Traffic Justice

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance will file no criminal charges against the cab driver who killed 9-year-old Cooper Stock and injured his father in an Upper West Side crosswalk in January.

In a rare case of an apparently sober motorist facing serious penalties for a fatal crash, an unlicensed hit-and-run driver who killed one Brooklyn pedestrian and seriously injured another pled guilty to manslaughter this week.

A motorist who authorities say had a history of driving offenses and was driving without a license when he fatally struck a Brooklyn senior and fled the scene two years ago is on trial this week.

The office of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson won't talk about reported developments in the case of a defendant who avoided a homicide charge after killing a pedestrian while driving drunk.

Last June, according to prosecutors, 33-year-old Shaun Martin, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, got behind the wheel of a Nissan Altima and began speeding down Second Avenue in the East Village. At 4th Street, he veered across three lanes of traffic, jumped the curb and slammed into four people, including florist Mohammed Akkas Ali, who came out of a coma but later died, reportedly after removing his breathing tube.

A hit-and-run motorist who killed a Bronx pedestrian in a 2013 crash pled guilty last week to leaving the scene, but could be sentenced to as little as probation.

In a case the Ottawa Citizen called "astonishing evidence of the raw appeal of... victimhood," a woman who struck and killed a teenage boy riding his bike outside of Toronto is suing the boy's family for $1.35 million.

A convicted drunk driver was sentenced this week to probation, a nominal fine, and a six-month license suspension for killing a Brooklyn pedestrian.

As seasoned observers of the department's dealings with bicyclists know, NYPD has long enjoyed taking our bikes. Following the 2004 Republican National Convention, NYPD clipped locks and took bikes of persons suspected of associating with Critical Mass, resulting in a successful federal lawsuit that enjoined the practice as a constitutional violation. During a 2010 visit to New York by President Obama, NYPD without notice confiscated bikes wholesale along the president's route, failing to tag the bikes and making it extremely difficult for their owners to reclaim them. Now, NYPD has taken things to the next level by shuttering its bike pound for a year and a half, and refusing to allow owners to claim their bicycles indefinitely.