Still a deadly accident on New York streets: a woman was hit on Saturday morning, August 29, shortly after 7:30, at the intersection between Third Avenue and 55th Street.
The victim is Jiayi Zheng, a nurse who had just finished the night shift at NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, and was coming home when she was hit by a car in Sunset Park. She was 28 years old and worked in the same hospital she was transported after the accident and where she died shortly after.
According to the police reconstruction, Zheng was crossing the road when he was hit by a black Cadillac proceeding south along Third Avenue. The driver did not stop and fled. The NYPD has not yet announced arrests and investigations of the Collision Investigation Squad are underway.
The images recorded by the surveillance cameras in the area show Zheng, still with work clothes, enter the pedestrian crossing before being invested. The car continued along Third Avenue without stopping. State Senator Andrew Gounardes, who represents part of Brooklyn, said the vehicle would cross the crossroads with the red light.
“We are deeply grieved about the death of Jiayi Zheng,” said the hospital in a widespread statement on Sunday, expressing condolences to the family, to the people close to her and to colleagues.
His death brought attention above all to the conditions of Third Avenue, one of the great arteries that cross Sunset Park under the Gowanus Expressway. According to Transportation Alternatives, since 2014 eleven people on foot or bicycle died along a stretch of about two miles of the road: six pedestrians and five cyclists.
It is not the first time, moreover, that an employee of NYU Langone is killed while returning home from work in that area. In 2020, another hospital nurse died while cycling on Third Avenue after a night shift, near 56th Street, just a few blocks from where Zheng was hit on Saturday.
Third Avenue security issues have long been known. The road runs for long stretches directly under the Gowanus Expressway and the elevated structure reduces visibility between drivers and pedestrians. Already in his Pedestrian Safety Action Plan for Brooklyn, the Department of Transportation indicated the conditions created by Gowanus Expressway on Third Avenue among the factors that make pedestrian crossings more difficult and dangerous at Sunset Park.
In 2023, the Department of Transportation launched a specific project to make the Third Avenue stretch safer between Prospect Avenue and 62nd Street, which also includes the intersection in which Zheng was invested. After a series of meetings with local residents and organizations, the DOT had presented the first hypotheses of intervention and announced the intention to arrive at a definitive project.
However, interventions have not yet been carried out. Just last week, presenting the new plan for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the city again indicated the redesign of Third Avenue at Sunset Park among road safety projects that New York and the state intend to carry out along the BQE corridor.
After Zheng’s death, Transportation Alternatives asked the city to speed up its implementation. The organization argues that the danger of the road can no longer be considered an unpredictable problem, precisely because there have been data on accidents and projects for years to change its configuration.
L’articolo Another death on Third Avenue reopens the problem of road safety in Sunset Park proviene da IlNewyorkese.
