A 43-year-old cyclist lost his life after being hit by the 52-year-old driver of a tractor-trailer truck in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York last week. According to ABC News, the cyclist was riding on Pennsylvania Avenue when the tractor-trailer driver turned onto Linden Boulevard, hitting him. The driver was not arrested at the scene, according to Streetsblog, which identified the cyclist as “the 31st person killed in 2022 while riding a bike, e-bike or other micromobility device,” per its own data.
Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit organization advocating for transit safety policy, blamed the fatal collision on “inequitable street design.” A press release by the group noted that the scene of the incident, Linden Boulevard and Pennsylvania Avenue, is an intersection were 128 people have suffered injuries in the last five years, and where a pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run in March of this year. “No other council district had more injuries in the past two years than the 3,209 in District 42,” the release states, “where more than three-quarters of residents are Black and 97 percent are non-white, and where more than one in four residents lives below the poverty line.”
These sobering figures have not spurred any action by transportation officials, according to Transportation Alternatives, observing that authorities have not yet implemented any safety features—like bicycle lanes or pedestrian intervals—at the intersection. “All New Yorkers should be able to ride a bike without fear of death or serious injury on our streets,” said a spokesperson for the organization. “Yet as long as our streets are designed like highways, prioritizing the movement and storage of private vehicles above all else, people will continue to die. The solutions to the crisis of traffic violence are simple – prioritize people over cars. Our city’s leaders must demonstrate the political will to repurpose space from cars and trucks and build physical infrastructure that protects all street users, and gives every New Yorker safe, equitable and sustainable options to travel around the five boroughs.”
More information on the deadly crash in East New York is available via ABC News, Streetsblog, and Transportation Alternatives.
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