How Do We Protect New York City’s Pedestrians?

When a car hit John Longo as he crossed Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in December 2013, he was tossed skyward, high and far enough that he had time to contemplate his flight. “I remember thinking, I’ve been in the air too long,” says Longo, whose 230-­pound, 47-­year-­old body landed 20 feet from where it started. He does not remember hitting the asphalt (he landed on his head), but he recalls stumbling to a slender median dividing Atlantic and saying out loud, to no one in particular, “Please let me live, please let me live.” He was bleeding from the back of his head, but he felt little pain, only a numbness in his arm, which was the first clue, paramedics eventually told him, that he probably had spinal damage. 

 For years, Longo had crossed Atlantic at that spot as many as six times a day — it was the fastest way to get from Clinton Hill, where he lives, to Prospect Heights, where he owns a restaurant called Dean Street. A former high-­school linebacker and an entrepreneur, Longo was not a timid man. But he had always been apprehensive about the intersection, a sprawling space where three avenues meet at awkward angles: Atlantic, Washington and Underhill, which he was walking along the evening he was hit. A walk signal gave Longo 32 seconds to cross six lanes of traffic on Atlantic (three running east, three running west), which never felt to him, or just about anyone else who walks there, like enough time. Even still, when he tells the story of the accident, which happened on a rainy night, he partly blames himself for a lapse in his usual vigilance. He says he had reached the median, which is halfway across, “but I wasn’t looking over my right shoulder, and I stepped off.” Longo had the walk signal and the legal right of way, but that was no consolation when, a moment after he stepped into the street, a Lexus making a quick left from Washington Avenue slammed into him. At the hospital, he learned that he had broken three vertebrae in his neck. Nearly a year and a half later, he is almost fully recovered, with the exception of his left arm, which remains numb.

Read the rest of the story at the New York Times.