The man claimed that he isn’t seeking a large payout, he just wants coverage for his car repairs.
A New York City commuter escaped serious injury Thursday morning when a massive piece of debris crashed down from the ceiling of a Manhattan tunnel, damaging his car and missing him by seconds, the New York Post reported. John Toledo, 61, was driving home from his overnight shift with the city Department of Environmental Protection around 6:00 am (local time) when the incident occurred on the Trans-Manhattan Expressway. That stretch of I-95 connects the George Washington Bridge to the Cross Bronx Expressway and runs through a tunnel beneath the Bridge Apartments, a complex of four 32-story towers in Washington Heights.
Dashcam footage Toledo posted to Reddit shows a dark slab suddenly dropping in front of his vehicle. The impact blew out a tyre, but Toledo walked away uninjured. “Lucky to be alive. Car is Done. Now I need to figure out to whom I can file a complaint,” he wrote on Reddit.
Media outlet Gothamist reported that he had no time to stop or move away. “If I would have been one or two more seconds further forward, instead of that piece of concrete hitting the front of the car, it could have come through the windshield, and I wouldn’t be speaking to you,” Toledo said.
The tunnel and the section of roadway are under the jurisdiction of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the George Washington Bridge. After the incident, the Port Authority announced it would conduct “additional overnight inspections of the ceiling panels in this section of roadway, including lane closures to allow for a comprehensive examination and any necessary immediate mitigation measures”.
Toledo said he isn’t seeking a large payout – just coverage for his car repairs. “For the sake of anybody else driving that road in the future there should be some concerted effort by those responsible for that structure to examine it… so that something like that does not happen again,” he said.
Watch the video here:
Social Media Reaction
The dashcam footage went viral with thousands of views and over 2,000 upvotes. “OP that is terrifying and I’m glad you’re okay. Take good care of yourself in the coming days and weeks,” one user wrote.
“This happened in Boston and the person died. Same thing happened, you are lucky,” said another user.
“Was just driving here earlier today. This is my nightmare under this section every time. Glad you’re ok! Report it sooner rather than later. Good luck!!” a third user noted.
