A 25-year-old cyclist riding east on Broadway near Rodney Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn was killed when she was hit by a tanker truck which fled the scene late Thursday, February 28th, 2019.
Sadly, the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Police believe that the truck was heading in the same direction as the woman and are now trying to locate the driver.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the victim, who must now grapple with a lack of answers alongside the trauma and grief of losing a loved one.
One major source of frustration about this accident is the fact that this area is known to be especially dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. In a blog post of ours from just four days ago, we covered a new report that identified the most dangerous residential areas in New York City.
One of the most dangerous clusters of residential areas identified by the report is right by the Williamsburg Bridge, very near to where this accident occurred. The report says that this is an especially dangerous area due to the “heavy concentration of vehicle, bike, and pedestrian traffic” trying to operate within narrow roadways.
Motorists need to be extremely careful on roads that are frequently used by pedestrians and cyclists. When they don’t, sadly, it is pedestrians and cyclists especially that pay the price. In the dangerous Williamsburg intersections identified in the report, “the majority of the 24 people injured were cyclists.”
New York City has not gotten off to a good start regarding traffic safety in 2019. There were 19 traffic fatalities in the first 28 days of January, for example, which was nearly double the fatalities over the same time frame in 2018. Cyclists in particular have gotten the worst of this disturbing safety trend, as there were 191 bike riders injured over that time frame, up from 158 the year before.
We are entering our sixth year of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious Vision Zero campaign to put an end to traffic fatalities. Changes brought on by Vision Zero thus far includes lowering the city–wide speed limit, creating and extending the network of protected bike lanes throughout the city, and using traffic data to re-design intersections to make them safer.
None of these changes will make a difference, however, until individual New Yorkers, motorists in particular, start to take safety more seriously. The changes made by Vision Zero are necessary and will hopefully make this city a safer place to work, live and commute. But we cannot be lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that, as Mayor de Blasio says in the 2019 Vision Zero update, that “traffic fatalities are at an all-time low.”
Even one traffic fatality is too many. The driver of this tanker truck, whether he knows it or not, has caused unimaginable trauma and grief for the family of this victim. The family will not be comforted to know that traffic fatalities are at an all-time low-they need answers, justice, and compensation to deal with the logistical and financial burdens that such a tragedy inevitably creates.
The attorneys at Block O’Toole & Murphy have won more results exceeding $1,000,000 than any other New York law firm every year since 2012. They know how to uncover the truth behind an accident and aggressively pursue the maximum compensation available to victims of negligence, recklessness, and sheer incompetence.
Whatever the outcome of the investigation, hopefully the family can receive some level of justice in a case so far bereft of it.