Pedestrian Killed, Two Others Maimed By Truck Driver On Deadly Canal Street
A truck driver speeding off the Manhattan Bridge killed a pedestrian and injured two others on Thursday morning on Canal Street and Bowery, a notoriously deadly intersection where two people were killed last year and the city has delayed long-promised safety improvements.
According to the NYPD, a 66-year-old man was driving a Chevy truck westbound on Canal — exiting the Manhattan Bridge — at around 10:20 a.m. when he turned right onto Bowery, mounted the sidewalk and struck the three pedestrians.
A video obtained by Streetsblog shows the truck driver exiting the Manhattan Bridge after he has apparently struck the pedestrians. He is moving at high speed and his truck is wobbling before he strikes another truck on the block between Canal and Hester.
The trucker eventually struck a sedan at Hester Street, coming to a halt, police said.
All three victims were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where two women victims are in stable condition. A 77-year-old man died at the medical center. [He has since been identified by police as Jun Ye Ting of nearby Madison Street.]
Cops said a “person of interest” was taken into custody.
The truck, which was heavily laden with wooden pallets, has received two violations for reckless driving this year — a speed camera infraction in January and failure to stop at a red light in April.
Thursday’s victim is the 64th pedestrian killed this year, according to the Department of Transportation. That number is trending in the right direction — the average since 2013 has been 78 pedestrian fatalities through Sept. 9, the agency said — but it is still too many, one activist said.
“These streets are deadly, they’re killing our children, and yet they remain unchanged for years or decades,” Raul Ampuero, a member of Families for Safe Streets, said in a statement .
Canal Street in general, and the intersection of Bowery specifically, is known as one of the most dangerous places for pedestrians in town.
Last year, there were two crashes on consecutive days, one fatal, both involving motorists who drove into the deadly intersection from the highway-like Manhattan Bridge. May Kwok, who had been sitting at the plaza in the intersection, and cyclist Kevin Cruickshank both died in the second crash, prompting yet another call for immediate action.
“This intersection has to be re-engineered and figured out,” said state Sen. Stephen Chan (R-Brooklyn). “I don’t care if they got to put, traffic lights on the bridge itself, mid-span. These cars have to be slowed down.”
For more than two decades, officials have studied fixes for Canal Street, where, since 2022, at least two dozen New Yorkers have been killed or seriously injured.
The Department of Transportation this year finally announced a plan to upgrade pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, but that safety plan excluded the portion of the roadway east of Broadway, admitting that safety improvements are more-challenging there — politically — because some business owners on that stretch do not want to repurpose parking for more pedestrian space.
As a result, residents and visitors to the busier part of Canal Street will continue to be crammed into tiny foot paths while the minority of people in cars get six lanes. According to DOT’s own data, the most crash-prone sections of Canal Street are on Broadway and the eastern half of crosstown thoroughfare, with 190 people killed or seriously injured by drivers over five years, compared to 122 people on the western half.
“Canal Street is a blood-pressure-raising corridor. If I had my preference it should start on the eastern side,” Wellington Chen, the executive director of the Chinatown Partnership, told Streetsblog earlier this year. “I guess it’s because the people were making a ruckus on the eastern side of Canal. They have no solution to offer, so that is what is happens; other people go first and we may not get around to you.”
Activists again demanded changes.
Canal Street is one of the most dangerous streets in Manhattan,” Transportation Alternatives said in a statement. “Every year for seven straight years, at least one New Yorker has been killed on Canal Street.”
The group called for installation of the street safety project on the eastern end of Canal.
Read More:
Streetsblog has migrated to a new comment system. New commenters can register directly in the comments section of any article. Returning commenters: your previous comments and display name have been preserved, but you'll need to reclaim your account by clicking "Forgot your password?" on the sign-in form, entering your email, and following the verification link to set a new password — this is required because passwords could not be carried over during the migration. For questions, contact tips@streetsblog.org.
