Tuesday’s Headlines: Weekend of Carnage Edition

There were so many crashes over the long holiday weekend that it was hard to keep track of the coverage. Even amNY’s roundup — “Auto collisions claim six lives on NYC streets over Labor Day weekend” — didn’t have all the death and injuries.

It’s worth noting that total road fatalities are up nearly 2 percent so far this year, according to the NYPD, with 170 people dying on the streets through Aug. 25. More tellingly, there have been 57,758 reported crashes (that’s 244 per day!) and 35,146 total injuries (which is 149 per day).

Those numbers are horrifying. And they don’t even include all of the stuff in the amNY roundup or the fatalities in other crashes below:

• Four motorcycle riders were killed in three crashes. (NYDN)
• A reckless driver hit four cars and injured two pedestrians in Brooklyn. The Daily News and Post coverage had a picture of the car in question, but failed to report the driver’s record, which we provide here as a reminder that these occurrences are not “accidents” but “outcomes” when we fail to revoke the driving privileges of people with eight camera-issued violations in two years.
• A woman struck by a driver last month has finally been identified by cops: It was Russian poet Yelena Gervolskaya. (NY Post)
• Meanwhile, several outlets covered one specific crash: the van driver who killed a cyclist in Williamsburg … and was later arrested for unlicensed and drunk driving. (NY Post, Streetsblog)

And in other news from the weekend:

• It’s funny — New Jersey is still fighting New York’s law creating a new toll to drive into the Central Business District of Manhattan (NJ.com), but tolls were increased this weekend on four Garden State bridges without any major lawsuits or fuss (NJ.com).
• A judge ruled last week that all new taxis must be wheelchair accessible because the city is so far behind on its goal of having half the fleet accessible to the handicapped. (NYDN, amNY)
• That ol’ Hamptons rascal Dan Rattiner spoofed the driving class so richly that they thought his satire about congestion pricing on the East End was true. (NY Post)
• Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific writers of the last century. But who knew she also had a beef with NJ Transit:

• The Times’s Dodai Stewart had another great “Street Wars” story, this time about the (slight) rise in school streets. It’s a personal obsession of ours over here at Streetsblog, which is why we wish she’d cited our must-read investigation into how streets in front of schools are far more dangerous than other streets during key school-day hours.
• New York City Transit Interim President Demetrius Crichlow was eager (in an amNY op-ed) to defend the NYPD’s crackdown on bus fare evasion, though he left out two key facts: the Department of Transportation is doing a terrible job of speeding buses and many “fare evaders” are just using a bus to get to a subway, where they swipe in anyway. MTA Board member Andrew Albert was a bit more reasonable on NY1. And Larry Penner found a middle ground in Mass Transit.