Statement from Transportation Alternatives After Truck Driver Kills 16-year-old Bike Rider in Brooklyn
This is the 12th child traffic fatality in New York City this year. More children have been killed so far in 2024 than at this point in nine of the last 10 years.
In Brooklyn, traffic violence has killed 44 people, 10% above the Vision Zero-era average and 10% above this same point last year.
BROOKLYN — Yesterday, a truck driver turned into three children riding an e-bike in Kensington, Brooklyn. The crash killed the first child and injured the second, who was hospitalized.
The truck driver turned right onto Coney Island Avenue from Ditmas Avenue – an intersection that lacks basic safety precautions like daylighting, any sort of bike lane, or a raised crosswalk.
Transportation Alternatives has long called for a safe passage along Ditmas Avenue through its Flatbush Streets for People campaign. There are no crosstown protected bike lanes south of Prospect Park until you reach the ocean – leaving these children, and thousands of other New Yorkers traveling east-west in Brooklyn, with no safe options.
The 16-year-old boy is the 12th child killed in traffic in 2024 – 71% higher than average under Vision Zero, and higher than nine of the last 10 years. 11 of these 12 children were walking, biking, or riding a motorcycle or moped when they were killed.
This child is the 157th New Yorker to be killed in traffic this year, and since his death, another truck driver killed a pedestrian in Queens, bringing the total number of New Yorkers killed in traffic to 158. This is 8% higher than average under Vision Zero. In Brooklyn, traffic violence has killed 44 people, 10% above average and 10% above this same point last year.
He is also the 15th bike rider to be killed in 2024, and the sixth bike rider killed in Brooklyn alone.
Statement from Elizabeth Adams, Co-Interim Executive Director at Transportation Alternatives:
“Today, a family and a community is grieving. New York City’s children should be focused on their last few weeks of summer and preparing for the start of the school year, not mourning yet another tragedy on our streets. We send our thoughts to everyone who knows and loves these children.”
“Crashes like these are entirely preventable. If Mayor Adams wants to save lives, he only has to build the streets and intersections that our city needs and our children deserve. After a crash like yesterday’s, we need immediate action from our leaders. This intersection could be redesigned and rebuilt tomorrow with new daylighting, physical turn calming, and protected bike lanes, yet even with crash, after crash, after crash, on the same dangerous streets and in the same dangerous intersections, progress moves far too slow. Our leaders cannot pretend to care about the children of our city and still do nothing when they’re killed over and over again.”
“We need a protected bike lane on Ditmas Avenue – and safe streets across the five boroughs so every New Yorker can get where they’re going safely.”
