Sunday, May 24, 2015

2 DEAD, 2 INJURED WHEN TAXI TRAVELING SOUTHBOUND IN THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE LOSES CONTROL AND SLAMS INTO THE GUARDRAIL




MAY 24, 2015

MONROE, NEW JERSEY

John Forbes Nash Jr., the Princeton University mathematician whose life story was the subject of the film "A Beautiful Mind," and his wife of nearly 60 years died Saturday in a taxi crash on the New Jersey Turnpike, police said.
Nash was 86. Alicia Nash was 82. The couple lived in Princeton.

The Nashes were in a taxi traveling southbound in the left lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, State Police Sgt. Gregory Williams said. The driver of the Ford Crown Victoria lost control as he tried to pass a Chrysler in the center lane, crashing into a guard rail.

The Nashes were ejected from the car, Williams said.

"It doesn't appear that they were wearing seatbelts," he said.

The second vehicle also crashed into the guard rail, Williams said. The taxi driver was extricated from the vehicle and flown to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick with non-life-threatening injuries.

A passenger in the Chrysler was treated for neck pain, Williams said.

Nash, a West Virginia Native, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994, the year before he joined the Princeton mathematics department as a senior research mathematician. He is known for his work in game theory and his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia, depicted in the 2001 film, "A Beautiful Mind," starring Russell Crowe.

Alicia Nash was his caretaker while he battled his mental illness. They became mental health care advocates when their son John was also diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Nash was in Norway on Tuesday to receive the Abel Prize for mathematics from King Harald V for his work, along with longtime colleague Louis Nirenberg, on nonlinear partial differential equations.

Nirenberg, reached at his home Sunday, said Nash was a "wonderful mathematician" and person. Nirenberg had just flown back from Norway with the couple, and they were taking a taxi back from the airport, he said. 

Nirenberg had known the couple since the 1950s.

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Two passengers in a taxi were killed in a crash on the New Jersey Turnpike in Monroe Saturday afternoon, State Police said. 

The crash involved the taxi and another vehicle in the southbound lanes around 4:30 p.m., State Police Sgt. First Class Gregory Williams said, citing preliminary information. 

Rescue crews freed one person from the other wrecked vehicle, Williams said. They were taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital with non life-threatening injuries. 

The highway's southbound inner lanes remained closed around 6 p.m., near Interchange 8A, with traffic detoured through a rest area, according to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. 

State Police said heavy traffic delays were reported in the area.
Additional details were not immediately released. 

Traffic Delays NJTPK. SB in area of MP72,4, Monroe Twp.. Fatal MVA Invest.
— NJSP - State Police (@NJSP) May 23, 2015

Aggressive driving, especially in states that New Jersey, is one of the leading causes of traffic accidents.  This tragedy is a prime example of this.