Cops are now looking for four hit-and-run perps who killed one pedestrian and injured five people, including one walker injured in a rare bike-on-ped incident.
In the most recent crash, cops are seeking the driver of a black BMW who ran down 74-year-old Be Tran at Myrtle Avenue and Hancock Street in the Ridgewood section of Queens at about 7:40 p.m. on Sunday. The motorist fled southbound on Seneca Avenue, according to the police.
That crash came only hours after a woman was critically injured by another hit-and-run driver in Brooklyn on Aug. 14.
Meanwhile, cops are also searching for a cyclist who struck a 44-year-old man at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 22nd Street in the Chelsea section of Manhattan at about 6:40 p.m. on Aug. 10, causing head trauma. The pedestrian was taken to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition. The bicyclist fled northbound on Eighth Avenue, cops said.
That crash came only a few hours after, a hit-and-run driver injured three, including a mother and a toddler, also in Ridgewood, after being pulled over by police.
Police have not put out good descriptions of the suspects.
As of Aug. 14, 64 pedestrians have been killed in road violence, 10 fewer than on the same date last year, according to the Department of Transportation. Total road fatalities, at 157, amounted to two fewer than this time last year, which was the bloodiest year on record since the advent of Vision Zero in 2014. (There has been a large increase in deaths to people inside cars, which authorities have attributed to continued speeding.)
Fatalities only tell a tiny portion of the story of road violence in New York City. Since Jan. 1, according to the NYPD, there have been 60,845 reported collisions, or roughly 278 crashes every day. Those crashes have injured 29,571 people or roughly 102 per day. That's up 2.1 percent from the same period last year.
So far this year, 4,707 pedestrians have been injured, or roughly 21 per day. That's up by 23 percent this year.
And 2,609 cyclists have been injured this year, or roughly 12 per day. That's up 3.1 percent this year.
Cases of cyclists running down pedestrians are rare. Despite the continuing public clamor against cyclists who supposedly do not obey traffic rules, the incidence of bike-on-pedestrian injuries, let along fatalities, is vanishingly small. Between 2006, when the DOT to begin keep statistics on bike-on-ped fatalities, through 2020, 10 pedestrians were killed by cyclists and 2,116 pedestrians were killed by car drivers — meaning that bicycles were responsible for 0.47 percent of the pedestrian death total (the numbers for 2021 were not immediately available).
Injuries to pedestrians by cyclists also comprise a tiny fraction of the overall injuries caused by motor vehicles in this city.
Police only rarely solve hit-and-run crashes. In 2020 (the last year for which there is data for a full year), there were 39,299 hit-and-run crashes involving injuries or damage to property. Cops arrested just 351 people, or 0.8 percent of the cases. Police are better at solving hit-and-run crashes that cause serious injuries, though there are fewer of those. In 2021, there were 93 such crashes, and cops ended up making 24 arrests, or just over 25 percent of the time.
In the last quarter of 2021, there were 24 hit-and-run crashes involving critical injuries, according to the NYPD. In those cases, cops arrested four people, or 16 percent of the cases.
Cops are hoping anyone with information will call Crimestoppers at 800-577-8477 (TIPS) or for (888) 577-4782 (or 57-PISTA, for Spanish). The public can also submit tips through the Crimestoppers website or on Twitter @NYPDTips.
— with Gersh Kuntzman
