A street safety advocacy group is demanding Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Department of Transportation make changes after two bicyclists died vehicle collisions just a few blocks away from each other in the same week.
Police say on June 5, they responded to the scene at Willis Avenue and East 138th Street and found 23-year-old Ivan Morales, of East Harlem, with severe injuries to his head and body.
The NYPD's collision investigation squad found that Morales was driving inside the bike lane on Willis Avenue when he collided into the driver's side of a Lexus sedan driven by a 62-year-old man.
Morales died a few days later on June 8 at NYC Health And Hospitals/Lincoln.
On June 11, police say as the driver of a box truck attempted to navigate around a double parked car, 38-year-old Jose Luis Estudillo Garcia, of the Bronx, tried to pass between the two vehicles on his bike, lost control, fell to the street and was struck by the back wheels of the moving truck.
The distance between the two fatal accidents is less than half a mile.
Joe Cutrufo, the communications director of the street safety advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, says, "New York cannot continue to be a city where cycling infrastructure is installed slowly over years in a piecemeal fashion, and mostly in predominantly wealthy, white neighborhoods. As our city begins to recover from a pandemic, Mayor de Blasio and the Department of Transportation need to prioritize the rapid construction of a protected and connected bike network that serves the five boroughs. Transportation Alternatives stands ready to support."
The group also says these deaths are the fifth and sixth cyclists killed on NYC streets this year.