González-Rojas hit by car, breaks arm

Source: Queens Chronicle

Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas (D-East Elmhurst) was hit by a car near her home in Jackson Heights last Thursday night, leaving her with bruises across her face and a broken arm, which may need to be surgically repaired.

González-Rojas was walking west on 35th Avenue last Thursday night on her way to meet a friend, she told the Chronicle, when she crossed 78th Street in the crosswalk, with the light. Suddenly, a Honda sedan making a left turn from 35th Avenue onto 78th Street struck her, knocking her to the ground. The lawmaker landed on her left side — she thinks she tried to brace her fall with her now-broken left arm — scraping up her face.

The driver, a 27-year-old man, the NYPD press office said, remained on the scene, while a neighbor, who had called 911, brought González-Rojas ice and a heating pad until an ambulance arrived to take her to NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst.

“It’s destabilizing — you feel very shaken up and the adrenaline’s running. I just wanted to get out of the street,” González-Rojas said. Though she said she was in a lot of pain, she added, “I’m in a place where I’m just grateful that it wasn’t worse, and it wasn’t a child.”

But the lawmaker, who has made traffic safety a cornerstone of her campaigns, said the incident is a prime example of how the Department of Transportation could use daylighting — removing parking spaces just before crosswalks to make pedestrians and oncoming traffic more visible — to make a difference. (Though according to Google Maps, the southeast corner of 35th Avenue and 78th Street is a bus stop, González-Rojas said a car was parked there at the time.)

“I think the driver was being perhaps reckless and careless, but it’s a dark corner with a car parked on the corner,” she said. “I believe if we blocked that whole corner for daylighting ... perhaps that could have helped me.”

In addition to noting that the driver, who police say was issued a summons for failure to yield to a pedestrian, may not have seen her because of the parked car, González-Rojas learned from the community member who came to her aid just how treacherous the site is, given how dark it is. “She said she’d lived there for 25 years, and has seen a lot of [crashes]. She said it’s a dangerous intersection,” the lawmaker said.

The timing is almost uncanny — hardly six weeks ago, González-Rojas and several of her colleagues released a blueprint for improved traffic safety in Western Queens, which, among other things, calls for universal daylighting. “[Traffic safety] has always been a top priority, it’s just now, there’s just a very deep, personal connection,” she said.