A truck driver mowed down and killed a Bushwick cyclist while making a U-turn in Williamsburg on Jan. 30, marking the first cyclist death of 2020.
The driver of the flatbed truck was heading north along Vandervoort Avenue near Rewe Street around 2:40 pm, and waited for oncoming car traffic to clear before trying to make U-turn — but then struck 41-year-old Pedro Lopez, who was traveling in the right southbound lane, according to police.
Following the collision, the motorist then jumped the curb and smashed into a row of unoccupied parked cars, cops said.
Paramedics rushed Lopez to Woodhull Hospital with severe head and body injuries, where doctors pronounced him dead.
The 54-year-old driver remained on the scene, and police gave him a summons but did not arrest him — and a Department spokeswoman could not elaborate what the summons was for.
Lopez’s death marks the first cyclist to die on the city’s streets this year, on the heels of a bloody year for bikers in 2019 — where 29 pedal pushers were killed by motorists citywide, 18 of which were in Brooklyn.
Those numbers compare to a just 10 cyclist fatalities across the five boroughs, and two in Brooklyn, during 2018.
In an effort to stop the carnage, the Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday 10 miles of protected bike lanes slated for construction in the borough this year as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Green Wave plan to install 80 miles of the green-painted lanes by the time he leaves office in 2021.
