A stalled vehicle sitting in a travel lane on the southbound Major Deegan Expressway near East 138th Street and the Grand Concourse was rear-ended by another car Monday morning, and the entire thing happened live on television as a traffic reporter described the scene to viewers.
The crash unfolded in real time during Eyewitness News traffic reporter Heather O’Rourke’s live report in the Bronx, according to ABC7 New York. The disabled vehicle appeared to be stopped in a travel lane when another driver struck it from behind, the station reported. No information about injuries was immediately available following the collision.
Following the crash, O’Rourke stressed the importance of remaining inside a disabled or crashed vehicle when it is safe to do so, the station’s report noted. That guidance echoes a recurring danger on this stretch of highway, where drivers who step out of their cars after a breakdown have ended up in the path of oncoming traffic.
A Highway With a History of Deadly Rear-End Crashes
The Major Deegan has seen fatal versions of this exact scenario before. In one case, a driver fled on foot after crashing a Mercedes-Benz sedan into a disabled Ford on the southbound Deegan near Fordham Road in University Heights, per the same account from Gothamist. The Ford’s driver was taken to Saint Barnabas Hospital in critical condition and later died; the NYPD identified him as 39-year-old Darryl Mathis of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and the department’s Highway District Collision Investigation Squad had not announced any arrests in that case.
A separate incident on Aug. 13 killed a 22-year-old Mount Vernon resident, Justin Francisco, after he exited his vehicle to inspect damage on the Major Deegan near 238th Street and was struck, according to the Bronx Times. A 37-year-old driver of a northbound Jeep Wrangler involved in that crash was brought to Saint Barnabas in critical condition. The Bronx Times reported that incident as the 18th pedestrian fatality on a Bronx highway since 2019 and the third that year to date, with five of those 18 incidents occurring on the Major Deegan specifically, according to NYC Department of Transportation data cited by the outlet.
Crash Numbers Trending Down Citywide, But Highways Remain Risky
Citywide, crash totals have generally been falling. Crashes across New York City's five boroughs declined by an average of 6.5% annually between 2022 and 2024, according to a Gothamist analysis of NYPD data. In the 52nd Precinct, which covers part of the Bronx, crashes fell from 291 through March 16 of the previous year to 246 over the same stretch this year, the outlet reported, even as Mathis became the first person to die in a crash in that precinct so far that year.
Gothamist also found that crashes in Manhattan's congestion-pricing zone dropped 13% to 1,526 incidents between Jan. 5 and April 21 compared with the same period a year earlier, with crash-related injuries citywide down 14% over that same window. Crashes on bridges, tunnels and highways flowing into the congestion zone plummeted by more than 26% that year, per the outlet's reporting, while citywide crash data showed an overall 15% decline since congestion pricing began on Jan. 5.
None of those broader trends change the basic risk at the center of Monday's incident: a car stopped in a live travel lane on a busy expressway, with another vehicle approaching from behind. Monday's collision adds one more entry to that pattern, though no information has emerged about who was in either vehicle or whether anyone was hurt.
