The Easy Solution . . .

. . . start driving again:

Sloshed straphangers made up nearly half of all accidental deaths underground during a 13- year Columbia University study.

“Now, if groups are going to a bar, then one should be a designated ‘safe rider,'” warned health professor Robyn Gershon, the study’s author.

Between 1990 and 2003, 145 of 315 unintentional deaths came when boozy riders stumbled off the platform, fell suddenly ill or, in acts of liquid courage, jumped onto the tracks to retrieve a personal item.

Drunken riders died at higher rates than those who were killed or committed suicide. And today’s economy might not help the equation.

“With the changes to the financial picture in New York, there’s talk of an increase in alcohol intake,” Gershon said.

Since most Manhattanites don’t own cars, Gershon said people might think “it’s OK to drink to the point of intoxication because they’re not driving.”

Everyone Always Says That They’d Never Get On That Rickety Old Thing . . .

. . . and then they see the sign saying that there’s never been a death on the Cyclone. And yet, you still “assume risk”:

A California musician who died days after riding the Cyclone should have known that riding the rickety 80-year-old Coney Island coaster is dangerous, the city says in new court papers.

Keith Shirasawa, 53, died in August 2007, five days after he snapped his neck and fractured several bones in his neck during a downhill plunge on the wooden roller coaster.

His family sued the city and the Cyclone’s operators last month.

In court papers filed yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court, city attorney Cynthia Goldman said Shirasawa should have known the risks involved.

“Any and all risks, hazards, defects and dangers to the extent alleged are of an open, obvious, apparent and inherent nature known and should have been known to [Shirasawa],” Goldman wrote.

This basically ensures that your mother will never get on there with you. Thanks.

Location Scout: The Cyclone.

Two Birds, One Stone

The mayor’s drive to rid the city streets of cars gets a boost from the beneficiary of one of his other major initiatives:

A couple inches more, and this story would have been Francisco Vizuete’s obituary.

Instead, the 60-year-old limo driver has an amazing tale to tell: He barely escaped being crushed to death Monday by a tree that toppled onto his car.

The father of two grown daughters felt so lucky he bought a Lotto ticket last night.

“Maybe my guardian angel is still with me,” he smiled.

Vizuete, who drives for Long Island-based Vital Transportation, was about to pull away from 411 W. 54th St. to pick up a “VIP going to Newark Airport” when death knocked.

“I put the key in the ignition, heard this loud noise, and looked to my left,” he said, recalling he was too stunned to move. “The tree was falling straight at me. It was like slow motion. I couldn’t believe it.

“It was coming 5 or 6 inches from my head,” he said. “Glass went all over me and everything went dark for a while.”

The honey locust pancaked the front end of the limo, which Vizuete owns, but didn’t touch him. Saturday’s storm apparently split the tree down the middle and made it unstable.

When Vizuete opened his eyes, people were taking pictures and a passing bicyclist, Darryl Pitt, was dragging him out through the back passenger side door.

“An Instant Hit” (Like A Mack Truck)

Broadway Boulevard has been “an instant hit” for thrill seekers:

As if New York wasn’t stimulating enough already, the city has provided a new kind of thrill right in the heart of Midtown: an esplanade carved into Broadway where people can sit and relax as cars and trucks whiz by.

And while the esplanade seems to have become an instant hit with office workers and tourists — the metal benches, tables and chairs (some under red umbrellas) were rarely empty on Monday morning, even though they have been out for only a few days — many eyed the traffic warily.

“I think it’s dangerous,” said Vicki Lee, who nonetheless sat with two friends eating lunch at a cafe table on the esplanade just south of 38th Street. Ms. Lee, a clothing designer at a Midtown fashion company, was careful to sit so that she could keep an eye on the traffic heading downtown.

Her concern, she said, centered on the gray plastic planters arrayed every few feet along the edge of the esplanade as a buffer for the passing traffic. The planters were filled with soil, flowers and other plants and were too heavy for one person alone to budge. Yet they did not make Ms. Lee feel safe.

“You hear so many accidents of the cars going out of control and all they have here is plastic pots,” she said. But she dug into her salad and added, “We’re going to roll the dice and eat lunch here today.”

Not far away, Eric Sachinis and Grace Ong sat on two metal chairs pulled up to the edge of the esplanade closest to the traffic. They ate sandwiches and gazed at the passing cars.

“It’s a death trap,” Mr. Sachinis, a network administrator for a garment company, said with a laugh. “It’ll be up for a month and then somebody’ll get hit and they’ll take it down.”

“I like it, though,” said Ms. Ong, an administrative assistant, who observed that a pedestrian would be no safer on the sidewalk than on the esplanade if a car lost control. Besides, she said, the esplanade was a good spot for people watching. “That’s why you live in New York,” she said, “to watch everything go by.”

Creating Axioms: “New Yorkers Sit Anywhere”

Once Every 3,400 Years

Not to freak you out or anything, but:

A new analysis of 383 quakes in a 15,000-square-mile area around New York City estimates that a magnitude-5 earthquake in or around the city occurs on average once a century, and a magnitude-6 or larger quake occurs once every 670 years. An even larger magnitude-7 is estimated at once every 3,400 years.