Car Crash in Harlem Kills Pedestrian, Hospitalizes Five Others

One person is dead and at least five others have been hurt after a pick-up truck and livery cab collided at 145th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem this afternoon. After impact, the truck driver jumped a curb and careened into an elderly woman and the man she was pushing in a wheelchair, according to a report on DNAinfo. The woman did not survive:

The 89-year-old woman, whose name was not immediately released, was rushed to Harlem Hospital where she was pronounced dead. The other victims were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital with injuries that were not considered life threatening.

The accident unfolded as a silver Lincoln Town Car headed north on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. tried to make a left turn onto W. 145th Street. The Toyota pickup going south on Adam Clayton Powell struck the sedan and spun out of control, cops said.

One witness told DNAinfo that the two pedestrians were “knocked right out of their shoes,” and another said the intersection is a constant source of anxiety: “It makes me nervous. Every day there’s an accident here. The mayor has to do something about it.”

Both streets are wide and dangerous: 145th has four travel lanes and ACP Boulevard has six, so the livery driver was apparently trying to find a gap to turn left across three lanes of moving traffic. Between 1995 and 2005, 65 pedestrians were injured and one killed at this intersection, according to CrashStat. A buffered bike lane was proposed for ACP Boulevard in 2009, but the proposal went nowhere after Manhattan Community Board 10 overturned its own transportation committee and voted against it.

“This horrifying crash underscores the deadly conditions prevailing on New York’s streets,” said Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White. “Over 70,000 New Yorkers are injured by cars every year and hundreds more are killed. More people are actually killed by traffic in this city than are murdered by guns. It’s time to put pedestrians first and bring those numbers down to zero.”