Driver in Distress? It’s Cuomo to the Rescue (Again)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/nyregion/governor-andrew-cuomo-bqe.html

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Who needs AAA when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is on the road?

Mr. Cuomo has a well-documented penchant for aiding motorists in distress: He has pushed cars out of snowdrifts, comforted accident victims and even hooked a stranded vehicle onto a tow cable.

On Monday, the governor went a few steps further.

After spotting a van that was tipped on its side and leaning against a median on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Mr. Cuomo directed his State Police detail to stop.

As partially captured by a video recording that was posted online by the governor’s staff, Mr. Cuomo climbed onto the concrete barrier and, after extricating the van’s driver from his seatbelt with a device used by troopers for that purpose, helped the man down from the damaged vehicle.

There was property damage but no injuries, officials said. It was not immediately clear how the accident happened.

At the time of the episode, Mr. Cuomo had just left an event in Manhattan where he announced a plan to expand Pennsylvania Station with the addition of eight new tracks. He intervened in the expressway accident out of concern that the van could topple over, injuring anyone who might be inside, a spokesman said.

The Fire Department said that it had received a call about the accident at around 1:15 p.m., and that emergency workers had responded within a minute.

Signage on the driver’s side door identified the van as belonging to Regina Caterers of Brooklyn. A phone call and email to the company were not immediately returned.

The sight of Mr. Cuomo, a well-known car enthusiast who drove a tow truck as a young man, addressing trouble of the roads has become something of a winter tradition in recent years, usually when conditions are more treacherous than they were on Monday.

Last month, for instance, the governor was on his way back to Albany, N.Y., after announcing a weather-related state of emergency at a Thruway exit in Kingston when he came upon a two-car accident in Selkirk. A photo shared by his office showed him inspecting the scene.

In 2017, Mr. Cuomo’s office posted several photos on Twitter of him and his security detail helping a driver who had been stranded amid snow and slush on the Sprain Brook Parkway in Westchester County. Tow cables were involved.

A year earlier, as photos posted on Flickr by Mr. Cuomo’s staff showed, he performed a similar rescue on the Cross Island Parkway during a blizzard.

Last January, the governor deployed his brand of roadside assistance in a different way. On a tour of roads near Buffalo, he climbed up on truck cabs to admonish drivers who were violating a statewide ban on tractor-trailers using some highways during a storm. (As usual, staff members captured the action.)

Mr. Cuomo has not limited his desire to portray himself as a man of action just to New York’s roadways.

On a trip to Puerto Rico in 2018 as part of a post-Hurricane Maria relief effort, he posted a video on Twitter that showed him wearing a hard hat and swinging a sledgehammer while demolishing the wall of what appeared to be a terrace.

And in 2017, while announcing a doubling of the fine for littering in the subway to $100 from $50, Mr. Cuomo got down on the tracks and aimed a vacuum at a pile of trash to show what workers have to do to clean those areas.

He appeared to know how to use the equipment.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting.