Bedford-Stuyvesant, NY Car Accident & Injury Lawyer

What the city found on Broadway

Start here, because it is the most useful thing anyone can tell you about being hit by a car in this neighborhood.

New York City’s transportation department studied the Broadway corridor running through Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick and published what it found. Broadway carries 14.8 people killed or severely injured per mile — which puts it in the worst ten percent of all streets in Brooklyn. A pedestrian was killed at the Myrtle Avenue junction in 2024.

Three findings from that study are worth holding onto.

Left turns. 16.4 percent of the motor vehicle injuries on Broadway come from left-turn crashes, against 9.7 percent citywide. The department’s own word for what that indicates is “fast, aggressive turns”.

Drivers failing to yield. When a pedestrian on Broadway is struck in the crosswalk while crossing with the signal, 41 percent of the time the vehicle is making a left turn — and the department attributes every one of those crashes to the driver failing to yield.

The elevated structure. The J, M and Z run above Broadway on elevated tracks, and the department says plainly that the support columns “can cause visibility issues among drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists” and produce “disorganized and unpredictable vehicle movements” at the junctions. At DeKalb Avenue the roadway is 40 feet wide and the crosswalk is 70 feet long.

If an insurer suggests you appeared from nowhere on Broadway, the City’s own engineers have already explained why a driver might not have seen you — and whose responsibility that is.

Where Bed-Stuy accidents happen

The city designates its most dangerous streets as Vision Zero priority corridors, and Bedford-Stuyvesant has fourteen of them plus thirteen priority intersections, inside a single continuous priority area covering most of the community district. Few neighborhoods in the city carry that density.

The designated roads are Fulton Street, Broadway, Myrtle Avenue, Nostrand Avenue, Gates Avenue, Lafayette Avenue, Marcus Garvey Boulevard, Malcolm X Boulevard, Throop Avenue, Franklin Avenue, Ralph Avenue, Howard Avenue and Saratoga Avenue, with Atlantic Avenue running along the southern boundary.

Worth knowing what is not on that list, because plenty of pages get this wrong: Bedford Avenue, DeKalb Avenue and Flushing Avenue are not designated priority corridors.

Within the neighborhood boundary in 2025 there were 1,556 reported crashes, in which 869 people were injured and three were killed. Of those injured, 202 were on foot and 143 were on a bicycle.

By street, Fulton produced the most crashes, then Nostrand, Bedford, Myrtle and Marcus Garvey. But Broadway is the one that stands out: it produced 39 recorded crashes and 16 pedestrian injuries — by far the highest share of pedestrians of any major road here, which is exactly what the transportation department’s own study predicts.

The claims we handle in Bedford-Stuyvesant

• Pedestrian knockdowns on Broadway, Fulton Street, Nostrand Avenue and Myrtle Avenue — the largest category here.
• Car accidents across the corridor network and on Atlantic Avenue along the southern edge.
• Cyclist collisions, at a rate well above most of the city.
• Slip, trip and fall claims on sidewalks, stoops and in apartment buildings — a category with its own rules about who is answerable, covered below.
• Construction accidents. Bed-Stuy is being rebuilt, and New York gives construction workers protections most of them do not know they have, including protections that apply regardless of immigration status or whether you were paid off the books.
• Scaffolding, sidewalk shed and falling-object claims. More than 2,800 sidewalk shed permits and 2,600 construction fence permits have been approved in this community district — over 5,400 structures narrowing or blocking the footway.
• Bus and commercial vehicle crashes. Where an MTA bus or a city vehicle is involved, a notice of claim has to be filed within 90 days rather than three years.
• Premises liability, where an owner knew something was dangerous and left it that way.
• Hit and run cases, where the driver leaves and you are told nothing can be done. Usually something can.

Sidewalk falls in Bed-Stuy are a special case — and this neighborhood is the reason

Since 2003 New York City has put responsibility for most sidewalks on the owner of the building beside them. There is one exception: owner-occupied one-, two- and three-family homes used exclusively as residences. For those the City remains responsible, and a claim against the City has to start with a notice of claim within 90 days instead of the ordinary three years.

Bedford-Stuyvesant is where that exception bites hardest anywhere in the city. Roughly 62 percent of the tax lots here are one- to three-family residential buildings — the exact category the law carves out. Seven in ten were built between 1870 and 1930. It is a neighborhood of brownstones and row houses, which is precisely the building stock the exemption was written for.

But the exemption has two conditions, and both matter:

• An owner has to actually live there. A one- to three-family house that is entirely rented out is not exempt, and the owner remains liable.
• It has to be used only as a home. Around 740 lots here are one- to three-family buildings with a store on the ground floor. On the face of the statute those are not “used exclusively for residential purposes”, so the exemption should not apply — and the owner stays on the hook. Bed-Stuy’s avenues are full of exactly that building.

