A box truck driver fatally hit and ran over a young woman riding a Lime rental moped in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Nov. 2, according to police.
Greenwich Village resident Molly Pearson, 24, was driving east on Meeker Avenue at 11:18 a.m., when the trucker heading in the same direction turned right onto Skillman Avenue and smashed into her, ejecting her from the two-wheeler and running over her on the roadway, cops said.
Paramedics found Pearson with severe injuries on her lower body and rushed her to Bellevue Hospital, but she succumbed to her wounds on Saturday, Nov. 6.
The 33-year-old driver remained on the scene, but NYPD did not make any arrests and is still investigating the collision, according to a Department spokeswoman.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Department of Transportation has promised to redesign the dangerous Meeker Avenue corridor from Metropolitan Avenue to the foot of the Kosciuszko Bridge after at least six years of local advocates pushing to make the roadway beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway highway safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
The pedestrian crossing at Skillman Avenue also has a curb extension marked in beige and plastic flappers which DOT installs with the goal of calming traffic.
The intersection has only seen one previous crash and three injuries over the past decade, but at the next nearest crossing at Union Avenue there have been a whopping 55 crashes, injuring 76 people and killing one motorist since 2011, according to the website NYC Crash Mapper.
California-based company Lime launched its green electric moped sharing service in April competing against homegrown Brooklyn company Revel, which offers the same scooters in blue.
Revel has had several fatal crashes on its battery-powered scooters since it launched in 2018, and briefly shut off service in the summer of 2020 after a string of deaths.
Limę rolled out explicitly positioning themselves as a safer alternative to Revel, boasting an entry quiz vetted by motorcycle experts and artificial intelligence that can tell whether riders are wearing their legally-required helmets.
