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Citi Bike fatality is New York’s first, second nationwide for bike-sharing – Metro US

Citi Bike fatality is New York’s first, second nationwide for bike-sharing

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An investment banker riding a Citi Bike was killed Monday after he toppled over while riding beside a bus and was crushed to death under its wheels.

The death of Dan Hanegby, 36, of Brooklyn, is the first case of a Citi Bike rider dying in New York City after an estimated 43 million rides.

It’s the second death nationwide linked to a bike-share program, which have popped up in recent years in cities across the country and which have been widely credited as mostly safe.

As of 2014, bike-share programs nationwide had logged more than 23 million rides without a single fatality.

That changed in 2016 when a 25-year-old biker in Chicago was killed after being hit by a flatbed truck in the city’s Avondale neighborhood.

Philadelphia’s bike-share program hasn’t seen any fatalities, but the program did raise eyebrows after two bike-share riders were caught on camera pedaling next to speeding cars as they rode on a city expressway.

In general, most bike-share bicycles have a heavier model that keeps riders safe by preventing them from traveling too fast, said Randy LoBasso, Metro’s bicycle columnist and the communications manager of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

“The fact that bike share bikes are big, bright, and clunky is partly what makes them safe,” he said. |It’s difficult to pick up speed on an Indego bike and, therefore, if an out-of-control motor vehicle hits you, the damage tends to be less severe. That’s, of course, more of an indirect or accidental safety feature, but it does help explain why there are so few deaths  relatively  of people on bike share bikes.”

LoBasso added that protected bike lanes cut off from traffic would make biking even safer.

Hanegby was a Brooklyn Heights resident and father of two who worked as an investment banker for Credit Suisse, the New York Times reported.