A teenage e-bike rider was killed, and two others were injured, when a truck driver struck them on Monday afternoon on a notoriously dangerous Brooklyn roadway that Mayor Adams pledged to make safer in one of his first press conferences.
According to the NYPD, the 48-year-old driver of a 2017 Hino box truck was headed eastbound on Ditmas Avenue, paralleling the three teens, all of whom were allegedly on the electric bike, when the truck driver turned right onto Coney Island Avenue, striking the teens.
Juraed Umedjon, the 16-year-old who was operating the bike, was injured the most severely. He died later at Maimonides Hospital. His 15-year-old passenger was taken to the same hospital in stable condition. A third person, age 16, was treated at the scene. The truck driver did not flee the 1:54 p.m. crash and was not charged, though an investigation is ongoing.
According to Transportation Alternatives, Juraed is the 12th child traffic fatality in New York City this year. The group added that more children have been killed so far in 2024 than at this point in nine of the last 10 years.
But activists also pointed to Coney Island Avenue as a nexus of road violence. In January 2022, new Mayor Adams held a press conference at the corner of Coney Island and Caton avenues to announce his intention to make New York City safer for pedestrians and cyclists — an announcement that came after the bloodiest year of the Vision Zero initiative created in 2014 by his predecessor, when 122 pedestrians were killed.
At the time, at that single intersection, there had been 95 reported crashes in the previous five years, injuring 26 people. All of Coney Island Avenue was made a Vision Zero priority zone in 2015, but little has been done since. In 2021 alone, there were 273 reported crashes on Coney Island Avenue between Prospect Park and the Belt Parkway, a strip of just four miles, injuring 16 cyclists, 30 pedestrians and 100 motorists, according to city statistics.
Last year, there were still 244 reported crashes, injuring far more cyclists (24), far more pedestrians (43) and slightly fewer motorists (93), evidence that Coney Island Avenue lacks the vision of a true Vision Zero project, Transportation Alternatives said.
“Crashes like these are entirely preventable," said co-interime director Elizabeth Adams. "If Mayor Adams wants to save lives, he only has to build the streets and intersections that our city needs and our children deserve. ... This intersection could be redesigned and rebuilt tomorrow with new daylighting, physical turn calming, and protected bike lanes, yet even with crash, after crash, after crash, on the same dangerous streets and in the same dangerous intersections, progress moves far too slow. Our leaders cannot pretend to care about the children of our city and still do nothing when they’re killed over and over again.”
Google images of the corner show that it has not received any safety improvements.
Transportation Alternatives has called for improvements in the corridor as part of its Flatbush Streets for People campaign, pointing out the lack of cross-Brooklyn protected bike lanes south of Prospect Park.
According to the NYPD, 158 people have been killed on the roadways through Aug. 18. That's 8 percent higher than the average through that date under Vision Zero. Juraed is the 15th cyclist killed so far this year.
DOT has pledged to make some changes on Coney Island Avenue, including installing some pedestrian islands at three intersections this year. But the promised concrete has not been installed yet at Ditmas Avenue. Those are the only changes that the agency has announced since it hosted a 2019 safety town hall.
Juraed's death came two days after an 82-year-old man was killed by the 22-year-old driver of a Ford van on Marcy Avenue in the Bronx. According to police, the driver struck Valentin Radames at the intersection of Quincy Street, but remained on the scene and was not charged.
