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Shortly before 9 a.m. this morning a pedestrian crossing Front Street at Washington Street in Dumbo was struck by a commercial van. No word on the extent of the injuries. While certainly a busy corner, the number of stop signs at this corner doesn’t make it a likely candidate for this kind of thing.


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  1. Traditional Mod – they really said that? I own a car (would much prefer not to) because I need to drive once a week for work. If they’re concerned about morale, they should stop towing people’s cars for “street cleaning”. It’s a total scam. And it’s not just demoralizing, but humiliating for some.

    It’s an absolute disgrace the way the system treats local citizens and whoever else it rakes up with these pointless “tow jobs”. I’ve seen old people, sick people (myself included), exhausted children, hungry babies, even people carrying glass dishes on their way to a potluck supper fully unaware of the purgatory to which they’d been condemned, all stand online for well over two hours to get their car out of the Navy Yard pound. When you finally do reach the window, that’s when things usually get worse depending on the dysfunction of the attendant.

    It’s a terrible, humiliating system our city should be ashamed of and I wish people would organize to curb the extent to which vehicles are towed. Rescinding the policy that all New York is a tow-away zone would be the best start.

  2. Brooklynchicken, exactly. I have never once seen a cop stop a car for speeding or running a red light. Ever. Our police liaison was told by the local precinct they don’t like to ticket drivers because it’s bad for morale in the neighborhood. No joke, they really said that. The NYPD doesn’t like to make bad drivers in NYC hate the cops. And they’re willing to let pedestrians die for it.

  3. Why aren’t traffic laws enforced in NYC? Anywhere else in America it’s a field day for traffic tickets. It’s practically free revenue for the City!

    Can anyone explain why NYC leaves this money in the table and throws pedestrians under the bus (or van)?

  4. There are no traffic lights down here and way too much commercial traffic.

    My office is on Water Street and I can’t tell you how many near misses occur between pedestrians and drivers at the corner of Front and Water streets.

  5. I totally agree tybur. there needs to be more inforcement by traffic cops of all rules (it seems they’re only interested in chasing around UPS trucks and writing parking tickets) Pedestrians are quite often at fault. I cringe at work whenever I go out for a smoke – peds regularly just waltz out infront of traffic on Soho side streets, its awful.

    I just fail to see in this particular case above how this van could have hit someone – there is a STOP sign. So either the van didn’t stop and hit the person, or did stop – the person walked out in front of them and they decided to hit them anyways.

  6. Not only do I walk through this intersection 2x a day every day (and saw this scene this morning), but I also walk under the overpass at York and Washington which is an even more dangerous intersection (and the site of a hit and run accident last summer where a pedestrian was seriously hurt). The bottom line is that people rarely ever complete full stops at either of those stop signs. Almost every day I see the following: two or three cars are lined up at the stop, people wait to cross, one car goes through and then the other car just immediately follows right as the pedestrians think it is their “turn” to cross. I think lights at these intersections would be odd and somewhat unnecessary, but if we cannot trust people in vehicles to obey the law and be conscious of pedestrians, it may be the only solution.

  7. I doubt they were ‘standing in the road.’ They were probably crossing the street like hundreds of people do at this intersection and this ass failed to stop. This isn’t exactly a thoroughfare. If you think people have no right to be out-of-doors without being in a car then move to Houston you jagrag. It pisses me off when pedestrians step in front of me on the sidewalk but I don’t get to deck them. You aren’t entitled to any special treatment because you drive.

  8. DH — You know I’m not going to disagree with you here. The lack of ANY enforcement of vehicular traffic in this town is truly astounding. I don’t care if it’s even parking enforcement or *actually* penalizing WILDLY dangerous driving that is standard around here…

    But my point is that there is usually quite a lot of fault that could be placed on the pedestrian. No doubt, it’s the huge heavy object that needs to take responsibility given its deathly consequences… BUT pedestrians need to figure out that they are the CAUSE of some of the danger. Standing IN THE ROAD is not acceptable.

    I think ticketing jaywalking is silly. I lived in Seattle for 3 years where it was enforced like a weird fetish — AND I experienced how not being flexible with jaywalking actually INTERFERED with the flow of traffic. Right hand turns in a car were as difficult as left hand turns…

    What would NOT be silly is ticketing pedestrians for STANDING IN THE ROAD! This creates a dangerous situation for the pedestrian, makes dealing with pedestrians far more unpredictable for cars (AND bicycles), and effectively narrows and slows the travel lanes.

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