Updated | A man on an electric bike was killed by a hit-and-run driver early on Wednesday in The Bronx, the latest death in what is on pace to be the bloodiest year for cyclists of the Vision Zero era. The driver was later caught, but not charged.
According to cops, the cyclist, Mariano Leonardo Victoriano, 30, was traveling southbound along side a massive dump truck on Tiffany Street in Hunts Point at around 5:40 a.m. when the driver of truck turned right onto Barry Street and struck the cyclist, knocking him to the pavement, running him over causing severe head trauma.
The driver fled, and the cyclist was taken to Lincoln Hospital where he died. Cops initially provided no further information about the driver or the victim, but later said the hit-and-run suspect had been identified but not charged.
Transportation Alternatives pointed out that the 21 cyclist deaths is not only the worst since Vision Zero began in 2014, but the most through this point of any year in four decades. The spate of road violence remains particularly acute in The Bronx.
Neither Tiffany nor Barry streets has a protected bike lane, and, in fact, Council District 17, where the crash took place, has protected bike lanes on just 1.64 percent of its streets — which is below the city average of 4.23 percent. As a result, district has the third-most traffic fatalities and eighth-most traffic injuries out of 51 council districts, according to the group's Spatial Equity tool.
By comparison, nearly 20 percent of the roadways in Council District 3 in a wealthy part of Lower Manhattan have protected bike lanes.
Here's your regular reminder that every single day in this city, there are roughly 250 reported crashes. So far this year, those 55,807 crashes have injured 29,326 people (about 135 per day!). And overall fatalities are down, but nowhere near where they should be. pic.twitter.com/YkEa8qxiKg
— Streetsblog New York (@StreetsblogNYC) August 9, 2023
“Inaction is killing New Yorkers of color," said Jada Yeboah, the Bronx/Uptown Organizer for the group. "Mayor Adams cannot ignore death after death on our streets without this clear indictment: inaction is violence. The administration cannot fall further behind on the NYC Streets Plan’s legal requirements to build protected places for people to bike in every neighborhood of our city. Only five miles of protected bike lanes have been built in the Bronx out of 50 required miles this year citywide. We demand action now.”
This story was updated to provide new information from NYPD on Thursday morning.
