Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Tagged with Bronx Personal Injury

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Traffic fatalities on the rise in the Bronx NYCAn 18 year old man was critically injured in an e-bike accident in the Bronx, NYC. The accident occurred on Saturday morning on Schley Avenue near the Throggs Neck Houses NYCHA complex. The young man who was was riding his e-bike on the sidewalk changed paths and moved onto the roadway when he got side-swiped by the SUV.  He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition where he is still struggling for his life. The driver stayed at the scene of the accident. He was questioned by the police and was not charged. (reads more in AMNY)

Micro-mobility device users need to be better protected in the Bronx

While the police do not suspect any criminality, the accident  clearly highlights that infrastructures protecting cyclists and pedestrians alike are still missing in the Bronx, especially in family housing areas where it is expected that young people are riding their bikes around.  Compared to Manhattan and Queens where 75% of the protected bike lanes are installed in the city, only 6% of the bike lanes are installed in the Bronx, even though an equal percentage of residents use micro-mobility devices in every borough. Every New Yorker should be equally protected while they ride their bike, e-bike or e-scooter.

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Reckless driving  and speeding caused 6 people to die and several to be injured in multiple car accidents all over the city. On Monday early morning, around 2:00 am, a black BMW landed on the Amtrak tracks below the Henry Hudson parkway around 183rd Street. The driver lost control of the vehicle and went over the barriers of the highway. When the car landed on the tracks it exploded, killing the driver and the passenger. The police was seen at the scene investigating the accident while Amtrak published a service advisory signaling delays for the trains travelling between Pen Station and Albany.

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the NYC building where 19 people died in a fireA door that malfunctioned and was left open in an apartment in which a defective heater started a fire caused heavy smoke to spread through a residential high-rise building in the Bronx and lead to the death of 19 people including 9 children. Another 32 people who suffered critical injury and 3 who suffered serious injury were rushed to the hospital. 19 other people suffered minor injuries and were treated at the scene. This is the most catastrophic fire in New York City since the Happy Land fire 30 years ago. A couple, Mahamadou Toure and his wife, lost 2 of their 5 children in the fire.

The fire started in a duplex located at the third floor of a building located at 333 E. 181st St. in the Bronx and was caused by a defective space heater.  The door of the apartment where the fire started was left open and a very heavy black smoke invaded all the hallways of the building.  The building had no fire escape and the stairwells that were supposed to be used as emergency exits quickly filled with heavy smoke. The smoke also invaded all the stairwell exits that were left open. Firefighters found victims in cardiac arrest on every floor and in the stairwells. Other people were trapped in their apartments. Those on the highest floor were told by 911 to put towels at the bottom of their door and stay in their apartment until they were told it would be safe to go out. People on the lowest floors closer to the fire were evacuated by their window.

The building that was built in 1972 under federal guidelines had multiple units converted into duplexes. According to FDNY some spaces were hard to reach because of the old design of the building.

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location of the bee-line bus accident in the Bron NY11 people were injured including one critically after an articulated bus of the Bee-line system from Westchester county crashed into a pillar of the elevated subway line on Jerome Avenue near the intersection of East 213th Street in the Bronx, NYC. The bus was serving the 4 line and transporting passengers between Yonkers and Bedford Park in the Bronx. A car that previously collided with another one slammed into the bus pushing it into the pillar.

One 69 year old man in critical condition

Some of the bus accident victims were taken to the hospital by EMS, others were treated at the scene.  Among them, was the driver of the bus who was put on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital. The bus drivers told witnesses that 3 people were more injured than he was. A 69 year old man who suffered critical traumatic brain injury is in critical condition. He also said he was a veteran driver who was planning to retire next year and never had an accident in his entire career as a bus driver.

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accident sceneAn 8 year old pedestrian was critically injured in a back-over accident in New York City yesterday. The boy was playing on the sidewalk of Webster Avenue  near the intersection of Ittner Place when a car pulled out of an auto shop and hit him. The driver stayed at the scene of the accident. According to the police the driver and the boy knew each other but were not related. The boy was transported to the hospital in critical condition. (read more in the NY Daily News)

50 children hit every week in the US with at least two of them dying

Children are the most common victims of back-over accidents because they are smaller than adult and drivers may not see them in the rear view mirror when they are backing up. According to statistics of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, every week in the US, 50 kids are being backed over by cars or by other motor vehicles such as buses or trucks. Injuries are often serious and among these 50 children, at least 2 of them die from their injuries.

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The building where a lady died in a fireAn electric scooter being charged is the cause of a fire that ravaged a residential building in New York City, killing one and injuring 11. The fire started in the middle of the night, around 4;40 am on Wednesday inside an apartment on the third floor of a building located in the Bronx, on Park Ave near E. 161st Street in Concorde Village. Residents heard a loud boom and then the fire spread very quickly to the upper floors of the six-story building. Residents were woken up by the smell of the smoke or by other residents screaming about the fire and asking everybody to get out.

