Bloody Tuesday: Second Cyclist of the Day — 17th This Year — is Killed

The crash at Norman and McGuinness avenues was not initially thought to be life-threatening. Photo: Trevor Boyer
The crash at Norman and McGuinness avenues was not initially thought to be life-threatening. Photo: Trevor Boyer

Breaking news: A cyclist was killed by a box truck on McGuinness Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon, the second bike rider to die in the day and the 17th fatality of the year.

Preliminary information is very sketchy, but according to the NYPD, at around 3:50 p.m., the 58-year-old cyclist was “facing southbound on McGuinness Avenue on a bicycle at Norman Avenue when he made contact with a box truck that was traveling southbound on McGuinness.”

The cyclist was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died. Other details were not provided. A city source told Streetsblog that the cyclist may have had some medical episode before the crash.

“No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing by the NYPD Collision Investigation Squad,” police said in a statement.

The death came just four hours after teen cyclist Alex Cordero was killed in Staten Island, also in murky circumstances. The second cyclist has not been publicly identified, pending family notification.

The deaths are the 16th and 17th cyclist fatalities so far this year, up from 10 in all of last year. Mayor de Blasio has said he will announce a new “bicycle safety plan” this week.

  • Larry Littlefield

    This is terrible. If the toll goes high enough, it begins to move away from just bad luck to something more ominous.

    More inexperienced cyclists? I thought cycling had plateaued.

    More bad drivers? The only thing I can think of is that unemployment is down, and there have been lots of commercial vehicles involved in these tragedies.

    More truck driving rookies, and businesses not checking licenses carefully?

  • Voter

    The one thing all these deaths have in common is they happened in a city governed by a mayor who doesn’t give a sh*t.

  • This is an abomination. We need to begin to place tighter restrictions on cars, and enforce the law against cars for infractions like parking in the bike lane. This will help move people out of cars onto bikes which is desperately needed. There should be serious restrictions on cars, and separate laws for bikes so we don’t continue to be slaughtered by cars.

  • p-beuntz’t

    McGuiness is one of the many, many outer borough roads that drivers treat like an expressway – everybody goes 40mph+ because there’s practically no enforcement of speeding laws.

  • Joe R.

    If the rest of the year continues at this pace we’re on track for 30 dead cyclists this year. Not a statistic our “Vision Zero Mayor” can be particularly proud of. I think pedestrian deaths are up double digits over last year as well.

  • Andrew

    A cyclist was killed by a box truck

    The plague of the autonomous box trucks has reached Streetsblog now?

  • Zero Vision

    Bill de Blasio never cared to include safe cycling in Vision Zero. A bike wasn’t even part of the Vision Zero logo and policy matters related to bikes were never at the forefront. He and his DOT never made the holistic case for safe streets and were afraid of a BS controversy about bikes that he actually made worse by giving into the loudest voices. He has no sense of what a city is. People are dead as a result.

  • Tom

    A driver killed the cyclist. Not a truck.

  • Simon Phearson

    Gersh has picked up the habit of citing unnamed “city sources” – usually some cop at the station that takes the call and knows nothing – from typical tab practice, as well.

    Gersh needs to go.

  • jposner

    With law enforcement run by a police department that believes that a driver who says “I didn’t see them” should be absolved of guilt, rather than prosecuted for negligence.

  • Knut Torkelson

    Not to mention the road design is that of a 4 lane highway and absolutely inappropriate for being in the middle of fucking greenpoint.

  • woodyguthrie

    OK, “killed by a box truck” is not stated the best way certainly, but to call for his head? Come on. Gersh puts out several stories a day and I don’t know if he even has an editor. Give him a break. He does a great job IMO. You would rather he wait a day or two? If he waited until more facts became known, others would accuse him of ignoring a cyclists death. The guy can’t win.

  • PDiddy

    Maybe you should take the job.

  • Cinghialino

    sure enough, you’ll never hear that from “the news”.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Five people didn’t get what you are doing there. But I did.

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