crashed<\/a> at Sherman Avenue and West 204th Street, sending both cars onto the sidewalk and into the front of a deli. The aftermath, which passersby captured on video, showed mangled cars and a pedestrian splayed out on the sidewalk in pain.<\/p>\nPolice said two people in the Corvette and a pedestrian were injured, and the Mercedes-Benz driver ran off.<\/p>\n
West Harlem resident Eric Torres, the Corvette driver who allegedly caused the crash, was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. The Manhattan district attorney\u2019s office said he was also arrested and charged last September for driving a stolen 2025 Acura TSX that had stolen New Jersey license plates inside, adding that he later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.<\/p>\n
Locals said they\u2019ve had enough of the racing, and are calling on the city to make changes to Inwood\u2019s streets to prevent speeding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s cars speeding through our streets, drivers doing donuts, racing, operating vehicles while under the influence, putting innocent families, pedestrians, and the entire community at risk,\u201d said Elizabeth Adames, whose brother Joel Adames was killed by a driver in 2022 while walking along Sherman Avenue.<\/p>\n
Joel Adames was with his friend David Fernandez around 4 a.m. when the driver sped through a red light and crashed into another car, which flew into Adames and Fernandez, killing them both.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth said she hears speeding cars down Sherman Avenue \u201call day, all night, every day, different cars, different people and nothing’s being done.\u201d<\/p>\n
“My kids see that and it scares them,\u201d she said. \u201cThey know what happened to my brother and it scares them. They have to run and they want to run inside the building.”<\/p>\n
Joes Adames was one of two people killed in 2022 by a speeding driver who blew through a red light in Inwood.<\/p>\n
Ramsey Khalifeh\/ Gothamist<\/p>\n
City data shows at least 27 people have been injured in car crashes on Sherman Avenue since 2021. Residents like Adames want more red light cameras, narrower lanes and speed bumps installed on the street.<\/p>\n
City transportation department officials said they gave the street a \u201croad diet\u201d in 2015, reducing the car lanes and replacing them with bike lanes and turning bays.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery New Yorker deserves to be safe on our streets and those who endanger themselves and others must be held accountable,\u201d DOT spokesperson Scott Gastel said in a statement. \u201cThrough Vision Zero efforts, traffic fatalities are at historic lows, and NYC DOT is reviewing the area for additional safety upgrades.\u201d<\/p>\n
But locals said it\u2019s not enough to stop the drag racing \u2014 and the evidence of the problem is laid bare through skid marks all over the street\u2019s crosswalks.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to do that and drive reckless? You got to be a man and stand up and be accountable when you mess up. \u2026 Even if you\u2019re young, you got to learn,\u201d said Angel Rodriguez, 50, who was standing at the corner of Sherman Avenue and Isham Street near a mural honoring Joel Adames, whom he grew up with.<\/p>\n
The neighborhood is connected to the Bronx by three bridges, making it easy for the speedsters to flee after a race.<\/p>\n
Linda Ng Boyle, vice dean for research at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, studies driver behavior and strategies for reducing dangerous crashes. She said the city knows how to redesign streets to deter the type of drag racing that\u2019s become endemic on Sherman Avenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing to kind of think about is whether or not we can redesign this roadway so that people cannot actually speed through,\u201d Boyle said. \u201cYou should absolutely have enforcement, but I don’t think it’s going to be as effective as if we just redesigned the roadway so that you cannot actually do some of the things that are being identified in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n
One simple way to reduce speeding on Sherman Avenue, she said, would be to make the road narrower so drivers will have less space to race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inwood is under siege by street racers who roar up and down the neighborhood\u2019s main drag, making residents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-333762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}