Which side of that line your fall falls on decides whether you have three years or ninety days. Two doors on the same block can land on opposite sides of it. This is the single best reason to make a phone call in the first week rather than the first year.

Where you were treated matters, and the answer here surprises people

The hospital closest to Bed-Stuy’s most dangerous corridor is NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull, at 760 Broadway — on the Broadway corridor itself. Two things about it are worth knowing.

It is a city hospital, so a claim about the care you received there has to begin with a notice of claim within 90 days, not three years.

And it is not a state-designated trauma center. Neither is Interfaith Medical Center, The Brooklyn Hospital Center, or Wyckoff Heights. The designated trauma centers in Brooklyn are Kings County, NYU Langone Brooklyn, Maimonides, Brookdale and NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist.

So someone badly hurt on Broadway is likely to be carried out of the neighborhood, most plausibly to Kings County Hospital Center — which is also a city hospital, and also carries the 90-day clock.

One more thing worth getting right: Interfaith Medical Center is a private not-for-profit, so no notice of claim applies — but its licensed operator is now recorded as The Brookdale Hospital Medical Center, following the One Brooklyn Health consolidation. Naming the right defendant matters, and the name on the building is no longer the whole answer.

Whichever hospital it was, bring the paperwork to your first appointment. Those records usually decide what a claim is worth.

Where your Bed-Stuy case will be heard

Serious personal injury claims in Brooklyn are filed in the Supreme Court, Kings County, Civil Term, at 360 Adams Street.

Claims worth up to 50,000 dollars can be brought in the Civil Court of the City of New York at 141 Livingston Street instead, and small claims up to 10,000 dollars are heard there too. Which court a case belongs in is one of the first things we work out, and getting it wrong costs time you may not have.

What to do after an accident in Bedford-Stuyvesant

1. Get medical attention the same day, even if you feel fine. A gap between the accident and the first treatment is the first thing an insurer points to.
2. Call 911 and get a police report. Bed-Stuy is covered by the 79th Precinct at 263 Tompkins Avenue and the 81st at 30 Ralph Avenue. If the accident happened in a NYCHA development, it may be handled by PSA 3 rather than the local precinct — there are eight developments here, including Marcy Houses.
3. Photograph everything before it is moved — the vehicles, the road, the hazard, your injuries, the light, the weather. Put something in the frame for scale.
4. On Broadway, photograph the columns. Where the elevated structure sits relative to the vehicle and the crossing is often the whole case.
5. For a sidewalk fall, photograph the building too — the whole frontage, the number of doorbells, and any shop at street level. That is what decides whether you have three years or ninety days.
6. Take names and numbers from witnesses. They disappear quickly.
7. Ask about cameras. Shops, buses and buildings carry them and the footage is routinely overwritten within weeks.
8. Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer. You are not obliged to, and it is rarely used to help you.

Bed-Stuy injury claims — common questions

I fell on a sidewalk outside a brownstone. Who do I claim against?

It depends on the building, and in Bed-Stuy that question is live more often than anywhere else in the city. If it is a one- to three-family home with an owner living in it and no commercial use, the City is responsible and you have ninety days to file a notice of claim. If it is rented out entirely, or has a shop at street level, or is larger than three families, the owner is responsible and you have three years. Photograph the frontage and call early.

The driver turned into me while I had the walk signal.

That is the most documented crash type on Broadway. The transportation department found that when a pedestrian is struck in the crosswalk crossing with the signal there, 41 percent of the time the vehicle was turning left — and it attributes each of those to the driver failing to yield. Left-turn crashes cause injuries on Broadway at nearly twice the citywide rate.

What does it cost to start?

Nothing. We work on contingency, so we take a percentage only if we recover money for you. If we recover nothing, you owe us nothing.

How long do I have to bring a claim?

Generally three years from the date of the accident, and two and a half years for medical malpractice. But if a city agency, the MTA, a public hospital or a City-maintained sidewalk is involved, a notice of claim has to be filed within 90 days. In Bed-Stuy those exceptions come up constantly.

I was taken to Woodhull. Does that matter?

For a claim against the driver, no. For any claim about the care you received, yes — Woodhull is a city hospital and that part carries the 90-day notice requirement. Worth raising early even if you are not sure.

I was partly at fault. Is it worth calling?

Yes, and it is worth calling sooner rather than later, because the rule changed in 2026 and it now depends on what kind of accident it was.

In a car accident case, you can still recover if you were up to half at fault, and what you recover is reduced by your share. If you were more than half at fault, you recover nothing for pain and suffering.

In other injury cases — a fall, a construction accident, a dog bite — your share simply reduces what you recover and does not bar the claim.

Either way, the percentage is argued rather than obvious, and it is usually lower than the other side’s insurer first suggests.

The other driver had no insurance. Do I still have a case?

Often, yes. Your own policy may carry uninsured motorist coverage, and where the driver was never identified there is a state fund for exactly that situation. It has its own deadlines, so do not sit on it.