Motorcyclist Kills Pedestrian Crossing Flatbush Avenue at Parkside

The corner of Flatbush Avenue and Parkside Avenue, where a motorcyclist hit and killed a pedestrian yesterday. Image: ##http://g.co/maps/sb58b##Google Street View.##

A motorcyclist driving north on Flatbush Avenue hit and killed a woman crossing the street at Parkside Avenue yesterday morning. NYPD’s public information office told Streetsblog the victim was crossing against the light and while an investigation is ongoing, no charges have been brought against the driver.

The crash took place yesterday around 5:00 in the morning. One commenter on the blog The Q at Parkside, which was the first outlet to report the crash, said that she came across the crash site moments after the incident. Wrote commenter Maizie, “An elderly woman said that a motorcycle sped around a bus and hit the pedestrian. She was surrounded by a number of do gooders who diverted traffic and directed the FDNY and ambulance personnel to her location. She was moving around, clearly in pain, and bled from her head.”

The police did not have any information about whether the motorcyclist was passing or speeding when he hit the victim.

The crash took place days after DOT announced plans to improve safety at the dangerous intersection of Parkside and Ocean Avenue, one block away. According to CrashStat, even more pedestrians were injured in traffic crashes at Parkside and Flatbush than at Parkside and Ocean between 2004 and 2009.

  • dporpentine

    I go through those intersections (at Parkside and Ocean and Parkside and Flatbush) twice a day. The traffic is appalling. A perfect storm of buses, delivery trucks, jaywalkers, yellow cabs, livery drivers, dollar vans, and cops (there’s a doughnut shop). You’d think three-point turns were mandatory from how  common they are. At both ends of Parkside drivers invent lanes like crazy, beeping at me for waiting for the light, intimidating pedestrians in the crosswalks.

    It’s terrible about this woman. My only hope is that the tragedy of her death inspires the DOT to clean up that whole block. I know they’re changing some of the parking but that’s not enough. They need to
    enforce the law more and they need narrow Parkside on the Flatbush side. Right now it’s a zoo.

  • @c661ddb94bcffdc2c6124e349eafdc77:disqus I’m afraid that an intersection like that (I’ve seen it) should be a bigger priority to fix than anything else on the DOT’s plate, yet its condition is indicative of the sort of neglect and indifference that will leave it in a dangerous state. 
    That, and every road change is a political time-bomb. The main problem is that Flatbush is treated like an expressway by drivers. If you take that away from anyone (despite the fact that speeding and reckless driving is ILLEGAL), they’ll scream. The newspapers will pick it up and won’t stop screeching about it until they are sure whoever made the changes is run out of town. That is the environment that we are in, and it’s been that way for years, and it needs to change all around. Telling people that it’s a life-or-death matter for pedestrians is apparently not enough!

  • Jenniferskeen1987

    this is my family. my mother uncle wife. im so upset and sad. i can’t believe this.

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