NYPD examine the scene in Central Park where a pedestrian was struck by cyclist Jason Marshall, 31 on Thursday afternoon. Jill Tarlov, 59, suffered severe head trauma after being struck and hitting the ground as she was walking across a crosswalk in the park on the west Drive near W. 63 St. around 4:30 p.m. (Photo: David McGlynn)
Manhattan
The wife of a CBS executive suffered a critical head injury when she got slammed by a cyclist in Central Park on Thursday afternoon, cops said, according to the New York Post.
Jill Tarlov, 59, who lives in Fairfield, Conn., was in a crosswalk near 63rd Street when cyclist Jason Marshall, 31, came barreling along West Drive and yelled for her to get out of his way, law-enforcement sources said.
Tarlov, whose husband Michael Wittman is a senior vice president at CBS, was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she was declared brain dead, sources said.
Marshall, an accomplished baritone saxophone player, was riding on a $4,000 Jamis Eclipse racing bike when he spotted the woman in the crosswalk at an intersection controlled by a traffic light, sources said.
“He was riding in the car lane and yelling: ‘Get out of the way! Get out of the way!’” one source said.
It was unclear who had the light, but Marshall — who remained at the scene — “admits to being in the wrong lane,” the source added.
A family member said that Marshall was taken to the hospital.
Cops were talking to the Manhattan DA’s Office about possible charges.
Law-enforcement sources said Marshall was among a number of athletic cyclists who routinely ride in the car lanes so they can go faster through the park.
“These guys think that they have entitlement and they don’t ride in the bike lanes,” one source said.
Witness Phillip Fenton, 21, who’s visiting New York on a geography field trip from the UK’s University of Exeter, said Marshall was “speeding,” adding: “It didn’t look like he tried to stop.”
“He was yelling for her to get out of the way, but I don’t think she heard him and then they just collided,” Fenton said.
Fenton’s pal Tom Longman said Marshall was hunched over the brakeless “aerobars” attached to the handlebars of his high-performance, yellow-and-black ride.
“He couldn’t break because he was leaning down,” Longman said. “She went down pretty hard. The right side of her face looked very bad. There was blood all over her.”
Read More:
New York Post - September 18, 2014 - By Larry Celona, Erin Calabrese, Kirstan Conley and Bruce Golding
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The cyclist was not in the wrong lane. The West Drive at 4:30 PM is car-free, so at that point all of the non-pedestrian lanes are for bikes and blades. Even if this weren't during car-free hours on that stretch of the drive, there are reasons that a cyclist might merge into the auto lane for a bit -- preparing to use one of the drive's exit ramps, for example -- though that wouldn't typically apply at West 63rd.
ReplyDeleteIt is likely that the cyclist was speeding only slightly or not at all, btw. Eyewitnesses to cycling crashes seem to think that a cyclist going at anything faster than beach-cruiser speed is somehow "speeding", but this is unwarranted. The speed limit is 25 mph, and the road from 72nd to 63rd is only slightly downhill.
So what this really comes down to in terms of legal culpability is the status of the traffic light.
In terms of moral culpability, though, the cyclist is almost certainly in the wrong, regardless of the status of the light. A cyclist in the park -- on a gorgeous fall afternoon, no less -- needs to expect that people will encroach on the cycling space, ride heads-up, anticipate who might present a hazard, and ride at a speed where if something unexpected, they have a better option to avoid a collision than shouting "out of the way, out of the way! "