Picture by NY Scanner
A young man is dead and 14 other people are injured including several of them in critical condition after a massive fire destroyed apartments in a three-story building on Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn, NYC early this morning. The fire broke out above the stores and destroyed all the apartments. Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the accident.
Read more in the NY Daily News and see video below
Personal injuries related to traffic accidents in NYC gradually declined so far this year compared to last year while deaths related to traffic accidents were mostly stable as analyzed in our previous blog. Pedestrian injuries have significantly decreased over the summer while bicycle accident injuries stayed stable.
The graph below shows the total number of people injured in traffic crashes over a 3 month period with numbers for 2013 in blue and numbers for 2014 in red.
Pedestrians injuries are following the same gradual trend. The number of pedestrian injuries slightly decreased at the end of the winter and during the spring of 2014 compared to the same periods of 2013. The decline continued over the summer and the total number of pedestrian injuries over a 3 month period was below 2300 for the first time during the two years under review.
Baja Motorsports knowingly failed to report immediately defects and an unreasonable risk of serious injury involving 11 models of minibikes and go-carts said the Consumer Product Safety Commission in charges that were resolved by a settlement reached recently between the two parties.
The defective minibikes and go-carts were sold by Baja Inc., and its corporate affiliate, One World Technologies Inc., of Anderson, S.C. in the United States from 2004 to 2010. During that period of time Baja received several reports that people had been injured, including a child who was severely burned, after the gas cap leaked or detached from the fuel tank. Baja also received reports of stuck throttles. The CPSC charged that the the throttle could stick, due to an improperly positioned fuel line and throttle cable, posing a sudden acceleration hazard. The company didn’t file a full report with the CPSC until June 2010.
Read more on the CPSC website
Sequence of events in car-pedestrian accident: Source Wikipedia.
At least 4 pedestrians were struck by vehicles in 4 different accidents yesterday in New York City according to the the NY Daily News. One of them, 34 year old Latchman Singh died from his injuries at the hopsital. He was hit near the intersection of Flatbush Ave and Dekalb Ave in Brooklyn. The driver who hit him was stopped on the Manhattan side of the Manhattan brodge but wasn’t charged.
A 19 year old driver and his two passengers were in serious condition after they rear ended a tractor trailer in Queens, NYC early Friday morning. The accident happened on Astoria Bvd near 111th street, an intersection prone to car crashes according to the NY daily News
A man was fatally struck by a subway after he fell on the track in the Bronx, NYC, last week. The victim was hit by the southbound 6 train at the St. Lawrence Ave. station about 6:15 a.m., officials said. The police are still investigating the cause of the accident.
Read more in the NY Daily News
An NYC taxi driver and his passenger suffered personal injury after an explosion caused a manhole to fly in the air and strike the taxi on Lexington near 44th street in Manhattan early Monday morning.
The impact damaged the doors and the windshield of the taxi.
A good Samaritan pulled the two victims out of the taxi through a window and through the sunroof. The driver suffered back injury and the passenger a minor hand injury.
135 people died in traffic accident in New York between the beginning of April and the end of September this year compared to 134 for the same period of 2013. Despite all the Vision Zero efforts and the new street designs implemented by the Bloomberg administration, the streets of New York City remains dangerous for pedestrians, bicyclists and vehicle passengers.
The graphs presented in this post compare data from NYPD crash statistics on a 3 months basis with the blue bars representing traffic deaths in 2013 and the red bars, traffic deaths 2014.
While comparing 2014 to 2013 data, the graph below shows that most of the decline in traffic deaths happened at the end of the winter. During the good season, a slight increase of fatalities in the spring was compensated by a slight decrease during the summer.
Christopher Sallay, a partner at NYC Personal Injury Law Firm Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is representing Juan Rosario who lost his wife and two children in a car accident in which a van plunged of the Bronx River Parkway viaduct into an unoccupied part of the Bronx Zoo.
According to an article published today by the New York Post, this particular section of the Bronx River Parkway is the most dangerous and expensive stretch of road in the city and 16 people died in accidents at this spot. The city already paid an $11.5 million settlement last year for a fatal crash that happened in 2006.
More lawsuits are underway, including the one handled by Chris. Chris was quoted in the article saying the Jersey barriers – finally installed two weeks later – “could have prevented this, it’s that simple,”.
A scaffold accident caused by an equipment failure of the traction hoist brake mechanism that supports one side of the rig, left two window washers dangling outside the 69th floor of One World Trade Center in Manhattan, NYC which opened for business last week.
The two window washers, Juan Lizama and Juan Lopez, were trapped for two hours until firefighters were able to rescue them. The two workers were brought to safety through a hole that firefighters cut in one of the windows.
Officials are still investigating the cause of the accident. It is not the first time that Tractel Group, the company that supplied the scaffold, has had an accident with its material. The company was fined $21,000 in 2008 after one worker died in an accident during which a scaffold that the Tractel Group had previously repaired gave way. Last June in midtown Manhattan two other window washers were left dangling 500 feet above ground after a scaffold built by the Tractel Group snapped. They were rescued by firefighters. Read more on the AP website
New York Personal Injury Attorneys Blog