VIDEO: Reckless Driver Kills Cyclist, Injures Four Others in Harlem Crash That Shows Need For Speed Caps

A reckless driver traveling at out-of-control speeds killed one cyclist and injured three more people inside other cars before crashing into a parked truck to end the carnage on Thursday night on the busy main street of Harlem.

The 8 p.m. crash comes just a few days after Mayor Mamdani was criticized by the pro-car right for announcing that speed-limit reductions in school zones would be in effect all day, not just during school hours.

According to police, the 49-year-old driver of a red Hyundai was heading eastbound on W. 125th Street and was near Frederick Douglass Boulevard when he struck a 33-year-old male bicyclist and a 28-year-old male bicyclist in the right lane of the wide roadway. ABC7 said both men were delivery workers.

The driver, whom the Daily News reported was speeding, continued east and struck a Toyota Rav 4, injuring its 40-year-old occupant, and a parked Lexus that was occupied by two men, 28 and 23. Both of those men were injured, too.

“We heard the banging noise like that car crashing like maybe two or three times, it was very fast,” said witness, Sunny Singh, who works at a jewelry store on the block. “It was scary. I never saw one car going as fast as that. He was driving faster than on a highway! He was going like a bullet.”

Of the cyclist, Singh said, “He got killed for nothing. He was doing nothing wrong.”

Video obtained by Streetsblog shows the moment just after the first crash, when the force of the car threw the cyclist up and over the hood and roof. (Warning: Graphic content.)

The carnage ended when the Hyundai driver crashed into an unoccupied and parked NYPD vehicle and an unoccupied tractor trailer, cops said. Photos from the crash site show damage to vehicles consistent with a high rate of speed. And video broadcast by WCBS2 reveals that the car had a South Carolina plate with three local speed-camera violations on it since late November, according to city records. One ticket remains unpaid.

The younger cyclist was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he died. The other cyclist and the other injured car occupants were taken to Harlem Hospital, the cyclist in critical condition, the others stable, cops said.

Police declined to say whether the driver was speeding, drunk, distracted or simply murderous at the time of the crash. It is unclear if he is injured or arrested, but a police spokesperson said that a “person of interest” was “taken into custody at the scene.”

Cops provided no further information.

The advocacy group that fights for safe streets and working conditions for the city’s tens of thousands of delivery workers issued a statement that called the crash “a devastating reminder of the dangers deliveristas face every day.”

“Delivery work is among the most hazardous jobs in New York City. One in five workers has been injured on the job, and the occupation has a fatality rate five times higher than construction,” read the statement from Los Deliveristas Unidos. “Behind these numbers are workers navigating congested streets, unsafe road conditions, and dangerous driving behavior while under constant pressure to move faster themselves.”

People who are struck by drivers at 20 miles per hour — a standard speed limit that advocates want Mayor Mamdani to implement — have a 90-percent chance of surviving. But those odds decrease dramatically as drivers hit higher speeds. At 30 miles per hour, a pedestrian has a 60-percent chance of surviving.

At 40 miles per hour, the pedestrian has only a 20-percent chance of surviving.

Such statistics reveal the frustration many street safety advocates feel when drivers and their political enablers argue against speed-limit reductions.

The hour of the crash — 8:05 p.m. on a Thursday — also bolsters Mayor Mamdani’s argument that school zone speed limits should remain in effect not only in the hours that children are in classes, but at all times because schools are typically at the center of communities.

P.S. 154, for example, is one block from the crash site. The school is named after Harriet Tubman and has 140 students, all below the age of 11.

City Council Transportation Committee Shaun Abreu, who represents 125th Street just east of the site of the crash, called on the city to “do everything we can to improve safety for all road users” on the strip. Advocates from Transportation Alternatives took the call to action a step further — urging the Mamdani administration to build the long-sought “Central Harlem Bikeway” on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

“We’re horrified to learn that a single driver was able to speed through one of the busiest corridors in Harlem,” the group said in a statement. “The City of New York must use Sammy’s Law aggressively and expansively to reduce speed limits to 20 mph, and install a network of protected bike lanes to connect every New York City neighborhood, starting with Adam Clayton Powell [Boulevard].”

This is a breaking story and will be updated as more information comes to light.