An MTA bus collided with a cherry picker in Midtown Monday night leaving eight people with minor injuries, cops said.
A BMX6 bus was traveling in the vicinity of 48th Street and Madison Avenue at around 8:30 p.m. when it collided with a boom lift, which was being used to hoist construction workers at the site where a new Chase building is going up. Several of the vehicle’s windows were smashed and the operator of the lift was injured as the machine was sent tumbling.
Many of the victims were transported to Bellevue Hospital, while some were treated at Cornell Hospital. There were no serious injuries.
“It was so scary,” one woman told amNewYork Metro as she was ushered to a nearby ambulance.
Several witness accounts differed when recounting the cause of the crash. Some riders laid blame on the boom lift operator, saying that the cherry picker smashed into the bus.
“I was at the back. I saw the crane pass in front of me and I threw myself on the floor,” a bus passenger said who did not want to be identified. “I am shaking.”
Workers at the construction site told a different story, charging that the bus driver zoomed into the boom lift, rocking its operator.
“I couldn’t believe it happened. The bus driver, these guys fly around us and they don’t pay attention,” Shawn Mcivor said. “The bus hit the basket of the lift, he was driving it. It snapped the side of the basket, he is shook up.”
amNewYork Metro reached out to the MTA for comment and is awaiting a response.
