From The Villager, Aug. 6:

With tree memorial, keeping son's memory alive
The well-tended tree and blooming bed commemorates Kyle Larson, a 20-year-old New York University student who was rushing to turn in a term paper when he was fatally hit by a delivery truck in November 2012.

For his parents, Nancy and Robert Larson, making the journey every weekend from their home in Manhasset, Long Island, to the city to take care of the tree and the memorial has become a way to keep their son's memory alive.

"We come in on Sunday mornings because it gives us a chance just to remember him for a few quiet moments," Nancy Larson said on Sun., Aug. 2, seated with her husband at the new pedestrian plaza near where the accident happened. "He's always in our thoughts — there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think of him countless times."

The Larsons chose this particular tree, in front of McDonald's and the former Heartland Brewery, because a few days after the accident, the NY Longboard Association held an event to honor Kyle, an avid skateboarder, who had been riding his longboard the day of the crash.

The association designated that tree because it had been the closest to where the incident occurred. The Larsons had found out about the memorial through Facebook.

"We almost weren’t going to come," Nancy recalled. "It was really cold that day. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and we came in. We were blown away. So many people showed up — there were at least 100 people. None of them knew him — they just knew that he was a skateboarder that had been involved in an accident."

From Gothamist, Aug. 18:

24-Year-Old Woman Dies One Week After Being Pinned To Light Pole By Midtown Driver

A young woman who was struck and pinned against a light pole by a driver in Midtown East earlier this month has died, according to police.

Authorities have confirmed Mallory Weisbrod, 24, died on Sunday. She was struck by a driver at 2nd Avenue and East 49th Street on the afternoon of August 10th, and suffered serious leg injuries. The 64-year-old driver, who was operating a Mercedes-Benz, mounted a curb while heading southbound on 2nd Avenue. He also struck a 23-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman—the former was treated at Bellevue Hospital and is expected to survive, while the latter refused medical treatment.

Weisbrod lived only a few blocks from where she was fatally struck. No arrests have been made but the NYPD says the investigation is ongoing.

From the NY Times, Oct. 31:

Three people were killed on Saturday, including a 10-year-old girl, after a car swerved off a road in the Bronx and ran onto a sidewalk, crashing into a group of children and adults who were trick-or-treating, the police said.

The crash, which happened just before 5 p.m. on Morris Park Avenue, near Bogart Avenue, injured four others, including a 3-year-old girl and the driver, the authorities said.

The police said that the driver was a 52-year-old man in a sedan. He was driving westbound when he bumped another car and then swerved onto the sidewalk. The car came to a stop at 936 Morris Park Avenue.

From 69 News, Allentown, PA:

Allentown crash knocks out power to thousands on Halloween night

Officials say a car crashed into a PPL [Pennsylvania Power and Light] Electric and Utilities substation on East Columbia Street in Allentown around 7:30 PM and went up in flames. Fire officials said Saturday night that they were not able to extinguish the flames until they received permission from PPL Corporation officials hours after the crash.

Witnesses say flames could be seen shooting up into the air as high as 20 to 30 feet. Crews worked throughout the night to put out the fire and restore power to the surrounding area. Over 6,000 people were affected by the outage. Allentown police say the driver of the vehicle was arrested for DUI. In addition to a DUI charge, the driver is also charged with recklessly endangering another person and driving with a suspended license - which was the result of a separate DUI offense.

First the good news. The Daily News reports Nov. 10 that Public Advocate Letitia James will introduce a bill making it legal for pedestrians to cross while the light is blinking (Outragroues that it isn't!) But simultanesouly, DNAInfo tells us that the NYPD is about to begin a "Jaywalking Ticketing Blitz in Queens." Perversely, this is portrayed as for pedestrians' "own protection" (Sic!) We are told: "The change comes days after an elderly woman was struck and killed by a bus while walking mid-block near Main Street and Kissena Boulevard—whose death was the catalyst for the meeting at the [109th] precinct, officials said." Fuck this Orwellian blame-the-victim bullshit. We continue to assert: Jaywalking is a human right. NOT ONE INCH TO THE TYRANNY OF THE AUTOMOBILE!!!

From Gothamist, Dec. 7:

SUV Driver Kills 30-Year-Old Woman On Fort Greene Sidewalk

A woman walking on a Brooklyn sidewalk with her boyfriend was fatally struck by a driver last night. Apparently an SUV driver jumped the sidewalk because he wanted to avoid hitting a bus.

According to the police, the incident occurred just before 5:30 p.m.: A 2004 Chevrolet Suburban was heading eastbound on Fulton Street in Fort Greene when, at South Portland Street, the driver "swerved to the right in order to avoid hitting the vehicle in front it." The 5,300-6,100 pounds vehicle barreled into Victoria Nicodemus, 30; her 37-year-old boyfriend; and another 75-year-old female pedestrian.

