The mother of the three girls killed, Diane’s sister-in-law, has an article in Ladies Home Journal that’s just completely heart breaking.
Life After the Death of My Children
She and her husband are still together and apparently expecting another child. The article is a tough read, I can’t imagine her anger and devastation.
I used to drive on the Taconic Parkway regularly (although I haven’t done so in over fifteen years) and I don’t remember the entrance and exit ramps being at all confusing. So I don’t know if there is any basis for his lawsuit. North of Westchester County, the parkway gets a little hairier, with at grade crossings and less separation between the northbound and southbound lanes. But right around the area of the accident, the north and southbound lanes are well separated and no crossings are at grade level.
This article contains diagrams and a photo of the exit ramp and might help to illustrate it for people.
Her husband is trying to get her body exhumed so another autopsy can be done.
It’s a very tragic situation all around. I personally feel there was a medical condition involved. At first I thought that maybe she was a secret alcoholic, but then when the tests showed that she had no damage to her body from alcohol abuse, I thought maybe something medical happened and she was sick and confused. People who don’t drink don’t suddenly down 10 glasses of vodka while driving.
According to the Wikipedia article, her husband said that the two of them had imbibed alcohol earlier in the weekend, but that she had had nothing to drink on the day of the accident.
He also admitted that she used marijuana. I’m guessing the hoofbeats aren’t a zebra.
I’m not seeing the bad design. Your standard NO ENTRY and ONE WAY signs bracket the exit ramp where it joins the surface street. I’m trying and failing to think of exit ramps around here that terminate at stop signs as opposed to lights that are constructed differently. Actually I just street-viewed them all, and they universally have less signage than what’s pictured in that article (2-3 signs each instead of 4). What is the plaintiff alleging, that the state should line all freeways with lights that blink in sequence in the correct direction of travel?
The one thing that’s slightly weird about that intersection is that there is only an exit ramp for the northbound parkway. There’s no entrance ramp for the parkway there. I can’t remember where you have to go to enter the parkway.
Here is an attempt at showing the exit ramp of the Taconic Parkway onto Pleasantville Road in Google Street View, and here is a Google Maps satellite view showing the parkway, the exit ramp and Pleasantville Road.
(As I said, I lived really close to where this happened and drove on Pleasantville Road daily, so this is particularly interesting to me.)
Around the corner on Chappaqua, judging by your map. Two of the interchanges in my town that match this style don’t even have entry/exit ramps in the other direction - that is, you can exit southbound or enter northbound, but you can’t enter southbound or exit northbound.
Your street view link just confirms for me that this interchange is no different from any of the thousands of others where exit ramps join surface streets with no traffic lights. Thankfully, if there’s anything that can make a horrible tragic better for the surviving family members it’s frivolous lawsuits.
I saw that as an option On Demand last night but decided on something else. Any idea if it’s good or not?
If you can find a greedy enough lawyer, you can file real stupid law suits.That does not mean you will collect. It does not mean the judge wont toss it out. he is looking for a payday that is not coming.
I watched it. I had seen the husband on tv before and I was of the opinion that he was in the dark about her drinking. After seeing the documentary, I looked up the autopsy and other documents online and I changed my mind.
The gruesome is limited to pictures of Diane’s body from the waist up only.
It’s very sad, especially when they show the video of Diane at the gas station, in the store, etc. knowing everyone except the little boy will soon be dead.
Spoiler alert!
We already have that - the court tv shows. 
Shit, man, you’re a real neighbor. Where you at now?
There’s no real on-ramp there, it was a late addition to the highway. To get back on, you have to go up to Pleasantville by the college and go north, or over by the new on-ramp, or… it gets messy.
Oh, right, or down a bit further and around the corner, I think, but I never take that. There’s just a whole knot of highways there.
They kept on saying “She would never do that. She wasn’t an alcoholic or an addict.”
Like only alcoholics get drunk.
The hubby admitted that she did drink on occasion and that she did smoke on occasion. It’s not unthinkable that she did both that morning, especially if she was in pain as they kept on saying.