[UPDATES: See below]
When an allegedly intoxicated driver plowed into crowds of pedestrians in the heart of Times Square today, you’d be forgiven for thinking this isn’t something that happens all the time in New York. Alas, you’d be wrong. Even in the densest city in America cars are allowed to race around at lethal speeds. The solution from police is of course to crack down on jaywalkers, with predictably bloody results.
But since this collision (we still don’t say accident) mowed down so many in what’s essentially a giant public plaza, the BREAKING-NEWS-AT-ALL-TIMES!!! mainstream media ran with lines about “Terrorism”, or at the very least “might not be terrorism”. We just don’t know!
Half an hour in, they were eagerly alerting us that this was, unfortunately, not an act of terrorism, just a regular act of traffic violence. But then readers of this blog and other livable street advocates declared aloud, ‘Well, it IS actually still kind of terrorism.’
DEVELOPING: NYPD says crash in Times Square was likely DWI, not terrorism https://t.co/B7NKuUMEnd pic.twitter.com/ZCZgQgzmph
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 18, 2017