A hit-and-run private waste truck driver struck and killed a cyclist in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Thursday morning, May 5, according to police.
The heavy hauler was driving south on 9th Avenue near New Utrecht Avenue just south of Green-Wood Cemetery when he hit the 35-year-old male riding a bike around 8:23 a.m., according to an NYPD spokesperson.
The driver fled the scene and officers found the victim with wounds on his body lying in the roadway. Paramedics rushed him to Maimonides Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Police did not release the identity of the cyclist and they continue to investigate the incident.
The stretch of 9th Avenue has an unprotected and only half-painted bike lane adjacent to MTA New York City Transit’s 38th Street Yard. Lying between the cemetery and 39th Street, it has seen 66 crashes over the past 11 years, injuring 93 people, including 63 drivers, 16 pedestrians, and 14 cyclists, according to data collected by the website NYC Crash Mapper.
Garbage trucks have proven to be particularly dangerous on city streets.
A city-commissioned study, reported first by amNewYork Metro in December, found that the waste carting crashes caused 43 deaths and 107 injuries during the report’s study period of 2010-2019, or about 3% of all road fatalities.
A recent example was a trucker who mowed down a 62-year-old pedestrian outside Barclays Center in Brooklyn in March, which is also a notoriously dangerous intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.
Traffic collisions in New York City have increased to 31,918 so far this year, according to the latest NYPD stats through May 1, which includes 977 cyclists injured year to date, or about eight each day.
Crashes overall have seen a slight increase of 0.4% from the same time in 2021, a year that was the deadliest for traffic violence since former Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in 2014 and launched his signature Vision Zero policy to reduce road deaths.
