If NYC Fixed This Intersection, Why Do People Keep Dying There?

A small crowd gathered last week at the Myrtle-Wyckoff intersection in Ridgewood, Queens, trying to puzzle out how yet another pedestrian could have died there. As many neighborhood people could tell you, it was the third death in five years at the same spot.

Among the agitated was a dazed and grieving Lillian Perez, the wife of the victim, Edgar Torres. "I want to know exactly where he got hit," she said, her voice quavering. "I want to see the area. I just went to the hospital. He's at the morgue. He's gone."

The police say Edgar Torres, 60, walked into the intersection a little after 5 a.m. He was on his way to an early morning dialysis appointment for his diabetes.

Bystander Jose Velez was headed to work at the nearby Chimy Mundo Taco Shop. He later stood on a curb and pointed to a spot in the middle of Myrtle Avenue before describing what happened next. "He was in the crosswalk," Velez said of Torres. "He had the right of way. He was already through there, that's when the bus came out of nowhere — boom! Hit him and just kept on going."

Not As Safe You Might Think

It turns out that being in the crosswalk can be a very dangerous place. WNYC has analyzed the last four years of traffic crash data in New York and found that the most common location for pedestrians to die is in a crosswalk, with the light. That's when turning vehicles are supposed to yield. When they don't, it can be deadly. 

The police say the rear wheels of a turning Q58 bus caught Torres and dragged him under. Velez said a cab driver had to chase down the bus and tell the driver to stop because he'd struck someone.

After seeing the crash, Velez rushed over to where Torres lay on the asphalt. "I could tell it was bad," Velez recalled. "I could tell by the way he was laying that he was already dead. He didn't move at all. All you could see is blood coming out through his nose and his mouth."

Paramedics removed the body before sunrise.

A Tragic Precedent

Edgar Torres died in hauntingly similar fashion to 23-year-old Ella Bandes. In January 2013, Bandes was crossing a street at the same intersection and was struck and killed by a bus. Her bus had finished with its route and was heading to a nearby depot, making an unpredictable turn that is not on any mapped route. Since then, the MTA has banned such turns at the Myrtle-Wyckoff intersection.

In the wake of Bandes' death, the city DOT gave the intersection a safety makeover. That included banning some vehicular turns — but not for buses — and extending some corners in order to cut crossing distances down by several feet.

Even so, the area remains rife with conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians. Five roads and six bus lines converge there, and the elevated tracks of the M Train loom over everything, casting shadows and unleashing a periodic cacophony.

"It’s very complicated," said DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg when asked about the recent death at the trouble-plagued spot. "No question when you have five roadways coming together — some places in the city, six — that makes tremendous challenges in terms of making geography, traffic flow and pedestrian movements right, getting them right, getting them safe." 

Trottenberg said she was sorry about the death of Edgar Torres, and that her department would re-examine the ways that vehicles and people interact at the Myrtle-Wyckoff intersection. "We're going to come back again with the MTA, take a look at how the roads are operating, how the bus routes are operating and make adjustments if we need to," she said.

Too Late

If adjustments are made, they'll come too late for Edgar Torres' 21-year-old daughter, Lilliana. "It's hard because he was only 60 years old," she said of her father, raising her voice to be heard above the tumult of traffic and a train screeching overhead. "He still had a life to live. He's a strong man. He fought through a lot. And for the bus to keep going like he just ran over a piece of trash ... it's just not right for me."

As she spoke, a man holding a bouquet of white flowers stood silently by. He seemed to want to lay them on the spot where Edgar Torres died in the crosswalk. But if he did, they'd be run over by a bus.

WNYC is profiling all the victims of traffic crashes in 2014.  If you know someone who died this year and would like to share their story, please email us at transponation@gmail.com or call 347-352-5686.

With reporting from Kat Aaron