Eyes on the Street: Driver Goes Wheels-Up Outside Inwood School

Via Shannon Park (@GothamGoddess), this was the scene on Park Terrace West at Isham Street in Inwood this morning. Hard to tell how the driver of the SUV managed to mount a parked livery cab, but we do know a few things.

Park Terrace West is not a wide, speed-inducing roadway. It’s northbound-only with parking on both sides, and is flanked by a park and apartment buildings. This block of the street is curvy and, if you’re driving it, goes uphill. Not to say that drivers don’t speed through regularly — they do, of course — but I can only imagine what you’d have to do to catch air at this spot, just a few yards beyond the Isham intersection.

We also know that the building in the background, to the right, is a school. On nice days like today, Isham serves as its playground. While that segment of the street, directly in front of the school, is cordoned by NYPD sawhorses on weekdays, Isham is also a thoroughfare for kids on field trips to Inwood Hill Park, who cross where this driver apparently barreled through. Out of frame to the immediate left: a daycare center.

Isham Street constitutes the southern border of the proposed Inwood 20 mph zone. Would the zone prevent people from getting hurt or killed at the hands of drivers like this one?