Metro

Drivers who hit people on sidewalks not being prosecuted

The driver who mowed down an elderly abortion pioneer won’t be prosecuted for reckless driving — making him the fifth motorist in a 30-day stretch to hit a pedestrian on a sidewalk and not face serious charges, The Post has learned.

The spate of pedestrians getting hit on sidewalks has led to three deaths, two serious injuries and calls for reforming New York’s notoriously hard-to-stick vehicular-crime laws.

“I hope this is an eye-opener and we have some change, because its really, truly heartbreaking,” said Doris Day, whose father, Mansoor Day, 90 — co-founder of one of New York’s first abortion clinics — was out on his daily walk when driver Richard Moussi careened into him.

The trauma of the accident caused Mansoor Day to suffer a stroke, his family maintains. He also had serious head and leg injuries and remains in extremely critical condition.

Moussi was arrested at the scene, but prosecutors declined to press charges.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office found that his behavior did not amount to criminality, said a source.

The driver who killed Tenzin Drudak, 16, in Long Island City, Queens, also wasn’t hit with serious charges.

Despite allegedly telling cops he lost control of the car after reaching for a dropped carton of milk, he got only a summons for driving without insurance.

In another case, driver John McKinney, an ex-con with a history of drug arrests, walked free after hitting Emmy-winning TV producer Martha Atwater. She was killed Feb. 22 coming out of a Brooklyn bakery.

The absence of criminal charges against any one of those drivers illustrates the need for New York to reform its vehicular-crime laws, according to Steve Vaccaro, a lawyer who specializes in representing pedestrians hit by motor vehicles.

Under the law, when drivers haven’t been drinking, prosecutors must first find “recklessness” when applying the most serious criminal charges.

That means the driver was aware of the risk of his or her behavior but disregarded it anyway — a state of mind that is often difficult to prove in court.

One way to increase the odds of criminalizing driver behavior would be to presume that any motorist who ended up on the sidewalk was reckless.

That would put the onus on the driver to explain how he got up there, similar to the presumption of recklessness assumed for drivers who get behind the wheel sloshed.

jennifer.fermino@nypost.com