Nurse Killed In Sunset Park While Cycling Home From Hospital Shift

SUNSET PARK – On Saturday, October 3 shortly after 7:30 a.m, Clara Kang was bicycling home, going eastbound on 56th Street near 3rd Avenue, having just finished the night shift at NYU-Langone Brooklyn.

A 29-year-old man on a black and white 2018 Suzuki GSZ-R Motorcycle was heading north 3rd Avenue when they both crashed into each other, knocking both into the street, the NYPD said. When cops arrived, the man was conscious and Kang was not. Both were taken to NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn, where the man was treated for trauma to his head and body, and Kang was pronounced dead.

Kang, a South Korean immigrant and a resident of Long Island City had been working the overnight shift NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn prior to her death, the Daily News reported. One of her colleagues was also on her way home from work, saw the crash, and “stopped in a desperate attempt to resuscitate her mortally injured colleague,” the Daily News wrote.

Kang is at least the 19th cyclist killed in NYC in 2020.

“Early on in the pandemic, advocates called on the mayor to quickly roll out protected bike lanes so that more essential workers would be able to commute in a safe manner. Instead of rising to the occasion and launching a network of protected lanes, the mayor did the bare minimum, plugging only a handful of gaps in the city’s bike network,” Transportation Alternatives’ Executive Director Danny Harris said.

“South Brooklyn has seen a surge in cyclist deaths in the last two years, and Third Avenue has become known for deadly crashes. While the Department of Transportation lowered the speed limit from 30 to the prevailing 25 mph citywide speed limit, no physical changes have been made to this deadly corridor, even after two people were killed and 11 more were injured on Third Avenue in 2019 alone.”

“Our city continues to fail New Yorkers who travel by bicycle, and the mayor does not seem to understand his role in this failure. Earlier this year, he slashed funding for the life-saving Vision Zero program, canceled the Green Wave plan which he released after a spate of cyclist deaths in the summer of 2019, and delayed the implementation of a law which would impound the vehicles of the city’s most reckless drivers. Moreover, he has all but ignored the recommendations of his own Surface Transportation Recovery Panel,” he continued.

“Our city was shut down for two months, but with nearly three months left in the year, we have already reached the average annual total of cyclist deaths during Mayor de Blasio’s administration. Just as each of these deaths is a tragedy, each is a policy failure. Every one of them could have been prevented.”