A 20-year-old scooter rider is recovering from a serious head injury after losing control of his scooter along East Fordham Road in the Belmont section of the borough last month.

 

Officers from the 48^th Precinct responded to East Fordham Road and Belmont Avenue after a 911 call received at 9:28 a.m. on Friday, October 13.

 

A police spokesperson told Norwood News, “Upon arrival, officers observed a 20-year-old male, unconscious and unresponsive with trauma about the head. EMS responded to the location and transported the male aided to NYC Health and Hospital’s Elmhurst Hospital in Queens where the victim was said to be in critical condition.”

 

According to the spokesperson, the victim was riding a gas-powered black 2023 Jia Scooter and was headed eastbound on Fordham Road at Belmont Avenue in the outer traffic lane when he lost control of the vehicle and collided with the curb, at the point where Fordham Road goes under the Southern Boulevard overpass. As vehicles exit the underpass, they enter Pelham Parkway.

“There is no criminality suspected at this time,” the spokesperson concluded, adding that the investigation remained ongoing.

 

Having passing the accident scene, “Jasania,” a resident of East 153rd Street in The Bronx, recalled how she and her daughter were nearly struck a day earlier by a turning scooter rider as they stood at a crosswalk. Jasania said of scooter riders, “They don’t care; they drive on the sidewalk the wrong way. They don’t care.”

The NYPD had previously reported on the death of moped rider, Christopher Vatran, 27, of Wallace Avenue which occurred on Sunday, Sept. 17. Police said Vatran was riding a 2023 Jiaju gas-powered moped when he struck a concrete barrier on the south side of Southern Boulevard as it approached East Fordham Road.

 

The Oct. 13 crash occurred a week after NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) work crews spent most of the week shutting down bus lanes to repaint them orange, creating heavier than usual traffic along the already busy East Fordham Road.

Norwood News asked DOT spokesperson Mona Bruno for comment about a proposal by DOT earlier this year to close Fordham Road to general vehicular traffic and only allow buses [and maybe emergency vehicles], as well as a separate proposal to paint the bus lanes at night when there was less traffic. We did not receive a response to those questions.

 

Bruno told Norwood News, “Thousands of Bronxites depend on [the] bus service on Fordham Road each day, and we are taking immediate steps to speed up the service for riders. In response to feedback from community leaders, we repainted curbside bus lanes and continued automated bus lane enforcement.”

As the NYPD steps up that enforcement, adding additional cameras to catch drivers of vehicles illegally traveling in the bus lanes, Bruno said that in the summer of 2024, DOT will review the results, and will “evaluate whether additional treatments are necessary.”

 

On Wednesday, Oct. 8, Rafael Moure, the district manager of Bronx Community Board 6, said, “It was announced that it [DOT] was moving forward with one of those three proposals, but didn’t at any point in time kind of vet those proposals with the community.”

According to DOT, approximately 85,000 commuters use the buses along East Fordham Road daily, and according to the agency, 83 people have been killed in accidents which occurred on the road between the Major Deegan Expressway and Boston Road between 2014 and 2018.

 

Norwood News also reached out to the Fordham Road Business Improvement District (BID), who hosted their 18th Annual Fordham Road Fair on, Saturday, Oct. 28, as reported, for comment. We did not receive an immediate response.

 

Read our recent story on the implementation of DOT’s East Gun Hill Road bus redesign launch here, as well as feedback from local residents on the redesign here.