Pedestrian + Van + Canal Street = You Guessed It

I find it truly amazing in a city where you can be ticketed for feeding pigeons, jaywalking, riding a bike without a helmet, smoking within 100 feet of the entrance to a public building, walking down the street while reading, but it is perfectly fine to double park a large commercial vehicle on a crowded street and leave it running unattended in reverse and allow it to travel down the street, turn, go up a sidewalk and kill and injure innocent children.

I called and was notified by the DA's office that the Hayley Ng "accident" is still an active investigation so the petition is making a difference so please keep circulating it to your family and friends to keep this investigation alive.

wowthatsucks, the post is correct that this is the intersection of Canal and Centre, facing southbound (i.e. against traffic on Centre). From this street view view you can pick out the "We Buy Gold" neon signs in the second floor window of the building on the southeast corner, the red facade of the building on the southeast corner of the next intersection (Canal and Walker), and the municipal building further downtown (though in the picture attached to the article it looks much closer for some reason).

However, you're right about the left turn signal - the intersection of Canal and Centre is the mirror opposite of the one at Canal and Lafayette, with traffic turning left off Canal having a left turn arrow (that is often ignored by pedestrians) before crosstown traffic gets a green light. The driver of the van was turning left from Canal onto Centre and presumably didn't see the victim, who, from the direction s/he is facing, looks to have been crossing Centre from West to East (right to left in the picture), so the van was behind him/her and to the right.

At 10am on a weekday there is almost always a traffic agent directing traffic in this intersection and another in the intersection of Canal and Lafayette, but in my experience (I used to commute daily on the B51 bus which comes across Canal and turns left onto Lafayette) they are generally more concerned with moving cars through the intersections than with keeping an eye on crossing pedestrians. Of course, in this case, for all we know the traffic agent could've been blowing a whistle or shouting at the van driver or the pedestrian and simply been ignored by both, so it certainly seems premature to lay any blame at the traffic agent's feet.

@15

yeah man you can attribute any mistake someone makes to race

blacks are TOTALLY subhuman animals too, since racism is okay right?

also nice stereotyping/racial profiling. I'm sure whites have an equal/proportionate amount of traffic accidents; do you have some imagined 'reason' for casual bigotry or did you watch too much Rambo as a kid?

If anyone has ever rented a van or a truck from U-haul, then you will know the gear shifts are sometimes tricky. You shift all the way up thinking it's on park but it's really stuck between park and reverse. The slightest move can shift it to reverse. I was helping my friend move and he left it in what he thought was park; as we were about to step behind the van, it lurched backwards. It's hard to say my friend was criminally negligent.

This morning I was nearly hit by a van outside my apartment in Brooklyn. The driver was looking over into the window of a coffee shop on the corner while he turned toward me, completely oblivious to my presence until I started yelling at him to pay attention.

Drivers need to be held accountable for their actions. Not seeing a pedestrian in a crosswalk who had the right of way is negligence. Not putting the van in park and turning off the ignition when you're making a delivery is criminal negligence. Plain and simple.

Do I really need to say it? Do I? What demographic is in that area? Steriotypes are

Sometimes funny.... And true.

I feel deeply sorry for the families of the dead children. But criminality is determined not by the effects, but by the acts. A non-criminal act that results in deaths is nonetheless non-criminal, just as a criminal act that luckily results in no harm is nonetheless criminal. (Of course, once criminality is determined, the level of crime and related punishment may depend on the harm caused -- but horrible harms can result from purely non-criminal acts.)

I know nothing about this case -- maybe there's reason to believe it wasn't just an accident. But if so, that reason has to be something about what the man did -- it cannot simply be the (very true) fact that losing beautiful children is a tragedy.

You're right, you know nothing about the case, so maybe you should stop talking hypotheticals.

I know enough about this case to know that it looks like an accident -- a horrible, sad accident. If you have anything to point to that would suggest otherwise, I'm all ears.

You don't try to point to anything -- you just take an impotent little swipe at me. If that makes you feel better about all the horrible things in the world...hey, great, happy to contribute to your mental well-being.

I know enough about this case to know that it looks like an accident

Automobiles are moving, motorized, multi-ton machines that routinely kill people. Operaters of these vehicles who, due to their negligence or carelessness, kill or injure another person should be held accountable for their actions. Calling it an "accident" is an easy way for everyone to sweep these horrible stories under the rug, and to allow it to happen again.

It's definitely an accident -- the guy clearly had no intention for it to happen (unless you think this guy is the John Wayne Gacy of parking). But you want to ask about whether it's criminal, and that's a fine question -- let's ask it.

As noted, it's not intentional, so take off the table all the laws that require intent. What do we have left? Let's start with recklessness -- was this reckless, under the legal meaning of the term? Probably not -- that requires a willful disregard for others' safety, and there's no such willful act here.

So moving down the list, is it criminally negligent? Again, probably not -- that requires a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. Note, by the way, that it's not just a regular deviation from the reasonable standard of care -- it's not just "what would I have done" -- but rather a GROSS deviation, a significant departure from the actions that a reasonable person would take.

It would be negligent (reckless, actually) to intentionally jump out of a car that's in gear. But is there evidence that he intentionally did so? No -- the evidence suggests that he thought it was in park. So is thinking your car is in park, and being wrong, criminally negligent? Is it a gross deviation from a reasonable standard of care?

