A teenage e-bike rider was killed and two others were injured when they were struck by a truck driver on a notoriously dangerous Brooklyn street Monday afternoon. Mayor Adams promised to make the street safer in one of his first press conferences.

According to the NYPD, the 48-year-old driver of a 2017 Hino box truck was traveling east on Ditmas Avenue, parallel to the three teenagers, all of whom were reportedly riding electric bikes, when the truck driver turned right onto Coney Island Avenue and struck the teenagers.

Juraed Umedjon, the 16-year-old driver of the motorcycle, was the most seriously injured. He later died at Maimonides Hospital. His 15-year-old passenger was taken to the same hospital in stable condition. A third person, 16 years old, was treated at the scene. The truck driver did not flee the 1:54 p.m. crash and has not been charged, although the investigation is ongoing.

According to Transportation Alternatives, Juraed is the 12th child killed in traffic in New York City this year. The group added that more children have been killed so far in 2024 than by this time in nine of the last 10 years.

However, activists also pointed to Coney Island Avenue as a hotspot for road violence. In January 2022, new Mayor Adams held a press conference at the corner of Coney Island and Caton Avenue to announce his intention to make New York City safer for pedestrians and cyclists – an announcement that came after the bloodiest year of the Vision Zero initiative launched by his predecessor in 2014, when 122 pedestrians were killed.

At the time, 95 accidents had been reported at this single intersection over the past five years, injuring 26 people. The entire Coney Island Avenue was declared a Vision Zero priority zone in 2015, but little has been done since then. In 2021 alone, 273 accidents were reported on Coney Island Avenue between Prospect Park and the Belt Parkway, a strip just four miles long, injuring 16 cyclists, 30 pedestrians and 100 motorists, according to city statistics.

Last year, however, 244 traffic accidents were reported, with far more cyclists (24), far more pedestrians (43) and slightly fewer motorists (93) injured. This shows that Coney Island Avenue lacks the vision of a true Vision Zero project, according to Transportation Alternatives.

“Accidents like this are completely preventable,” said Deputy Director Elizabeth Adams. “If Mayor Adams wants to save lives, all he has to do is build the streets and intersections our city needs and our children deserve. … This intersection could be redesigned and rebuilt tomorrow with new lighting, turn calming and protected bike lanes, but despite accident after accident on the same dangerous streets and at the same dangerous intersections, progress is far too slow. Our politicians cannot pretend to care about our city’s children and do nothing when they keep getting killed.”

Images of the curve viewed on Google show that no safety improvements have been made there.

Transportation Alternatives has called for improvements in this corridor as part of its Flatbush Streets for People campaign, pointing out the lack of protected bike lanes across Brooklyn south of Prospect Park.

According to the New York Police Department, 158 people have died on the roads as of August 18. That’s 8 percent more than the average to that date under Vision Zero. Juraed is the 15th cyclist killed so far this year.

The Department of Transportation has promised to make some changes to Coney Island Avenue, including installing some pedestrian islands at three intersections this year. However, the promised concrete has not yet been laid on Ditmas Avenue. These are the only changes the agency has announced since it held a town hall meeting on safety in 2019.