Nicodemus was pronounced dead at Brooklyn Hospital; her boyfriend and the other pedestrian are in stable condition...

Police arrested the SUV's driver, Marlon Sewell, charging him with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, operating a motor vehicle without insurance and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.

Gothamist on Dec. 17 runs the utterly maddening story of Christen Conyers who was sent to jail for six months for riding his bicycle on the streets of New York. He was leaving his Harlem housing project to break his Ramadan fast at a local chicken joint back in June when he ran into a Black Lives Matter protest. "They told me to get on the sidewalk, but I was on my bike so that would have been illegal," Conyers told reporters during visiting hours at the Manhattan Detention Complex. "I wasn't part of the protest, although if I was that would have been my legal right." He was busted on a strong of ludicrous charges: felony assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, two counts of disorderly conduct, obstructing vehicular traffic, and harassment in the second degree. These were reduced at his arraignment to disorderly conduct, but he was still sent up the river for six months for violating conditions of his parole on a prior. What utter bullshit.

Here we go again. New York's PIX reports :

HOMECREST, Brooklyn — A city bus driver has been arrested after he struck a 62-year-old pedestrian in Brooklyn, killing her, police said Monday.

Wayne Alman, 52, faces a charge of failure to yield to a pedestrian, according to NYPD.

Investigators said Alman was behind the wheel of a B36 bus the evening of Dec. 14 when he made a left turn on East 17th Street from Avenue Z and slammed into Eleanora Shulkina as she crossed the street.

When officers arrived at the scene, they found the 62-year-old victim unconscious and unresponsive. She was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead, police said.

Alman remained at the scene, police said.

But the headline was "MTA bus driver arrested in deadly Brooklyn crash." This was not a crash. This was an eldery pedestrian getting squashed like a bug.

An apparently homeless woman with a toddler in her car plowed into pedestrians on the crowded Las Vegas Strip Dec. 20, killing one and injuring dozens. The driver, Lakeisha Holloway, was said to be a drifter who had arrived in Las Vegas days earlier. (NBC)

Meanwhile, the youth in the so-called "affluenza" case, Ethan Couch, is reported to have fled the country with his mother—just before a scheduled court hearing that could have transferred his case to adult court, possibly resulting in prison time. Couch came under fire this month after a video surfaced on Twitter that appeared to show him playing drinking games, which would violate his 10-year probation sentence. When his probation officer came around to check in on him, the house was abandoned. (NYT, Dec. 22)

We asked when Couch received probation despite having killed four if his too-rich-to-know-better defense would inspire a too-poor-to-know-better defense. Let's see what happens to Lakeisha Holloway. The psychological pressures of being a homeless single mom strike us as a far more legitimate defense than being a spoilt brat.

But the latest in New York City's workaday traffic fatalities (there were 242 in 2015, according to the Mean Streets blog) is the case of middle-aged Stanley Marshall, who was riding his bike on Staten Island's Richmond Ave. when he was run down by a motorist who pulled out of a parking lot. The headline in the Daily News reads: "Man, 59, killed while riding bicycle by stoned driver on Staten Island." The motorist, Lisa Martini, admitted to police: "I was just pulling out from getting my food and I guess I hit something. I smoked a little bit of weed around 2:30."

But in the next paragraph down is a continuation of the quote: “I take buspirone for my anxiety problem and sometimes Xanax,” she added. Martini was swaying, and had bloodshot eyes, body tremors and poor coordination, the complaint said.

Now, pot, as we all know, can cause bloodshot eyes. But body tremors and poor coordination? Every toker knows that is not part of the cannabis high. However, RxList website informs us side effects of Xanax include "dizziness" and "poor balance or coordination." And buspirone? Expect "dizziness... nervousness, lightheadedness, drowsiness, blurred vision," according to RxList.

Martini is a 9-11 widow (her husband was an FDNY lieutenant killed in the Twin Towers collapse), so we're not here to give her a hard time over her substance use. But let's not allow this incident to become more fodder for anti-cannabis propaganda. However counterintuitive it may seem (for people who don't actually use cannabis), a 2011 study found a reduction in traffic fatalities in states that had legalized medical marijuana. The conjecture was folks were turning to legal cannabis instead of alcohol. The study's authors were quick to emphasize that their research doesn't "prove" that cannabis impairs driving less than alcohol. But anybody who has used both knows that is the case. And we'll bet the same can be said of pot as compared to Xanax and buspirone .

More to the point: It is the domination of the city's streets by toxin-belching death machines that is really responsible for traffic fatalities—and everyone accepts that as completely "normal." You've got to give New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio credit for his Vision Zero program that at least aspires to get the human roadkill down to nothing before he leaves office. But what is the critical issue here? That Lisa Martini was high on ‪‎cannabis‬? Or that she was driving an automobile? If anyone asks me, I say: ban cars‬, legalize pot!

