Today’s Headlines

  • City’s Own Data Shows Fewer Injuries at Times Square After Plazas Installed (WSJ)
  • Six Injured When Casino Bus Crashes Into Rego Park Building (NYT, News, Post, NY1, DNA, WNBC)
  • Schumer Wants $550 Million in Sandy Relief Funds to Repair East River Rail Tunnels (News, Post)
  • Cuomo in Letter to Times: “I Actually Want to Get the Tunnel Done”
  • Uber Wants You to Know It Pays Sales Taxes, But Not the 50 Cent MTA Fee (NY1)
  • As Drivers Switch to Uber, Unused Taxis Stored on Greenpoint Streets (Gothamist via WCBS)
  • Washington Post Covers the Campaign to Use “Crash” Instead of “Accident”
  • Flushing Residents Want Better Transit, More Parks With Flushing West Rezoning (YIMBY)
  • More Coverage of Fixes at Atlantic and Washington (DNA, AMNY, WCBS, AYR, Gothamist)
  • Pedestrian Island Under Construction on E. Gun Hill Road in the Bronx (Norwood News)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Gov. Cuomo’s “but actually” letter is good but also hilarious. The idea that he’s adding to the discourse by stomping his feet and demanding money is rich, but if he’s truly going to support the tunnel, so be it.

  • Geck

    Schumer Wants $550 Million in Sandy Relief Funds to Repair EAST River Rail Tunnels

  • WalkingNPR

    From the comments on the Washington Post article:

    “Also, crash implies lots of physical damage to the car. yet, a person, driving a car, can run over a person, killing him or her and there would be no physical damage to the car. That would not be a crash at all.”

    I sometimes forget there are real people out there with thought patterns like that.

  • Jeff

    I’m inclined to agree. “Crash” is, after all, an onomatopoeia. I mean, yeah, it’s a better word than “accident”, but it’s not a perfect, all-encompassing word for collisions and other traffic incidents that result in varying levels of property damage, injury, death, etc.

  • Jesse

    Yeah maybe “collision” is better. It’s 3 syllables just like “accident”.

  • WalkingNPR

    Collision is good, too, I think. But I’m objecting more to the implication in the quote above that you can run over/kill a person, but the main concern/deciding factor is the damage to the car–heaven forbid the paint get scratched on the deceased’s watch or something!

  • Fixed, thanks!

  • qrt145

    Right, because in comic-book “sound effects” they would show a “THUD!” or “SPLAT!” when a motor vehicle hits a human, but “CRASH!” when it hits another vehicle. (/sarcasm)

  • WalkingNPR

    Don’t give the Daily News ideas….

  • mattkime

    yeah, I took Cuomo’s letter to mean “I’m happy to take credit for the tunnel once someone else pays for it”

    he’s a visionary!

  • nanter

    The world of EMS changed from MVA (motor vehicle accident) to MVC (motor vehicle collision) years ago. I agree it seems like a better choice than crash, as it prevents silly objections like above.

  • JoshNY

    That casino bus crash was all over NY1 this morning. They interviewed an eyewitness who said that the bus driver swerved to avoid a car that was making a turn across him; it sounded to me like both were driving aggressively trying to stay ahead of one another, with the car driver trying to cut off the bus (I’m assuming the bus lane is on the right) and the bus driver not wanting the car to turn across him. And because neither would just slow down, six people are injured. I’m presuming the NYPD has already concluded it was “just an accident”?

  • Joe R.

    Given a choice between hitting a vehicle or a building, why wouldn’t the bus driver have chosen the vehicle? That’s especially true if the car driver cut off the bus. I might understand swerving off road to avoid an innocent victim but the car driver had it coming. It looks like that building is totaled. I’ve seen buildings less damaged than that which had to be razed. Now most likely a few families will be homeless for while. And I wonder if home insurance will pay for that?

    By the way, “slowing down” isn’t always an option for bus drivers when a vehicle suddenly cuts them off. If he hit the brake hard, standing passengers or people in the front row of seats could be thrown right against, or even through, the windshield. The car driver was 100% in the wrong here. Instead of waiting for 2 seconds for the bus to go by, the driver just had to get in front. I see this idiotic jockeying to gain one or two places all the time. Why isn’t the NYPD cracking down on this? That and failure to yield likely kill/injure more people than any other driving behaviors.

  • Andrew
  • Bolwerk

    It’s like the comments section on NYDN merged into one hive mind and got its own column.

  • Miles Bader

    When I was in college, I hit a car on my bicycle. I was travelling straight down a hill at a fairly good clip on a major road and this car turned in front of me to enter a side-street, with essentially zero room for any kind of evasive action on my part.

    I hit the side of his car, bounced off (luckily because he was turning, his car was at an angle, which made it sort of half bounce and half slide) and slid down the street for a good distance. I was left with some awful road-rash (clothes, torn up), my bike wheels, handlebars, and forks were bent (I had to replace all of them).

    After lying there on the street for a few seconds, I get up and walk slowly towards the guy (who’s stopped in the side-street), in a daze, literally dripping blood….

    The first thing he says to me? “Look what you did!! You scratched my car’s paint… you know how much that’s going to cost to repair?!?”

    I just turned around and walked away, it was like some sort of weird surreal dream in a movie….

  • JoshNY

    Regarding my suggestion that the bus driver should have slowed down, I’m not saying slam on the brakes; I’m saying the witness account made it sound like the SUV driver was speeding up alongside the bus to try to cut the bus off, and the bus driver sped up to prevent the SUV from doing so. THAT’S when the bus driver should have slowed down instead. (But my memory may be off at this point. My mistake if so.)

  • Joe R.

    It may have happened that way or not. Any way you look it, the SUV driver was the primary cause of this. When you see 40 feet coming at you, you don’t play chicken even if you have the right-of-way. In this case, the SUV driver didn’t even have the right-of-way. I see these stupid games of “me first” all the time. If we’re really serious about Vision Zero, drivers behaving like this should be the second priority of police, with failure to yield being the first.

    I still remain puzzled why the bus driver didn’t just hit the SUV. From a liability cost standpoint it likely would have been a better situation. Probably better for the passengers as well. A bus hitting a car is like a train hitting a semi. The vehicle being hit gets totaled but the passengers barely notice. On the other hand, a bus hitting a building is never good.

    It’s also worth noting even if this happened as you said, the bus driver was likely in this situation dozens or hundreds of times. He probably reacted the same as every other time, sped up, with the expectation the other driver would just back off. Probably that’s what happens 99.99% of the time. I know it won’t happen, but I wish the SUV driver would permanently lose the privilege to drive. This is just a completely wrong attitude to have behind the wheel, thinking you’re special and can cut people off as you please just to save a few seconds.

  • Joe R.

    I was in a similar situation about 30 years ago. A driver exits his car without looking and I hit the door. It was a POS subcompact. I knocked the door clean off its hinges. Fortunately I wasn’t badly hurt but the first words out of his mouth are “I hope you have money to fix my door.” I gave him an incredulous look and said I’m not paying a cent. You need to pay me to fix my bike since you couldn’t be bothered looking before swinging your door open. At that point you could the smoke coming out of his ears. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out what looked like a folded knife but I wasn’t 100% sure. Before he completes the motion my fist meets his mouth, and I see blood and teeth on the street. My bike was barely rideable, so off I went. I wasn’t about to stick around to see what happened next. I remain surprised he didn’t get back in his car and chase after me.