An unhinged motorist plowed through open streets barriers on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn seconds after volunteers set them up earlier this month, security camera footage showed — the latest case of drivers risking people's lives by disregarding the street closures.
The Dodge Durango driver approached the metal barriers at Hoyt Street and State Street on July 12 and honked repeatedly at the three people setting them up — before smashing through and speeding off, the dramatic video showed:
In the clip, workers wait for traffic to pass before setting up the barricades at the intersection. The driver then approaches, honking, before pushing through the metal fences as the open street folks dive out of the way. The car striking the barriers caused a loud bang.
The one-block open street's managers were putting up the barriers for the weekend at around 4:30 p.m. on that Friday, when the driver approached and kept hitting their horn — making clear they weren't going to be inconvenienced by the closure, said Kelly Carroll, Executive Director of the Atlantic Avenue BID, which runs the street closure.
"They honked us as if to say ‘I’m coming through anyway,’" said Carroll, who was among the people setting up the barriers. “Then they beeped again and just pushed the gas and just plowed through, and we couldn’t believe it, so we quickly moved out of the way."
"It was very scary, he was just two feet from us, really."
The NYPD have not yet made an arrest, but are prepared to slap the reckless driver with felony criminal mischief charges, according to a police report obtained by Streetsblog.
Automated enforcement camera nabbed the motorist's plate — which Carroll snapped a picture of as the driver zipped off — blowing a red light just four days earlier on July 8 in Queens, according to city records.
The car had dark-tinted windows so Carroll couldn't see the person behind the wheel.
But cops and other municipal workers are part of the problem on the small open street, routinely illegally parking on the block, Carroll said. One driver parked beyond the barricades recently had NYPD paraphernalia in the dash, and a whopping 23 speeding tickets and five red light tickets since 2019.
"We’ve had consistent issues with the NYPD and other agencies parking on the Hoyt open street," said Council Member Lincoln Restler. "It has been really frustrating that our city agencies that should be partners in this effort have undermined it."
That illegal parking also blocks the BID from setting up more tables and chairs — because the cars shrink the width of the roadway, and open streets must maintain clearance for emergency vehicles to get through.
"We can’t even set up a table if the cars are parked there. It renders the open street moot," Carroll said.
Miffed drivers have put people's lives at risk again and again since the open streets program launched at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic four years ago.
In 2020, an ice cream truck driver routinely plowed through barriers on nearby Pacific Street in Boerum Hill, and in 2021, someone notoriously stole a bunch of open streets barriers in Greenpoint under the cover of the night, loaded them into an Amazon-branded sprinter van, and dumped them in the Newtown Creek.
That theft in north Brooklyn is still under investigation, more than three years later, an NYPD spokesperson said Thursday.
