3 HURT AS PASSENGER BIKE SLAMS TAXI

By LORENA MONGELLI, AMBER SUTHERLAND and ANDY GELLER

3 HURT AS PASSENGER BIKE SLAMS TAXI

A pedicab speeding down the bike lane of the Williamsburg Bridge crashed into a yellow cab on the Brooklyn side yesterday, seriously injuring the pedicab driver and two of his three passengers, police said.

The passengers, returning home to Bushwick after a night of partying, yelled at the driver to slow down just before he hit the taxi at 7:27 a.m. at Bedford Avenue between South Fifth and Sixth streets.

The impact knocked over the pedicab and sent driver Nicholas Nicometi and his three passengers flying.

"He was going so fast it was scary," passenger Stephanie Monfort, 22, who had bruises all over her body, said at Bellevue Hospital.

"We were telling him to 'Slow down! Slow down! Stop!' But he just kept going and turned right into upcoming traffic. He hit a cab and we all flew out. It was horrible. I'm lucky I am OK."

Nicometi, 42, hit his head on the curb and was unconscious when cops arrived. He was in serious condition at Bellevue.

Monfort's boyfriend, Jonathan Richardson, 28, suffered two broken wrists. Her friend, Jessica Mageik, was not hurt.

While city rules say pedicabs have to stick to the streets, state laws that allow them on bridges are currently in effect.

That's because the bridge rule -- and dozens of other regulations -- was not enforced while the city and the pedicab industry were involved a lengthy legal battle.

That ended in April, and the city laws will prevail.

Monfort, a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate, said she and her two friends met Nicometi, a licensed pedicab driver, in a Times Square bar and he offered to take them home.

They decided it would be cool.

They had to walk halfway across the bridge because the incline made it too hard for Nicometi to peddle.

"Then when we get in, he starts going really fast," she said.

Cops said that when the passengers started screaming to slow down, Nicometi turned to talk to them over his shoulder, blew through a stop sign and then crashed into the cab.

"He was coming at me too fast," said Rafiqul Islam, 30, the cabby. "It was his fault."

"There was yelling when they hit me," he added.

One transit-advocacy group called the crash intersection "infamous for safety concerns."

"The entrance to the bridge path at Bedford Avenue is extremely dangerous," said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives.