By Aaron Naparstek
naparstek@nypress.com

The bike wreck on Fifth Avenue and Warren Street in Park Slope last Thursday was as bad as it gets. Elizabeth Padilla, a 28-year-old non-profit lawyer, was killed just six blocks from her apartment. She was cruising down Fifth Avenue at about 9 a.m. when the driver of a P.C. Richard delivery truck, Ioseb Peikrishvili, swung open his door directly in her path. She swerved out of the way just as a big, 10-wheeled ice cream delivery truck was passing, leaving her no room to maneuver. With her shoes clipped in to her pedals, she was unable to get her feet on the ground.

George Zampetis, a witness I spoke with, said Padilla was "squeezed, pinched, and rattled around" between the two trucks before she fell to her left. The rear wheels of the ice cream truck crushed her skull and she died instantly. The driver, Jose Cruz, had "no idea" he had run someone over. "He was absolutely shocked," Zampetis said.

By the time I came on the scene, one of Padilla's feet was sticking out from under a blue tarp. Crowds were gathering around the yellow police tape and detectives were going about their investigation. Some of the witnesses who saw the grisly aftermath were clearly traumatized. I found the whole thing chilling. I bike down Fifth Avenue all the time. In fact, only two weeks prior, two blocks away, I had crashed into the curb after being cut off by a careless cabbie. The body lying for way too long in the middle of the street under a plastic tarp could easily have been me or any one of a number of friends.

Padilla was the third New York City cyclists to die in just the last six weeks. On April 26, 59-year-old banking administrator Jerome Allen was run over from behind by a hit-and-run SUV driver while biking on Hyland Boulevard in Staten Island. And on May 10, Brandie Bailey, a 21-year-old waitress, was struck by a private sanitation truck on Avenue A in the East Village. All in all, nine cyclists have been killed on the streets of New York this year, and 195 since 1995. Before you decided to quit biking altogether, know that there are more cyclists on the streets than there ever have been and deaths and injuries are, overall, trending down the last 10 years. Things are bad, but they are getting better.

One of the big problems is that the city and the police don't seem to care a whole lot when cyclists get killed. The cops essentially blamed the crash on Padilla, claiming that she "cut in between" the two trucks. This contradicts the testimony of one of eyewitness I spoke with. The police didn't even give the careless slob in the P.C. Richards truck a summons for illegally opening his door into the path of a cyclist. After the crash, the driver of the ice cream truck was sitting on the curb talking on his cell phone. Did the cops check his phone records to see if he was on a call at the time Padilla was run over? They won't tell me, but you can bet not. Cyclist and pedestrian deaths in New York City aren't investigated like that. They're chalked up as "accidents" and the cost of doing business in NYC.

Not that a $100 summons to a traumatized appliance delivery guy is going to bring back a dead woman who, by all accounts, was a genuine asset to her community. Nor will a $100 summons fund the construction of buffered, protected bike lanes for New Yorkers who wish to get around by the cleanest, cheapest, most socially productive form of urban transportation there is. An alliance of local bike advocacy groups is calling on Mayor Bloomberg to convene a task force. Among other things they want a rigorous analysis of all cyclist fatalities over the last 10 years, more and better bike facilities, safer street design standards, and a public education campaign to make motorists more aware of cyclists. On Thursday, June 16, at 8 a.m. cyclists will meet at 5th Avenue and Warren Street in Brooklyn for a vigil ride to City Hall.

This is all good and necessary and the right thing to do. Yet, it still feels like not enough. Cyclists can yell at City Hall all they want. Today, there isn't a single elected official working in that building who is going to make the changes that need to be made. Conditions aren't going to get significantly better for New York City cyclists until the Mayor of New York City says that they need to get better. And cyclists are just too small of a minority in New York City to force a mayor to do that. What we need to do is begin to fold cycling priorities into a larger Eco-Metropolis initiative. Then we need a candidate to run for mayor on an Eco-Metropolis platform.

Let's start fleshing that out. What would the Eco-Metropolis look like? How would it work? Write me at naparstek@nypress.com and let me know your thoughts.