and Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, and as Charles Komanoff wrote last summer, these trucks have posed a consistent and long-standing threat to pedestrians and cyclists.

  • Jerk Jerk Jerk

    Gee. What a jerk this truck driver is.

  • carma

    before labeling the driver a jerk. get all the facts before mentioning he is a jerk. it is fairly interesting since both the woman and the truck was headed eastbound. this is such a vague statement. considering no other details were given such as was the truck driving on the sidewalk? was the woman walking on the road? it is unfair to label jerk so fast.

    the driver did the right thing in stopping at the crash scene.

    look, accidents happen. it doesnt make everybody a “jerk”
    if the driver ran a red. yes “jerk” applies (amongst a whole bunch of other negative tones)

  • Stephen J Collier

    Or — most likely — the driver was driving too fast, and failed to yield to a pedestrian crossing the street on the same green light that he/she was going through.

    This intersection — and others around it — is an absolute public safety disaster. The data are clear. It is a catastrophic failure of the city council, the DOT, and most importantly NYPD, which has traffic agents everywhere in this area, but does nothing concerning safety issues, that so many people are killed or gravely injured due to such “accidents” that happen over and over in the same location.

  • carma

    thats what i dont get. if the pedestrian is crossing, then, she wouldnt be going eastbound in the same direction with the truck. it claims the woman was run over by the trucks rear wheels.
    this seems to imply that the truck jumped the curb and the rear wheels clipped the pedestrian, dragging her. one can imply that, but no other details have been provided.

  • Ian Dutton

    The only group of drivers that I see flagrantly violating traffic laws as consistently as private trash carters is the police.

    That doesn’t mean that the disregard for the public’s safety that is so often demonstrated by trash haulers was a factor here; in fact, I don’t expect that we will ever be privvy to the details as PD hides those cards close to their chest as if to protect the victim, who I glean from reading crash reports is generally considered to be the one surrounded by many tons of steel.

  • Anonymous

    I think the point of the jerk comment is that is someone had been hit by a bike and hospitalized the local media would be going absolutely nuts about it, calling for all kinds of stepped up traffic enforcement, regulations, etc.., but there is a collective shrug when garbage trucks routinely ignore traffic laws, and kill people with alarming frequency.

    People are unfazed by a huge amount of daily road carnage, but their fixation on cyclists sends them into a frenzy that is completely out of proportion with any actual danger.

  • Driver

    You forgot about tow truck and newspaper delivery drivers.

  • Driver

    Carma, It’s not likely that the trucks rear wheels jumped the curb if it were traveling straight (not completing a turn). For this to happen the front of the truck would have to cross over the curb and sidewalk significantly just for the rear wheels to even reach the curb. Think about a car trying to parallel park by simply pulling forward into a spot. If you have ever done this, you know that you have to jump the curb with your front tires to even get your back tires close to the curb. The same principle applies to a truck.
    Also note there doesn’t appear to be any real sidewalk there, it looks like a curb on the left side and a jersey barrier on the right.

  • carma

    i agree. it doesnt make sense. thats why i would say we dont know all the details yet, so we shouldnt be judging. we can speculate a bit though.

  • carma

    dont forget the access-a ride vans. horrible drivers. and especially dont forget the chinese casino buses. rider beware!

  • krstrois

    Special thanks to Giuliani, Staten Island politicians and mobsters everywhere for all the private garbage trucks. NO REALLY. Thumbs up.

  • Anonymous

    I’d really like to see the stats for those Access-A-Ride vans. I can only assume the drivers are paid per-trip or something, because they are *insane.* Just this weekend one of them, carrying a disabled person, almost forced me into a cyclist riding in a bike lane while I was driving with my bike in the car–near death-by-irony.

  • Daphna

    station44025: Access-A-Ride drivers are not in the Transit Workers Union. They are not MTA employees. They are not Access-A-Ride employees. Rather, Access-A-Ride sub-contracts to other transportation companies. Those transportation companies will take anyone who has a driver’s license and a clean abstract from the DMV. That is basically the only hiring criteria. Many accidents are never reported to the DMV so a clean abstract does not reflect someone’s real driving history.

    Then these transportation companies give almost no training, maybe just a half day class or film that is not very informative. Then they set their drivers out on the roads! Apparently, the job is very stressful; the drivers are put under pressure to make pick-ups in tight time frames. And the drivers say that in addition to being under stress from their dispatcher, many of their disabled passengers also complained a lot and caused them stress.

  • Driver

    I don’t think they are paid very well either, so they end up with drivers who don’t give a $hit.

  • Clarke

    Delancey NEEDS a road diet! This “street” is a 8-10 lane freeway on/off ramp that is dangerous to drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians (who, from Essex to Clinton, need to RUN to make it across the street in one light interval). The LOMEX may have formally been cancelled, but it’s alive and well on Delancey St.

  • Concerned Citizen

    This woman is dead, please update!!

  • Concerned Citizen

    This woman is dead, please update!!

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