Private Trash Hauler Critically Injures Woman at Essex and Delancey

A private sanitation truck driver hit a pedestrian at the intersection of Essex and Delancey Streets yesterday afternoon, dragging her under the truck. She was transported to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition with severe trauma to her legs, according to the NYPD.

The NYPD press office reported that both the woman and the truck driver were headed eastbound on Delancey at the time of the crash and that the woman was run over by the truck’s rear wheels. The police do not suspect any criminality on the part of the driver, who remained at the scene.

The intersection of Essex and Delancey is one of the most dangerous in New York City. According to Transportation Alternatives, there were 119 crashes injuring pedestrians or cyclists between 1998 and 2008, more than any other intersection on Manhattan’s entire East Side. A pedestrian was killed in a traffic crash at the intersection last April.

This is only the most recent in a series of serious crashes involving private garbage trucks. A private sanitation truck driver killed a pedestrian this March at Broadway and Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, and as Charles Komanoff wrote last summer, these trucks have posed a consistent and long-standing threat to pedestrians and cyclists.