CROWN HEIGHTS — A school bus driver who struck and hospitalized an 11-year-old girl was arrested under the mayor's "Vision Zero" law, police said Thursday morning.
Shneur Brownstein, 28, has been charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care after the yellow school bus he was driving struck the girl as she crossed Nostrand Avenue near St. Johns Place on Wednesday afternoon.
Brownstein was turning right onto the avenue from the side street at the time of the crash, officials said. The girl was taken to Kings County Hospital with a head injury and is still receiving treatment, police said Thursday.
The bus involved in the crash belonged to the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva, a nearby school in Crown Heights, which described the incident as "an unfortunate accident," in a statement.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the girl and her family for a complete and speedy recovery," the school told DNAinfo New York.
The charges against Brownstein, both misdemeanors, include the “Vision Zero" law — failure to exercise due care, which was implemented in 2014 as a way to reign in pedestrian injuries and deaths.
The law was declared unconstitutional by a judge in Queens last summer, but Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed then that police would continue using the charge, which he said was a “vital tool” to hold drivers accountable.
Despite Wednesday’s crash, pedestrian injuries are down overall in both precincts that cover Crown Heights, NYPD data shows.
In the 77th Precinct, where the Nostrand Avenue crash took place, data through Feb. 12 (the latest date for which statistics are available,) shows one pedestrian has been injured by a vehicle since the beginning of the year, down 75 percent when compared to the four pedestrians injured during the same time in 2016.
In the 71st Precinct, which covers the southern half of Crown Heights, three pedestrians have been injured in crashes this year through Feb. 12, down 50 percent from the six pedestrians injured in the same time period last year.
