A Crash, Not An Accident

The lessons of two deaths in Park Slope, for a pedestrian city filled with cars.

- Christopher Bonanos

A few days after the crash, I went down to the Park Slope corner where it had happened. There was—is—one of those makeshift altars, the kind that appear after every horrific event, in front of a bank. Bouquets, notes, teddy bears. On the corner, buried in flowers, there was a folding stroller. It had been painted matte white, like the ghost bikes that mark sites where cyclists have been killed. I heard nothing on 9th Street but quiet talk of the crash.

As I got to the intersection, there were five or six people standing around the shrine, discussing what had happened on March 5, what hadn’t happened, what might be done. A lot of the signs made reference to Abigail and Joshua, the two children, ages 4 and 1, who had been killed there. As I stood there, a little girl, just about Abigail’s age, stepped up with her dad and set a few yellow flowers on the stroller. This was a neighborhood in mourning, one that saw the fragility of its own bodies reflected in the experience. “It could have been me” is a cliché, but it really could have been anyone.