'Godfather' actor killed by bus

Actor Richard Bright, 68, was hit by an Academy bus at 6:30 pm Saturday on Columbus Avenue. The driver did not even stop. When interviewed at the Port Authority, the driver claimed to be "not aware that he had hit anyone."
Let's mull this over a minute. Bus strikes and kills a man—never mind that he's a famous actor—and the driver does not even know he hit something or someone. He does not even stop. That's totally plausible, right?
Fact is, too many senseless and brutal fatal traffic accidents occur just in Manhattan alone. Sure, we hear every year about the most dangerous intersections in New York—usually places like Fordham Road in the Bronx and Queens Boulevard are near the top. But in recent memory, there have been a number of famous and not famous people plowed down in broad daylight in Manhattan. There was the philanthropist Andrea Bronfman, who was crossing the street with her dog a few weeks ago. It was early in the morning, before 7 a.m. She wasn't hit by just one vehicle—she was hit by two.
Last Fall, there were two stories about elderly female Holocaust survivors. One was quite short, under five feet tall. She was brutally plowed down by a truck at an infamous 14th Street intersection. The driver didn't even see her; in fact, it was claimed that there was no way he could have seen her because he was sitting so high up in his huge truck. Whatever. The irony is not lost, that a woman who escaped Hitler's death camps couldn't escape a cruel fate of being plowed down on 14th Street.
And you might remember some years back, a group would spray-paint stencil outlines of a human body at intersections where pedestrians had been killed. They would also spray in white block letters: "A pedestrian was killed here".
You might just say: we've become a more brutal society, we've taken to monster trucks and supersized SUVs. You might think traffic accidents are on the rise. But in comparison to 70 years ago, probably far fewer people are getting mowed down on city streets. Yet the weirdness remains: Richard Bright was struck by a bus and the driver claims not to know anything about it.

Tags:   academy bus, godfather, port authority, richard bright

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Posted on 2/19/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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