BICYCLIST PLOWS INTO PEDESTRIAN IN MANHATTAN'S CENTRAL PARK, AND KEEP GOING
From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Queens Accident Attorney)
If you've ever walked through New York City's Central Park on a weekend, you know that a pedestrian risks serious injury just crossing the road.
During peak recreational times, the park is closed to motor vehicles, which removes a lot of the potential danger. No cars, trucks or buses whizzing by makes for a more bucolic amble through the park.
There are hordes of runners. Not too bad, because they can step around you. Usually, the runners pay good attention to where they're going.
Dog walkers don't present a particular hazard, unless they can't control their dog. Most can and do. Bad dogs tend to have muzzles, and tend to stay muzzled by responsible pet owners.
Roller bladers can be a little scary, but they tend to have good maneuverability on skates. But The bladers that wear no helmets or protective gear at all scare me a little, because I sense in them a disregard for safety and, perhaps, for accident avoidance.
Bicycle rides, however, make walking in the park quite precarious. Many ride like they're training to race in the Tour de France. Can the next Lance Armstrong be bearing down on your strolling-around self in Central Park? They can move as fast as cars. Close calls whiz by so fast, they probably can't even hear the curse words you shout at their backs.
On Saturday, August 7, 2010, at 10:30 AM, a bicyclist in full racing gear tearing through Central Park in a pack of other cyclists slammed into a 73-year-old grandmother Ruth Shack near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was crossing Manhattan's East 84th Street with two friends and was 20 yards from the crosswalk when she was clobbered.
Shack, a public school teacher from Rockland County, was taken to St. Luke's Hospital with broken ribs, two damaged neck vertebrae and facial cuts. An avid ice skater and tennis player, she had driven from Rockland County to see her friends and visit the park. Likely she would have been hurt worse were she not in such good physical condition.
Another cyclist, an off-duty emergency medical technician, helped Shack into an ambulance while the rider that struck her took off.
Shack declined to file a police report.
