A truck driver fatally struck an e-bike rider at a treacherous intersection in East New York, Brooklyn, Tuesday afternoon.
The heavy hauler hit the cyclist while making a right turn off of the southbound lane of Pennsylvania Avenue onto Linden Boulevard at 4:25 p.m. on Aug. 30, according to the NYPD.
The victim, 43-year-old Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Jarrod Little, was heading south on Pennsylvania on an electric folding bike when the turning trucker hit him, ejecting him to the ground and injuring his head and body.
Paramedics rushed Little to Brookdale Hospital, but he could not be saved and was pronounced dead at the healthcare facility.
The 52-year-old man behind the wheel of the Freightliner stayed on the scene, but cops did not make any arrests, according to the Police Department.
The eastern Brooklyn intersection of two busy thoroughfares is a notorious crash hotspot, with 234 collisions injuring 376 people since August 2011, according to statistics by Crash Mapper.
A 62-year-old woman was killed by a hit-and-run driver at the junction earlier this year in March.
The city’s Department of Transportation has classified both the 11-lane, 150-foot-wide Linden Boulevard and the seven-lane, 78-foot-wide Pennsylvania Avenue as “priority corridors” under its Vision Zero initiative, a designation for streets with the highest rates of pedestrian deaths and severe injuries.
But the streets and the area around them lacks infrastructure to make it safer for cyclists.
Other than the Jamaica Bay Greenway along the waterfront and a stretch on Fountain Avenue leading there, the neighborhood is devoid of protected bike lanes, with only some sharrows on nearby New Lots Avenue and a painted bike lane on Van Siclen Avenue, according to the city’s latest bike map.
Safe street advocates demanded the city overhaul the deadly corridors to prevent further carnage.
“All New Yorkers should be able to ride a bike without fear of death or serious injury on our streets. 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,” said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Danny Harris in a statement. “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.”
So far this year, 171 people have been killed in crashes across the city, a number close to 2021 levels, which was the deadliest year under former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