3 unconscious people were removed from the flames by the firefighters

The tenants of the 20 apartments located in the buildings were all forced out extremely quickly and lost everything in the fire. 10 of them were injured as well as one firefighter. Some of the tenants were critically injured and a 91 year old lady died. She was among  the 3 residents that were unconscious when the firefighters pulled them out of the flames. The tow other unconscious residents were an 80 year old man and a 54 year old man. The elderly woman died from smoke inhalation and the two other men were in critical but stable condition.

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Ghost bike showing locations of previous NYC deadly bicycle accidentsA cruel and reckless driver  blows a stop sign, hits a cyclist critically injuring him, drives away, comes back, takes a look at the cyclist, gets back in his car and speeds away.

The accident occurred at night last week in the Bronx. A 46 year-old cyclist was riding his bike through the intersection of Dudley and Edison Avenues in Pelham Bay when a driver blew the stop sign and slammed into him.  A video surveillance first shows the driver taking off.  He then returned to the scene of the accident, took a look at the victim who was suffering critical injury and took off again. The victim was found by EMS and rushed to the hospital. (Read more in the Daily News)

Bicycle accidents injuries in the Bronx have been on the rise during this period of the year compared to the same period last year.  According to the most recent NYPD traffic statistics, 17 people were injured in bicycle accidents in the Bronx during the week of April 5 to April 11 compared to 2 during the same week a year earlier.  Last years numbers were much lower because the city was observing the Covid19 lock-down and the streets were mostly empty. The same can be said when looking at statistics on a 4 week basis. 54 people were injured in Bronx bicycle accidents between March 14 and April 11 2021 compared to 20 for the same period a year earlier.

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location of the gas explosion accidentA  gas explosion injured 10 people including several children in the Bronx, NYC.

The explosion blasted a three story multi-family residence located at 1520 Paulding Avenue in Morris Park, yesterday afternoon around 3:30 pm.  A gas leak on the building’s second floor  seemed to have been at the origin of the explosion according to preliminary investigations.

A tenant who  was watching television on the first floor had all his windows blown out. His kitchen cabinets were thrown outside taking down the kitchen wall. Above him a mother and a baby were stuck on a balcony. The mother had to throw her baby down to her neighborgh before others helped her get down the balcony. Another mother and her two kids were stuck on the seconf floor. The blast was so powerful that even the window guards flew off and the front door of one of the appartment units got stuck in the power lines across the street.  The building looked like it had been devastated by a tornado.

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the overpass where the bus fell from8 passengers and a driver were injured in a MTA bus accident last week. The driver lost control of the bus and  plunged from an overpass, leaving the articulated bus dangling over an expressway in the Bronx.

The accident occurred as the articulated bus was on the University Avenue overpass above the Cross Bronx Express Way. According to preliminary investigation speed was a factor in the accident. As he made the turn to get on the  overpass, the driver’s speed was between 17 and 26 mph while the safe speed for such a large bus should have been 3 to 4 mph.  He lost control of the bus, teared through a metal gate and plunged 50 feet over the overpass, leaving the accordion bus dangling from the overpass with its nose on the expressway below. The bus driver was able to extricate himself from the bus and help other passengers to get out of the bus. he suffered jaw, leg and knee injury. 8 other passengers were injured including two seriously. They were all transported to the hospital.

https://twitter.com/ADiLorenzoTV/status/1350026084398600194

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protected bike lane saves livesWhile bicycle accidents injuries in New York City went down by 3.6% during the last 3 months compared to the same period last year, bicycle accident injuries in the Bronx increased by 35 %. Bicyclist activist organization, Transportation Alternatives has been asking the city to install more bike lanes in the Bronx but instead the DOT is planning to use more police enforcement.

At the beginning of the summer the NYPD organized a four-weeks enforcement blitz to tame down speeding and failure to yield at Bronx high crash corridors such as Bruckner Boulevard and is planning to organize another one soon.

However while the blitz was  effective in preventing pedestrian accidents, it didn’t curb the soaring number of bicycle accidents in the Bronx this summer. On June 11th, a 24 year old cyclist died from his injuries  after being hit by a car on on Willis Avenue and E. 138th Street. The same day, a 38 year old cyclist was fatally struck by a truck on Park Avenue near 138th Street. Then, on June 20, a 43 year old man riding a e-bike in Pelham Bay Park died after being struck by a vehicle. Last week a cyclist who was hit by a car near East 175th street on August 5th and fought for his life for almost a month, died from his injuries. As mentioned above the number of bicycle accidents injuries is also soaring in the Bronx and a police blitz will have little effect on changing this dangerous trend. In an article in StreetBlog, Edwin Figueroa, a senior organizer at Transportation Alternatives, is asking for permanent measures allowing cyclists to be safe when commuting in the Bronx. “What cyclists from all over the city, but especially in the Bronx, need from this administration is more protected bike-lane infrastructure. The Bronx needs redesigned streets that are self-enforcing, not streets that are reliant on NYPD enforcement to ensure safeness,” he said.