Accidents

The roads of New York City have never been as crowded as they are right now. The rapidly growing number of cyclists in Manhattan and Brooklyn has greatly contributed to this congestion, and in order to make the roads safer the New York Police Department launched a new program earlier this month that will help track and better understand accidents between cyclists and pedestrians.  The NYPD’s new bike tracking system will track the continually growing number of accidents between bikers and pedestrians by requiring city residents to report bicycle accidents to the NYPD and fill out the same form that they use for other motor vehicle accidents.

Even though construction has resumed following a deadly crane accident that left a 30-year-old worker from New Jersey dead and three of his fellow workers with severe personal injuries, questions still persist about exactly what went wrong. The NYC Department of Buildings announced last week that engineers found defects in the hoisting system of the crane that crashed on the night of Tuesday, April 3rd. That fatal construction accident at the construction site of the 7 Train extension, located on 11th Avenue and 34th Street on the West Side of Manhattan, caused the wrongful death of the aforementioned construction worker, and the ongoing investigation is examining whether the crane was properly maintained.

The family of a New York City construction worker killed in a construction accident that may have been the result of labor law violations has hired a New York City lawyer after identifying his battered body on Saturday. “The family wants accountability, they want answers, and they want it done publicly,” said the family’s attorney. Juan Ruiz, a 69-year-old construction worker, died Thursday when the Columbia University-owned warehouse on 131st Street he was working on collapsed, and a wrongful death lawsuit is very likely to follow. Columbia is in the midst of building a $6.4 billion new campus in the Manhattanville neighborhood of New York City.

In the latest of a series of recent motor vehicle accidents involving pedestrians in New York City, two people were hospitalized Monday afternoon after a cab jumped a curb on a busy Midtown sidewalk before slamming into a Duane Reade, fire officials said. The taxi crashed into a pedestrian at 43rd Street and Third Avenue and then into the drug store about 1:13 p.m. on Monday afternoon, according to the fire department. In light of the fact that a recent study found that New York City cab drivers average around 70 hours of work per week, it’s no wonder that motor vehicle accidents like this are becoming more frequent.