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Bus Attacked By Taxi On Central Park West!
By
Garth Johnston
Published May 23, 2011
Modified May 23, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published May 23, 2011
Modified May 23, 2011
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[Update Below] Around 3:40 p.m. a taxi with three passengers in it drove directly into the back side of a city bus as it drove down Central Park West at 86th Street. Emergency services were there in minutes and the FDNY tells us that three patients, all from the taxi, have been taken to St. Luke's hospital where they are listed as being in serious condition.
And what of the bus—which from the photos clearly won this round of machine versus machine—and its passengers? It appears that it will be fine (those things are like tanks!) but we've reached out to the MTA for comment just in case.
What we really want to know, though, is how in the world that taxi even managed to hit the bus like that. Yes there is a transverse road there (as opposed to a non-transverse road), but the taxi doesn't even seem to be close to it! As our man on the street put it from the scene: "No one can figure out how the cab struck the bus from that angle coming from the sidewalk."
Update: A reader writes in with an eyewitness account of the accident, which apparently was even crazier than the photos suggest:
The taxi pictured was traveling northbound on CPW when it hit another taxi, veered left (going quite fast) and jumped the curb at 86 & the park, on the north side of the transverse road. It smashed into the stone wall along the park, bounced off and took a hard left, smashing into the bus. A split second before the taxi hit the bus a young woman, wearing all pink, jumped off the sidewalk and landed behind the bus narrowly missing being crushed. There were many people on the corner at that moment, but incredibly it appears no one outside of the taxi was hit. I left after the police arrived and don't know what happened beyond that.
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