From Global Ganja Report

In a charming convergence of tow of the most sinister trends on the planet—car culture and robotocracy—AP reported Feb. 29: "A self-driving car being tested by Google struck a public bus on a Silicon Valley street, a fender-bender that appears to be the first time one of the tech company's vehicles caused a crash during testing." Gee, we can hardly wait for self-driving cars to become ubiquitous....

From CBS New York, Feb. 28:

3 Dead, 2 Others Injured In 5 Separate Hit-And-Runs Across NYC
NEW YORK  — Police are searching for several drivers after five hit-and-runs were reported in four boroughs overnight.

Three people were killed and two others were injured over the course of several hours early Sunday.

A spokesperson from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office said the NYPD is "aggressively" investigating each case.

"Investigators are examining video footage from the area of each crash to identify those responsible to hold them accountable," said Wiley Norvell, with the Office of the Mayor.

From Lower Hudson Journal News, Feb. 27:

Oil spill leaks up to 600 gallons into Bronx River
YONKERS - As much as 600 gallons of oil drained into the Bronx River Saturday as hazmat crews scrambled to clean up a large oil spill.

"It's a major cleanup operation," said Yonkers Fire Department Chief of Operations Robert Capurso.

The truck, carrying 6,000 gallons of home-heating oil, was en route to Glendale Gardens, an apartment building at 125 Bronx River Road, around 8:30 a.m., Battalion Chief Timothy Fitzpatrick said. As the truck pulled into a driveway to make the delivery, oil began leaking out of the truck.

The truck's oil tank was divided into three sections, and the driver managed to contain the oil in two of them as the third section leaked.

Up to 2,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the roadway in front of the apartment building, Fitzpatrick said.

Up to 600 gallons of oil made it to a storm drain on the road and emptied into the Bronx River.

That's actually the encouraging title of a Feb. 29 opinion piece in the Washington Post by J H Crawford, author of Carfree Cities and Carfree Design Manual, and publisher of Carfree.com. The opening paragraphs:

We must first remember that all cities were car-free little more than a century ago. Not all cities responded to the advent of automobiles with the same enthusiasm as the cities of the United States. In fact, some cities never did adopt the car. Venice was unwilling to destroy itself in order to build streets wide enough for cars, and therefore has never had them except in a sliver near the mainland. The same situation exists in the Medina of Fez, Morocco, and several other North African cities. These districts are usually the most vibrant parts of their cities.

Cars were never necessary in cities, and in many respects they worked against the fundamental purpose of cities: to bring many people together in a space where social, cultural and economic synergies could develop. Because cars require so much space for movement and parking, they work against this objective — they cause cities to expand in order to provide the land cars need. Removing cars from cities would help to improve the quality of urban life.

At least such ideas are no longer completely taboo...

Talk about a license to kill. Gothamist on March 18 reports on the maddening case of Cindy Klumb, a Pratt Institute art instructor who was critically injured in a hit-and-run—and says cops let the assailant go after he flashed his badge. Klumb and her lawyer have yet to get the NYPD to turn over its footage from nearby surveillance cameras.

From AP, March 19:

NEW YORK  — Police say a woman was fatally struck by a taxi in Manhattan and the taxi kept going. The accident happened shortly after 3:30 a.m. Saturday on First Avenue near East 16th Street. Police say the woman was lying in the roadway when she was hit by a yellow cab. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was identified as 44-year-old Kenya Flores, of the Bronx. Police are seeking the taxi driver.

This just gets worse and worse. School-teacher Felix Coss, 61, was killed by police van while crossing a street in Williamsburg in July 2013. The officer who struck him, Paula Medrano, was never charged, and his family sued the city. Now Gothamist reports that the city is arguing that Coss "voluntarily...assumed the risk" of crossing the street—this despite the fact that he had the signal! Worse yet, witnesses say Medrano was talking on her cell phone when she ran down Coss. 

And Bill "Vision Zero" de Blasio is going along with this shit?

And worse still! Undercover police arrested and roughly treated a mailman who was doing his rounds in Crown Heights after they nearly sideswiped him in their car and he cursed them out for it. (Now This, March 25; Gothamist, March 23) OK, even assuming that cops are above the law and we are subject to arrest if we give 'em some lip over their lawless behavior... are we supposed to use our fucking ESP to determine who are the undercovers? And people wonder why we say ‪#‎FuckDaPolice‬...

