A 47-year-old man was fatally struck and, reportedly, dragged by a truck driver on Saturday night in Bushwick.
There wasn't a lot of coverage — just another pedestrian hit by a truck driver; cops didn't even release the victim's name or provide any details; Gothamist offered bare bones — and News12 initially reported that a witness said a private sanitation truck was involved, but turned out to be untrue (the company sent us incontrovertible video evidence that its driver actually discovered the fatality, not caused it).
But the fact remains: Drivers kill. They flee the scene. And they are rarely caught. Meanwhile, the city elite focuses its attention on reining in supposedly rogue cyclists even though they don't commit carnage on anywhere close to the scale that drivers do.
Consider this: Crashes are down more than 9 percent this year, according to the NYPD (the theory is that congestion pricing is playing a role in reducing road violence, even far beyond the toll zone). But even with that reduction, there are still an average of 225 reported crashes every single day in this city. And there are an average of 95 reported crashes with injuries every single day.
Lower speed limits (which the city is slowly rolling out) help reduce the carnage of crashes, but hundreds of people's lives — including the family of the unidentified Brooklyn hit-and-run victim from the weekend — are incalculably altered every week by the toll of car use in this city.
It bears repeating, so we are repeating it.
In other news:
- Speaking of hit-and-run drivers, cops are looking for a hit-and-run driver who injured a cyclist uptown. (CBS2)
- I can't read the article because Upper East Site banned me for some reason, but the website had a great picture of what happens when people speed and drive recklessly. Imagine the force summoned by this driver to overturn a 3,000-pound car.
- Slap, meet dash. Here's a very cursory look at the NYPD's paid detail program. (amNY)
- My Bingo card did not have Demetrius Crichlow falling on his sword in amNY, but the MTA top exec definitely needed to reassure riders after last week's commute debacle.
- The Port Authority starves transit because its big money comes from parking and tolls. So no wonder the PATH train caught fire. (NY Post, NYDN, News12)
- A Queens teen who killed another teen when he was out driving his parents' fancy sports car is headed to jail. His parents had previously been convicted for handing over the keys. (QNS)
- The Governors Island ferry is electric. (The New Yorker)
- In personal news, I went to the Met game last night and I was the one (and not the only one) screaming in the bottom of the ninth, tie game, with one on and no outs, "Nimmo should bunt!" — and was proven right. (amNY)
- Finally, meet a guy who commutes by boat from Jersey to Soho:
