Statement: Bicyclist Killed on Brooklyn’s Deadly Third Avenue

Statement of Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Danny Harris:

“A 31-year-old nurse who had just completed her shift at NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn was killed Saturday morning by the driver of a motorcycle near the intersection of 56th Street and 3rd Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. We send our deepest condolences to her family and friends.  

The cyclist is at least the 19th killed on New York City streets to date in 2020 and one of thousands of essential workers who have come to rely on cycling as a reliable and physical distancing-compliant method of getting to and from work. Early on in the pandemic, advocates called on the mayor to quickly roll out protected bike lanes so that more essential workers would be able to commute in a safe manner. Instead of rising to the occasion and launching a network of protected lanes, the mayor did the bare minimum, plugging only a handful of gaps in the city’s bike network. 

South Brooklyn has seen a surge in cyclist deaths in the last two years, and Third Avenue has become known for deadly crashes. While the Department of Transportation lowered the speed limit from 30 to the prevailing 25 mph citywide speed limit, no physical changes have been made to this deadly corridor, even after two people were killed and 11 more were injured on Third Avenue in 2019 alone.

 Our city continues to fail New Yorkers who travel by bicycle, and the mayor does not seem to understand his role in this failure. Earlier this year, he slashed funding for the life-saving Vision Zero program, canceled the Green Wave plan which he released after a spate of cyclist deaths in the summer of 2019, and delayed the implementation of a law which would impound the vehicles of the city’s most reckless drivers. Moreover, he has all but ignored the recommendations of his own Surface Transportation Recovery Panel.

Our city was shut down for two months, but with nearly three months left in the year, we have already reached the average annual total of cyclist deaths during Mayor de Blasio’s administration. Just as each of these deaths is a tragedy, each is a policy failure. Every one of them could have been prevented.”