So Allen Bullock, 19, who pleaded guilty to smashing the windshield of a police car during last April's Baltimore riots following the police slaying of Freddie Gray, is sentenced to 12 years—although all but six months is likely to be suspended. (CBS Baltimore, March 29) But former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship gets one year for responsibility in the Upper Big Branch coal-mine disaster that left 29 dead in West Virginia in 2010. After pleading not guilty, and arrogantly declaring in court: "I didn't break any laws." As a Lexington Herald Leader commentary notes, that's 12.5 days for each miner's life.

#BlackLivesMatter? Easy to see what matters in this world. Cars (especially police cars) and fossil fuels.

From the Cyclelicious blog:

Last week’s episode of the Freakonomics Podcast discussed the "perfect crime." Stephen Dubner examines the best way to kill somebody and get away with it.

His shocking discovery? Do it with your car. You're all so surprised, right?

Dubner’s podcast touches many of the themes so familiar to advocates of active transportation. Namely:

Homicide by car is very rarely punished as a crime.

American legal system makes vehicular manslaughter prosecution very difficult.

"It's just an accident."

Comparing accidental shootings...with accidental traffic deaths. Anything else is heavily prosecuted. Traffic "accidents" are ignored by the justice system.

The dehumanization of anybody who doesn’t drive a car. The only people who matter are people who drive autos...

According to police reports, it's the pedestrians' fault, because they’re doing something wrong. Get off the road!

We don’t really know who’s at fault because the only witness is the surviving driver. Responding officer hears only one side of the story...

Oh that poor, traumatized, innocent driver who was just minding her own business when *wham* that pedestrian came out of nowhere to ruin her day!

Is the death penalty really warranted if a pedestrian does something wrong?

Who are the roads for?

Et cetera. The problem is that Dubner (at least in the promos for the broadcast aired on WNYC) comes across as a sociopath boasting of how to commit the perfect murder and get away with it... Run someone over in a car. Now, he seems to be making a "point" I agree with... that a diver's license is a license to kill. But his whole attitude is like, Hey what fun! Let's mow down pedestrians! Aren't we bad boys!

And this when there is a wave of hit-and-run "accidents" (sic) going on in the city....

An NYPD cop was caught on video telling a motorist he pulled over in the Bronx that it’s Mayor de Blasio’s fault he’s getting a ticket. “Mayor de Blasio wants us to give out summonses Okay? Alright?” the cop tells the driver, who appears to be holding a ticket in his hand while the camera rolls. (NY Post, April 11)

From CityLab, April 6:

The number of America's youngest drivers just hit a record low, according to newly published data from the Federal Highway Administration. Roughly 8.5 million people ages 19 and younger had their licenses in 2014, and of those, just a little more than one million were 16 and younger—the lowest number since the 1960s.

Nationally, teen driving has been curving downwards for years, as automakers and transit advocates will inform you with respective consternation and glee. Why teens aren’t scrambling to the DMV as they did in decades past is a matter of debate. One explanation is the recession, which hit young people particularly hard... There may also be an attitude shift the air: Kids today may not place as much value on automobiles as previous generations did, and may be more open to other forms of transportation (including their parents' backseats, presumably).

From the Daily News, April 17:

Verizon lawyer accused of hitting protesters with Porsche
A Verizon Communications lawyer has been accused of hitting two of the company's striking workers with his Porsche.

The Communications Workers of America, who led roughly 40,000 East Coast employees in walking off the job Wednesday, said that a pair had been hit by the unidentified attorney in Gaithersburg, Md.

"That says it all, doesn't it?" the union said next to a photo they said showed police investigating the incident.

One of the workers was reportedly taken to the hospital.

From StreetsBlog, May 17:

NYPD and Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark have not charged the driver who struck and killed 3-year-old Mariam Dansoko in a crosswalk near Yankee Stadium Monday.

Mariam, her mother, and a 2-year-old sibling in a stroller were crossing E. 164th Street at Gerard Avenue north to south when a 21-year-old man hit Mariam with a 2014 Nissan while turning left from Gerard, which is northbound, onto E. 164th, according to NYPD and published reports. DNAinfo reported that Mariam was on her way to preschool when the crash occurred, at around 8 a.m.

“There’s no charges at this point,” an NYPD spokesperson told Streetsblog. True to NYPD protocol when a motorist kills a pedestrian and is not charged or ticketed, police shielded the driver’s identity.

License to kill.

From Michigan's WZZM, June 8:

COOPER TOWNSHIP, MICH. - Five bicyclists were killed and four others seriously injured when they were struck by a pickup truck Tuesday evening on a road in Cooper Township, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said.

In the half-hour before the bicyclists were struck, law enforcement in three jurisdictions received calls about a blue pickup truck driving erratically, Getting told reporters in a late-night news conference Tuesday night.

Fuck 'em. That's what they get for riding bicyles. Unpatriotic losers. If we don't use lots of oil every day, all those kids we sent to Iraq died in vain and the terrorists win.