MTA bus crashes into Burger King restaurant in New York

An MTA bus crashed into a Burger King restaurant in Brooklyn (NYC) after its driver reportedly suffered a medical problem early this morning covering route B16.

Surveillance video captured the crash that occurred around 12:10 a.m. today at the intersection of 3301 Fort Hamilton Parkway and Dahill Road. According to the NYPD, the 60-year-old driver lost control of the wheel and the bus swerved over the median and crashed into the side of the Burger King.

MTA officials said the driver suffered a cardiac arrest. He was taken to Maimonides Medical Center in critical condition. The restaurant was closed to the public.

The bus was removed from the restaurant at 5 a.m., leaving a gaping hole where the windows, tables and chairs once stood. The Department of Buildings (DOB) issued a total evacuation order for the restaurant and ordered the building’s owner to hire an engineer to assess the structural stability of the building.

At the time of the accident, two female passengers, aged 60 and 23, were on the bus. Both refused medical attention. One of them ran to the driver’s aid and said she was moaning and had fainted.

Passenger Valorie Terner told ABC News that everything had happened so quickly. “The bus started to accelerate rapidly… Before I knew it, we were at Burger King.”

In a similar case, in April five people were injured inside vehicles and on the road after an 89-year-old driver apparently lost control of his luxury Mercedes after suffering an apparent medical episode in Brooklyn.

In October 2023, a teenage robber apparently lost control of his stolen vehicle and crashed it into the living room of a home in Long Island, NY, but managed to flee on foot. In 2022, an elderly woman crashed her car into a chicken restaurant in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. And a 42-year-old drunk driver was arrested after crashing her vehicle into a power pole and then a residence in Saugerties, Ulster County, New York.