UPDATE: Hit-And-Run Ambulance Driver Kills Woman on Deadly Ocean Avenue
A hit-and-run driver of a hospital ambulance struck and killed a woman at a dangerous Brooklyn intersection early on Thursday.
According to the NYPD, the driver was headed westbound on Avenue O in Midwood at around 6:35 a.m. and made a left turn onto southbound Ocean Avenue at a wide intersection that encourages fast speeds.
Somewhere in the intersection, the driver struck a 44-year-old woman, causing severe body trauma. She was taken to Maimonides Hospital, where she died.
The driver fled, according to cops. In preliminary reports, police did not identify the vehicle involved, but video obtained by the Daily News later confirmed it was an ambulance fro Maimonides. The hospital told the paper it had suspended the EMTs.
Ocean Avenue, like the parallel Ocean Parkway, suffers from very wide intersections and notorious speeding.
According to city stats mapped by Crash Count, there were 215 reported crashes on the stretch of Ocean Avenue between Empire Boulevard and the Belt Parkway last year alone, injuring 180 people, including 47 pedestrians and 16 cyclists.
At just the intersection in question last year, there were 12 reported crashes last year, injuring 10 people, including four pedestrians.
According to a map created by How’s My Driving based on the locations of speed-camera tickets, Ocean Avenue is notorious for drivers with heavy right feet. A camera at Ocean Avenue at Quentin Road, for example, has issued about nine tickets every day since 2020.
According to the city Department of Transportation, Ocean Avenue is a Vision Zero priority corridor because four pedestrians were killed and 24 seriously injured there between 2017 and 2021. The area around Avenue O is a Vision Zero priority area.
Thursday’s killing comes as the DOT touted that fatalities were “near their lowest levels ever for the first three months of the year.” The 42 people who were killed in crashes represents the third lowest in the first three months of a year since records began being collected in 1910. But recent years — 2015 and 2018 — were safer.
Pedestrian fatalities were down from 29 in the first three months last year to 23 this year.
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