The driver of a New York City Police Department van hit and killed a man on Thursday evening who was standing in the middle of a main road in Brooklyn, police said.
The vehicle was heading west on Eastern Parkway near Schenectady Avenue in Crown Heights just after 8 p.m. when it hit the 53-year-old man, police said.
He was rushed to Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, where he was pronounced dead. Police were unable to identify the victim or driver.
Four people under arrest were being transported in the van to the 77th Precinct when the incident took place. The department’s press service did not immediately provide further details about the collision.
The man was killed in a years-long effort to reduce the death toll on the city’s streets and sidewalks. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio started the initiative seven years ago, which he called Vision Zero. But it struggles to improve safety for cyclists and walkers.
Indeed, New York City saw its highest number of road deaths in nearly a decade last year. And the 77th Precinct, which spans parts of Crown Heights and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, has one of the highest rates of road injuries recorded so far this year compared to the population of any city policing area, with 15 pedestrians and 46 motorists injured, none of them injured. fatal to them, until the end of February.
According to the most recently available data, 29 pedestrians were killed in collisions with motor vehicles in the city between January 1 and March 19. Last year, in the same period last year, 25 pedestrians were killed in collisions with motor vehicles and 129 in all of 2021.
Mayor Eric Adams pledged in January to revamp Vision Zero, and the Department of Transportation announced it would make design improvements to 1,000 intersections across the city, prioritizing areas where people have been killed or seriously injured.
Police also said it would enforce the rules for motorists who disregard pedestrians crossing the street.
