Are you fucking kidding me?
OK, my boss hates it when we curse, but when a German tourist is decapitated in Midtown during the annual Gridlock Alert fuckery by a reckless driver with a fake plate — the fucking kind of fake plate that tourists buy on Canal Street for $15 that I have fucking personally told Mayor Adams and NYPD Commissioner Tisch about — you have to let a guy with only a few ticks left on his superannuated clock stick his head out of a pixellated window and scream a barbaric yawp.
First, let me report the basics of a story whose tiny details offer a glimpse at every fucking thing wrong with this god-awful city capital of the world: According to police, two German tourists, Alexandra Sabine Lewalter Maric, 50, and her husband, 55, were in the crosswalk on E. 40th Street on the west side of Fifth Ave. at around 2:40 p.m. when the driver of a minivan that was stuck in the intersection — it's U.N General Assembly week! — suddenly put the van in reverse, pinning them against a truck that was stopped at the red light behind them. (The driver, who briefly fled, was later detained and identified by cops as Mohammed Abouzaid, 40. He was hit with minor charges of failure to yield and leaving the scene.)
Here's another key detail: Cops said the minivan had a Mississippi license plate on its front and a back plate that read “Times Square.” The Daily News and amNY properly called it a souvenir or novelty plate. The Times didn't even report the key detail. The Post, clueless as ever, simply called it a "vanity" plate, which it is not (genuine personalized license plates are limited to eight characters). Neither paper mentioned the congestion associated with the annual United Nation's confab, nor did the car-loving Paper of Wreckage admit guilt for successfully cowing Gov. Hochul from taking advantage of a state law that allows the MTA to raise the congestion toll 25 percent on gridlock alert days. But of course not — that paper lives, as Tisch so often says when she wants to complain about harmless cyclists, in a "consequence-free environment."
Now, the outrage. If you think the expletives above were excessive, I'm just getting started:
Of course, anyone who has read Streetsblog or fucking run into me on any goddamn street knows that these fake souvenir plates are everywhere and are often used by the worst drivers to evade the very enforcement that would have prevented this catastrophe if anyone beyond the Streetsblog C-Suite was paying attention.
Yes, injuries committed by car drivers are down this year, but still more than 130 New Yorkers are injured every single day by drivers. Beyond that, kids' lives are ruined. Our lungs are befouled. Our city is despoiled. Our streetscape is made ugly. Our businesses are stunted. Our policies are perverted.
And now a German tourist is dead and her husband is maimed during a visit to New York City to celebrate his birthday. All so that car drivers can have unfettered access to every single spot in the city at all times.
Is there not some part of you that is screaming out for sanity? Jesus, every fiber of my body is screaming right now.
The problem is, this latest tragedy has a shelf life of about 45 more minutes before the next outrage ("Supreme Court rules that Trump need not follow law" or "FDA approves 'clean, beautiful coal' as treatment for insomnia") hits our phones in an alarming news alert. But can we take a moment to scream together and demand that our elected officials do something?
They can and must end this.
OK, in other news that won't get us banned on Facebook:
- Speaking of outrage, a Long Island man was killed by a school bus driver. (NYDN)
- From the international desk: Doug Ford is still on a crusade to make Toronto streets less safe. (The Star)
- Mayor Adams's possibly illegal bid to lower the bike speed limit to 15 miles per hour starts next month, but no one had our angle. (NYDN, amNY)
- The increasingly unmoored amNY reported on the rising cost of transit, yet didn't mention that owning and operating a car is far more expensive.
- Is there really a crackdown on cruising in the Port Authority bathrooms? The 1970s called and it wants you to address real problems. (Gothamist, The City)
- Ugh, a cop was tossed onto subway tracks by a man described by the Post as homeless. Time for everyone to re-read Nolan Hicks's investigation into the challenge of solving that problem underground.
