On Sunday, a minivan carrying a family of seven flew off the Bronx River Expressway and fell 60 feet, killing four adults and three children. Critics noted that there have been many accidents at that stretch of the BRE, and the AAA said the guardrails were inadequate. Yesterday, crews started to make improvements to the dangerous road.
The victims were driver Maria Gonzalez, 45; her 10-year-old daughter Jocelyn; her elderly parents, Jacob Nunez, 85, and Ana Julia Martinez, 81; and her sister Maria Nunez, 39, and her sister's daughter, Niely Rosario, 7, and Marly Rosario, 3, all died. Police say that Gonzalez was driving around 70 mph, above the speed limit, when she apparently lost control of the car and hit a median. When she tried to correct the vehicle by turning right, the minivan careened across the lanes, hit a curb and catapulted off.
The curb that Gonzalez's car hit was two-feet high, and the minivan cleared the four-foot high guardrail. The AAA's Rover Sinclar said, "It is very strange that there is a curb there. You don't put curbs on high-speed roadways because they can serve as launching pads, which appears to be what happened here. A big Honda Pilot flew over a 4-foot guardrail."
Among the fixes being made are painting lines, and making room for bigger barriers; the speed limit may be reduced as well. Gonzalez's grieving husband said of the improvements, "It feels good that they are doing something about it so this doesn't happen to some other family."
