A startling video shows an NYPD vehicle running a red light before striking a cyclist on a busy Brooklyn avenue, prompting pedestrians to rush to her aid.
The woman was riding an electric Citi Bike through a crosswalk at about 5 p.m. Monday at Hoyt Street and Atlantic Avenue when an officer driving an unmarked white sedan sped through the signal, according to security footage obtained by The Post.
The sedan clipped the cyclist, throwing her from the bike and onto the roadway.
Pedestrians crossing in Boerum Hill and other witnesses quickly gathered around the injured woman to help.
The vehicle continued east along Atlantic Avenue before three NYPD officers emerged and returned to the crash site, witnesses said.
“I was sitting at the Hoyt Street Garden reading a book, and I turned around, and I heard skidding, and I just saw this woman flying off of her bike,” a witness told The Post shortly after the incident.
“She was in the street, and the car kept going down Atlantic and finally stopped when a huge crowd of civilians and other bikers formed around her,” the witness said.
The witness said the three officers, who were from Brownsville’s 73rd Precinct, attempted to move the victim away from the crowd.
“She had a Trader Joe’s bag … and a mug was broken that was inside … and they were like, ‘Let’s not touch her property.’ I’m like, ‘I’m giving it back to her. I’m not going to give you her property. You just ran her over,” she said.
“I think she was in total shock, and adrenaline and shock,” the witness added. “That woman was hit full-on. I’ve never seen something like that.”
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The cyclist, who asked not to be identified, was taken to a hospital. She told The Post that she is recovering from her injuries and suffered “multiple bruises.”
She said she did not remember hearing sirens or seeing emergency lights as the vehicle approached. However, she noticed the car run the red light and tried to stop the electric Citi Bike.
The victim also alleged that the officers told her not to call 911 and urged her not to speak with witnesses.
She said she called 911 despite those instructions and requested an ambulance, which transported her to the hospital.
The NYPD said in a statement that the incident is “under review.”
Kelly Carroll, executive director of the Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District, told The Post that Monday’s collision was not surprising.
Carroll described the roadway’s recurring traffic crashes as a “layer cake of failure.”
“The first thing I tell guests when they come to Atlantic Avenue is ‘Please look both ways’ and ‘do not step into the street,” she said.
Atlantic Avenue was designated a “Vision Zero” corridor during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration as part of an infrastructure initiative intended to reduce traffic deaths.
But Carroll said the avenue, which stretches from the Brooklyn waterfront along the East River to Jamaica, Queens, remains hazardous despite “piecemeal improvements.” Drivers, she said, frequently operate with “impunity.”
“We need enforcement. We need speed cameras, we need red light cameras. I don’t understand how we can be a Vision Zero corridor and not have literally every mechanism and tool to make the street less perilous to human life,” Carroll said.
