Early yesterday morning, a car careened off an Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge ramp and into a Long Island City building, resulting in injuries for the driver and passenger. This was the second accident off the ramp in nine days—and the car hit the same store, a beauty salon. Business owners declared the recently-renovated ramp a "death trap" as cops arrested the driver for aggravated unlicensed driving.
Driver Alexander Palacio, 39, was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition (his arm was partly amputated). He has a history of speeding and a failure to pain fines, resulting in his license being suspended multiple times. His passenger, a 40-year-old woman, was taken to NY Presbyterian with head trauma. The Wall Street Journal has photo of Palacio's totaled Volkswagen in front of Villa de Beaute, as well as a photo of the Volkswagen damaged in the March 28 crash. In the earlier crash, the driver's arm was amputated and a pedestrian, who was on the sidewalk, was killed. Salon owner Akber Jiwani told the WSJ, "The first shock was not even complete, and then I got the second one... Everything inside the store was damaged from the first impact. I was not sure [about reopening], but now I’m sure that I’m not going to open."
The NY Times looks at the changes to the off-ramp, "Two off-ramps, running side by side, each deposit cars from the bridge onto Queens Plaza South, an east-west boulevard that runs parallel to the bridge. In the past, the street had three lanes to handle the load. In January, however, one of those lanes was blocked off by concrete barriers as part of a large-scale redesign run by the city’s Economic Development Corporation to make the area more hospitable to pedestrians. The project, which includes wider sidewalks, a bike path and a park beneath the bridge’s overpass, called for a wider median with planters to take the place of the lane." However, this has made the angle for merging onto Queens Plaza South "sharper."
A lawyer representing Jiwani and another store damaged by the crashes plans to sue the drivers and the city. Scott Agulnick told the Post, "Clearly, after that first accident, the powers that be should have realized that there was a fundamental problem with how the traffic is handled. The fact that there was a second accident confirms what everyone has been saying, which is that this intersection is something of a death trap." The DOT is investigating, but believes the accidents—which occurred around 4 a.m.—are due to speeding and will add speed limit signs and rumble strips.
