Well, I\u2019m sorry to share depressing news as we head into the weekend, but this one<\/a> is too close to home for me to ignore:<\/p>\n This was Thursday morning, at rush hour, on a bridge bike path I\u2019ve described in the past as a \u201ccomplete shitshow:\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Police officers responded at 8:21 a.m. after a 39-year-old man riding a stand-up electric scooter crashed into a 35-year-old cyclist. The e-scooter driver was traveling westbound, while the cyclist was traveling eastbound, the police said.<\/em><\/p>\n The men were brought to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Queens, where they were pronounced dead. Photos taken in the aftermath of the collision show a white bike snapped clean in half, with an orange e-scooter lying next to it. The crumpled front tire of the bike rests against the bridge.<\/em><\/p>\n The scooter involved will apparently do over 50mph:<\/p>\n The photos of the crash site appear to show a\u00a0Teverun Blade GT Suit II+ e-scooter, billed on the company\u2019s website as a \u201cwolf in a suit\u201d that can reach almost 53 m.p.h.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBeneath its sleek, understated design lies immense power and explosive acceleration,\u201d the company\u2019s description reads. \u201cEvery twist of the throttle delivers thrilling speed while maintaining effortless control, turning your daily ride into an extraordinary experience.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n And yes, both riders were wearing helmets<\/a>:<\/p>\n Somewhere I said that if you feel like you need to wear a full-face helmet then you have no business being in a bike lane, but I can\u2019t remember where, so I\u2019m going to say it again, even though it\u2019s kind of gross to do so right after the person has just died. Sorry.<\/p>\n I probably haven\u2019t ridden over the Queensboro Bridge (or the 59th Street bridge as I usually call it, or the Ed Kotch Bridge as nobody calls) since at least last summer, since I live pretty far from it, though prior to that I was using it somewhat regularly, since my friend who died last year lived in Queens and I was going back and forth to his place often. As a regular user of the bridge he\u2019d often talk about how bad the bridge had gotten in recent years thanks to all the motorized contraptions on it, and holy crap was he right. In fact, in recent years the Queensboro Bridge bike path had become notorious, and I\u2019d say it always felt like an accident waiting to happen, but that\u2019s not accurate, because the accidents weren\u2019t waiting to happen at all\u2013they were very much happening<\/a>:<\/p>\n So I wasn\u2019t surprised to learn about this most recent crash, though the fact that it left both people dead is of course shocking, as is the image of the mangled bike. I\u2019m fairly certain the Queensboro is the steepest of the East River bridges, so no matter where you are on the span there\u2019s always really fast head-on traffic in at least one direction. Before the proliferation of \u201cmicromobility\u201d at least the uphill traffic would be moving slowly, but thanks to motors now the uphill and<\/em> downhill traffic can easily be moving at 20- or 30-plus miles per hour. So welcome to a new era of multiple-fatality head-on bike path collisions, I guess. <\/p>\n The opening of the separate pedestrian path on the south side of the bridge was supposed to mitigate the clusterfuckery of the bike path\u2013and maybe it did, though as someone who hasn\u2019t ridden over the bridge in like a year I\u2019m not qualified to say, and obviously it didn\u2019t prevent this crash:<\/p>\n
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