A scooter rider is in serious condition after a crash on Church street. Their helmet and blood is in the roadway, the vehicle involved has PA plates and multiple school-zone speeding tickets pic.twitter.com/1vHZ8GPjeh
Streetsblog reports that an e-scooter rider heading north in the bike path on Church Street collided with a car and was critically injured yesterday morning around 10:45 a.m., as the driver made a left turn from Church onto Thomas.
The NYPD’s preliminary investigation determined that “a 43-year-old male operating a 2010 Volkswagen Jetta was travelling northbound on Church Street, making a left turn into westbound Thomas Street. Concurrently, a 41-year-old male operating a Kaabo Mantis e-scooter (standing) was also travelling northbound on Church Street in a marked bicycle lane.
“As the Jetta was completing the left turn, the e-scooter operator braked and lost control of the scooter. As a result, the e-scooter operator was ejected over the handlebars of the scooter and collided head first into the driver side rear wheel of the Jetta. EMS responded and removed the e-scooter operator to NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue in critical condition with severe head trauma. The operator of the Jetta remained on scene and did not sustain any injuries.”
The NYPD’s Highway Collision Investigation Squad is investigating the collision.
An officer at the scene told Streetsblog that he blamed the accident partly on the curbside structure just down the block, since it hinders views of the bike lane, but the driver also had dozens of speeding tickets on his record.
According to the company’s website, that brand of e-scooter can hit a top speed of 25 mph.
I regularly make a left turn onto Reade from Church and I think it’s probably the most dangerous thing I do now that they moved the bike lane to the west side. The bulb out that was built when the bike lane was built seems to put the part of the bike lane near Chambers into a partial blind spot but the speed that electric bikes and scooters are going allows them to move from there to near the Reade corner in the same amount of time it takes to check that no pedestrians have suddenly started to cross from the north.
I’d avoid it entirely but if you need to get to Reade between Hudson and Greenwich from West St, it’s either that corner or the alignment hell of the “cobblestones” on Varick below Canal or Greenwich below Vestry.
This is irresponsible journalism in which you are trying to blame the victim, in this case the injured scooter operator. Why do you end the article with the top speed of the scooter? How is that germane? What’s the top speed of the car? Why is that not listed? Because you’re trying to deflect blame from the driver for some reason. City streets have a 25mph limit so I’m not sure the point besides taking a car-centric viewpoint here.
How is the car driver to blame? The scooter operator lost control of his own vehicle (perhaps he did not have antilock brakes) and his body crashed into the side of the car. He did not “get hit” by the car.
Car is supposed to yield to the bike lane just like a crosswalk.
this is hardly blaming the victim. it’s reporting all the details.
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