Witness: Bus Driver Backed Over Cyclist in Fatal Crash

According to an eyewitness account on NY1, the bus driver who killed a cyclist on Delancey Street yesterday afternoon was driving in reverse and did not respond to verbal warnings prior to the fatal crash:

A witness says the woman was riding her bicycle on Delancey when she
hit a pothole and fell behind the bus, which then backed over her.

“She
was just trying to get away from the school bus and the school bus just
kept driving, and it was getting closer and closer to her. And
everybody’s screaming at him, ‘There’s somebody behind you!’ And she
was trying to avoid the pothole, but once she hit the pothole, that’s
when she fell over,” said one witness.

Police had not charged the driver at the time NY1 filed the report last night. NYPD has not yet returned Streetsblog’s inquiries about the crash.

The driver works for the same school bus operator, Atlantic Express, as the driver who killed cyclist Jonathan Millstein on Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn in 2008.

Two other New Yorkers lost their lives on city streets yesterday. Rosemary Pratt, 46, was killed by a forklift operator at a subway overpass construction project on East 14th Street in Midwood, Brooklyn. And Mary Mason, 59, was killed by a fuel truck driver as she crossed Pacific Street at the intersection of Classon Avenue in Crown Heights.