The moment of impact on Ocean Parkway. Photo: NYC Scanner
Paramedics rushed two people to already over-capacity emergency rooms on Wednesday evening, thanks to speeding drivers who refused to slow down amid a worsening health crisis.
According to the NYPD, a driver of a Honda SUV was traveling at a “high rate of speed” down Ocean Parkway at around 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday when he or she crashed into a second vehicle heading east on Avenue U. After the initial impact from the high-speed crash, the Honda flipped multiple times and collided with two additional vehicles before finally coming to rest, as seen on video posted by NYC Scanner. The force was so great that one of the vehicles ended up striking a fifth vehicle.
Paramedics took the driver of the Honda SUV to Coney Island Hospital, and a 33-year-old woman behind the wheel of the fifth vehicle to Maimonides, both with minor injuries, according to the NYPD.
The video shows at least half a dozen emergency responders on the scene — people whose jobs are now under water trying to keep up with the growing number of coronavirus patients and victims.
Streetsblog on Tuesday revealed that this preventable crash is not just a one-off anecdote but a symptom of drivers treating the mostly open roads as speedways.
New York City’s speed cameras spit out 83,478 violations in an eight-day period in March — only eight-percent fewer than during a similar eight-day period in January, when there were tens if not hundreds of thousands more cars on the road.
When told of Streetsblog's findings, Mayor de Blasio urged New Yorkers to slow down, because the hospitals can't handle more patients.
“The last thing we want is any additional crash that harms your fellow New Yorkers and takes up yet another bed in a hospital. And my number one reason we don't want the crash is because it means a human being got hurt. But we also cannot afford our already struggling hospital capacity to be further strained. And it's about to get really, really bad," de Blasio said during his daily press briefing on coronavirus. "So, even though the streets are more open, everyone still has to slow down and be careful and not act like, you know, we're in a different situation where it's open season if you want to speed. It is not and we will make sure the NYPD is vigilant and that there's real enforcement because we have to keep people safe.”
Julianne Cuba joined Streetsblog in February, 2019, after three years covering local news and politics at The Brooklyn Paper. There, she also covered the notoriously reckless private carting industry and hit-and-runs. A 2015 graduate of Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism Master’s Program, she lives in Brooklyn. Julianne is on Twitter at @julcuba. Email Julianne at julianne@streetsblog.org
Sixty people died in the first three months of the year, 50 percent more than the first quarter of 2018, which was the safest opening three months of any Vision Zero year.
