A motorist smashed into a cyclist near the Manhattan Bridge entrance ramp in Downtown Brooklyn during the morning rush Friday, sending him to a Park Slope medical center with serious injuries.
The cyclist was crossing the Flatbush Avenue Extension along Concord Street astride his Raleigh 10-speed at 9:15 am, when the operator of a Manhattan Bridge-bound 2017 Subaru struck him broadside, according to officers from the 84th Precinct.
The impact sent the bike rider over the hood, and left a spiderweb crack smeared across the driver’s front windshield.
Firefighters rushed to provide aid to the wounded cyclist, who a witness claimed was “in and out of consciousness,” before transporting him to Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.
His condition at press time was not immediately known.
The 27-year-old driver remained at the scene and claimed he was proceeding through a “steady green light” when the cyclist wearing headphones and no helmet attempted to ford Concord Street.
“We were all speeding up to go onto the bridge, when [the biker] was crossing in the middle of the intersection,” said the driver, a Bay Ridge resident, who declined to provide his name. “I didn’t see him at first, because he crossed in front of a truck on my right, somehow didn’t get hit by the truck, and by the time I saw him, it was too late.”
The car suffered heavy damage to the windshield, hood, bumper and side mirror, and had to be towed away, according to the driver, who said he had just had the vehicle detailed. The bicycle suffered a bent rim and police towed it to the 84th Precinct’s Gold Street station house.
Traffic on Flatbush Avenue was backed up to as far as the Atlantic Terminal Mall as a result of the crash, and the lower level of Manhattan Bridge on the Manhattan-bound side was closed for about an hour and a half.
Twenty-four people have been killed riding bicycles this year, including 17 in Brooklyn, after an unlicensed driver struck and killed 10-year-old Dalerjon Shahobiddinov on Foster Avenue in Kensington on Oct. 5.
