Transportation Group Accuses Cops Of ‘Victim-Blaming’ In Fatal Crash On Avenue U

A local transportation group accused police Thursday of ‘victim-blaming’ during their investigation of a hit-and-run that killed a bicyclist from Bensonhurst on Avenue U.

The group, Transportation Alternatives, cited an article by the Daily News, in which an unnamed police source said authorities were looking into whether the driver even realized he had struck the bicyclist.

“This reflexive victim-blaming is not an isolated incident, but only the latest example of a longstanding pattern that prejudices the outcome of collision investigations and hardens the public perception that drivers should not be held accountable for dangerous choices,” the group’s executive director Paul Steely White said in a statement.

On Wednesday, cops arrested the driver, 31-year-old Queens resident Junior Hicks, and charged him with leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident with a death involved.

Hicks is accused of striking 54-year-old Can Reng Ma, a father of two from Bensonhurst, near the intersection of Avenue U and East 9th Street on Tuesday. Police say the two were moving parallel to each other when Ma was hit and that the driver did not stop after the crash.

Cops tracked Hicks to his home in Queens Village the next day, using the description of his Ryder box truck and the Indian license plate number seen at the crash.

White praised the police for quickly locating the driver and making an arrest. However, he also called on law enforcement to more aggressively enforce the city’s new Vision Zero laws.

“If the City is going to get to Vision Zero, the NYPD has an essential role to play in changing the culture, so that New Yorkers understand that collisions like the one that has devastated the family of Can Reng Ma are preventable,” White said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday credited Vision Zero with bringing down the number of pedestrian deaths to the lowest point since 1910, according to CBS. However, DNAinfo reports that only 15 percent of drivers who killed pedestrians or cyclists have been charged under the new laws and the number of bicyclists killed by driver in 2015 increased compared to 2013, the year before Vision Zero took effect.