Bicycle Collision On 5th Ave Tuesday A Common Occurrence, Store Owner Says

PARK SLOPE – A bicyclist was hit by a truck on 5th Avenue Tuesday morning in Park Slope.

The incident was caught on the surveillance camera at Milan Optique at 83 5th Avenue. At 7:44am on July 16, the video captured a truck heading toward the Barclays Center near the intersection of 5th and Prospect Place. A cyclist traveling behind the truck passes the vehicle on the left, going into the center of the road, and collides with an oncoming truck on the opposite side of the road.

A neighbor told Bklyner following the incident that he was walking to work Tuesday morning when he heard the accident about a block away. “The bike was destroyed and the rider was unresponsive and his leg was shaking,” he recounted. “He looked like he was hurt very badly. I stayed on site until the fire truck arrived.” The FDNY arrived in about six minutes, he noted.

The unconscious victim was taken to NY-P Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, according to an FDNY representative. Information on his condition was not available.

“This is Park Slope. Stuff like this happens all the time,” said Vladmir, owner of Milan Optique, who provided the above video of Tuesday morning’s incident.

“Bicyclists don’t care,” he added, saying he often sees accidents on 5th Ave. To prove his point, he showed Bklyner another video from later that same day (Tuesday at 8:27pm) showing a bicyclist and a scooter colliding while traveling west (toward Warren Street) on 5th Avenue. See that footage below.

“It’s a really small street,” Vladmir says of 5th Avenue, noting accidents are common  with “trucks, cars, and constant traffic” and cyclists “flying” into the middle of the road to avoid opening car doors. “It happens constantly,” he insists.

This incident occurs a week after hundreds of bicycling activists staged a die-in at Washington Square Park in Manhattan, demanding that Mayor de Blasio do more to prevent bicycling deaths. There have been 15 bicycle-related deaths in the city so far this year—10 have been in Brooklyn. The most recent happened on Monday, July 1, when 28-year-old Devra Freelander was struck and killed by the driver of a cement truck in Williamsburg.