Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Jersey City Hit-&-Run Driver Caught on Video!

NJ.com has traffic cam video of a hit-&-run driver running a red light and hitting a pedestrian crossing at a crosswalk with the walk signal.

Hit-run driver injures Jersey City man



The crash happens right at 1 min into the video, at the bottom of the screen. The pedestrian is wearing dark clothing. However this crash happened at 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, June 13th. If you look closely the man starts to cross about 1/2 second after he gets the "Walk" signal. All of a sudden this black pickup truck slams into the poor fellow. The crash happened at the corner of Marin Blvd and 6th Street in Jersey City. Another newspaper reports that the police estimating the driver's speed at 35 to 40 mph in a 25 zone.

The victim is 51-year-old Ricardo Torres who was listed in critical condition at Jersey City Medical Center according to the AP report.

The Hudson County Prosecutor should throw the book at this guy!

Oh yeah. One more very important thing. This is a good (bad) example of roadway design standards originally developed for freeways causing havoc on city streets with a large number of pedestrians. A quick look at the Google Maps shows a large residential neighborhood just to the west of this intersection with the Newport Center Mall and the waterfront just to the east. The video itself shows the constant pedestrian traffic at this site. So with engineering designs that allow drivers to greatly exceed the speed limit is it no surprise that drivers do?


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1 comment:

teacher.steve.campbell said...

Jeez this is sad - I heard about this a while ago but I didn't know about this video! I'm moving to JC from Philly, where we have the same damn problems of car drivers literally mowing pedestrians and bicyclists. I'll be sure to be extra careful walking around my new city!

Thanks for posting, and I look forward to reading more great articles!