The answer the DA came to was no -- and while reasonable minds can certainly disagree, that seems entirely supportable to me.

What you're asking for instead is a theory of strict liability. I could support that in a civil case -- this guy should compensate the victims for the harm caused by actions he set in motion. But in a criminal case it's a harsh standard not supported by the law.

So, yeah, an accident.

"The answer the DA came to was no"

Exactly, and well said for the whole post. Look, this would be exactly the kind of case that many DAs, who have to run for re-election, would love to prosecute for PR reasons. Innocent kids killed in the street... but the law simply doesn't support the idea. We actually should be applauding him for not grandstanding by wasting public money pursuing a case that can't be won.

In a civil case, on the other hand, the guy probably doesn't have a prayer.

How is exiting a moving vehicle (if it was in gear then it was moving unless he was exiting the vehicle with his foot on the brake and twisted his leg in a funny way to get out of the vehicle) not a gross deviation from actions a reasonable person would take?

No one is saying that he intentionally killed those children, but actions have consequences in life and being so careless as to leave the van in reverse seems to be a bit extreme.

My understanding (from the reports of the surveillance video) is that it was not moving until after he was out of the van -- reports say that it then "lurched" backwards. (If he was hopping out quickly to make a delivery, it's not surprising that he was out before the van started rolling.) I'd be interested in seeing the video, but haven't found it on the web.

By the way, reports also suggest that the "linkage was tight," such that the gearshift indicator might have seemed like it was in park, while the van was actually in reverse (or might even have popped from one to the other). So the actions you're talking about are perhaps the actions of an unnamed Ford worker somewhere.

That looks like the corner of Canal & Lafayette. There's a left turn signal onto Lafayette from Canal. Problem is 99% of pedestrians ignore the Don't Walk signs and just assume it's clear to cross the street when the light on Lafayette is red.

meant to replto my own post above, I hate this new posting system.

Of course, its still the drivers responsibility to yield for pedestrians though.

Well, not quite. New York vehicle & traffic law states that if auto traffic has the light and pedestrian traffic has a don't walk signal, it's the pedestrian's responsibility to yield to auto traffic. Therefore, if the pedestrian proceeds against a don't walk signal and is struck, it is the pedestrian's fault.

Naturally, the situation is reversed when the pedestrian has the walk signal and auto traffic has either a red light or a green light (i.e. turning auto traffic across the crosswalk).

Some assume that pedestrians always have the right of way regardless of circumstances, but this is not the case in New York.

"§ 1146. Drivers to exercise due care. Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law to the contrary, every driver of a vehicle shall exercise due care to avoid colliding with any bicyclist, pedestrian or domestic animal upon any roadway and shall give warning by sounding the horn when necessary."

Canal street is always a sh!t show.

Traffic cops make it WORSE!

Incompetence can be dangerous...

The Manhattan DA can go drop dead.

Well he is about 105 and has been in office for longer than Law & Order has been on. Him dropping dead is probably the only way he'll get out of office.

Are you sure? Law And Order premiered on CBS in 1901 as "The Law And Order Cyclorama".

"And there was a traffic agent on the scene when it happened!"

That's probably why the pedestrian got hit!

I drive on the streets daily and can say unequivocally that 9 out of 10 traffic agents are useless and actually contribute to the problem. The 9 out of the 10 I'm referring to simply do not do their jobs and just stand idly by letting cars and pedestrians to fend for themselves (usually resulting in cars winning and in some cases people dying). I'm always shocked at how these useless agents are allowed to continue working - aren't there quality control supervisor types to peek in and make sure they're acutally working? I guess I'm naive to think the city would use such a monitoring technique to ensure citizen safety.

Next time you spot a traffic agent, take a moment to examine what they're doing. You'll see exactly what I mean.

Like just an hour ago when I was riding my bike crossing Brooklyn Bridge traffic, with the light, and had the traffic agent wave traffic through the red light and onto the bridge as I was in the middle of the intersection. Traffic agents do it all the time at that spot.

No kidding. The ones on 42nd Street are just as bad -- without them, traffic stops when the light turns red. With them, they'll keep the cars coming after the light changes - which is fine, except that 50% of the time the cars hesitate before coming through the red light. When the cars hesitate, predictably pedestrians start to walk across. And then...yep, here come cars through the pedestrians, waved through by the cops.

If you're used to it, you watch the cop rather than the light and don't walk until he or she stops trying to coax cars through the intersection. But judging from what I've seen, a fairly large number of people are suprised to find themselves walking through a crosswalk on a walk signal and suddenly have traffic coming at them.

Yep this is exactly what I see at Columbus Circle. Waving cars through a red light while throngs of pedestrians wait. There are close calls pretty regularly. In situations like that, traffic cops would be a lot better off manipulating the light timing manually so there is no confusion. The only time traffic cops help by standing in the intersection is in block-the-box type situations. And even then 9 times out of 10 they aren't actually doing their job.

how many more auto-murders is this city going to allow?

yay. online petitions! it'll totally work!

and in two months, we can see online petitions on law and order.

I thought the same thing. What's next? On-line petitions on every news story that gets reported on Gothamist? Looks like Gothamist crossed the line between journalism and advocacy.

You could have filled out the online petition in the time it took for you to post your comment here.

I signed it! Woo!

what's your point? i'll get 100x more people actually listening to me if i post here than an online petition.

you could have looked up porn in the time it took you to respond to my post. look who's wasting his time now.