Kin fault city in cyclist death
$100M suit blames poorly designed street for collision with truck
A poorly designed street was responsible for the death of a woman whose bike collided with a box truck last month at a Brooklyn intersection, say the rider’s heartbroken relatives, who are suing the city for $100 million.
Sarah Schick’s family also plans to sue the man behind the wheel of the 26-foot box truck when it and the bicycle crashed on Jan. 10, dragging her to the pavement before she was run over by the vehicle’s rear tires.
The 37-year-old victim was pedaling east on Ninth St. in Gowanus about 7:20 a.m. when both she and the truck driver stopped at a red light at Second Ave.
When the light turned green, the truck and the bike somehow made contact, resulting in the deadly disaster.
A lawyer for Schick’s family, Sam Davis, said city streets like the one Schick was riding on that day are filled with “lethal flaws.”
Davis said the “sharrow,” or shared vehicle and bike lane at the location, contributed to Schick’s death.
“This is what happens when a 26-foot box truck with a 6-foot cab that’s 8½ feet wide is asked to navigate in a sharrow lane,” Davis said Monday. “That leaves 3 feet or less room on that road.”
He said Schick’s death was caused by the city’s “failure to do what is their responsibility to do, that is to study what’s a safe street, to design it as a safe street, to bring it up to date to what the current needs are to respond to the multiple fatalities and injuries and collisions. “Sarah’s death will be the force that compels the City of New York to fix these lethal flaws,” Davis added.
The lawyer also said there isn’t proper notification of the lane merging. “Sadly, that sign was placed about 300 feet from where it needed to be placed, where the dedicated bike lane ended,” Davis said.
A city Department of Transportation representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Schick was a wife and mother of 6- and 9-year-old girls. She was also director of a finance company that arranged funds for transportation projects.
“She was involved in infrastructure projects that in those communities made the kind of difference in the safety of communities that we need from the City of New York,” said Davis, calling it “the irony” of the situation.
Schick’s husband, Maxime Lemounier, said the city needs to be held accountable for her death.
“It’s unacceptable that Sarah died respecting every rule of the road,” Lemounier said. “The city needs to take action and be held accountable for what happened.”
In the days after Schick’s death, Department of Transportation officials said crews would redesign an unprotected portion of Ninth St. later this year and change the signal timing to give pedestrians and cyclists time to cross before cars and trucks get a green light.
The changes were announced after protesters and cyclists staged a “die-in” where Schick was killed.
For Schick’s parents, the promises were too little and too late.
“We all know that at any moment anything can crumble, disappear,” said Schick’s mother, Evelyne, with Schick’s father, Pierre Schick, by her side. “All that remains is a pain that seems to go on to consume us and we are devastated by this terrible tragedy.”
A pink-and-white “ghost bike” was placed at the scene, with flowers coming out of the basket and a photo of Schick attached to the front spokes. “Sarah” was written on the frame in gold.
At the corner, a large display of photos of Schick with family and friends covered two panels attached to a building exterior.
One friend, Adel Sammons, remembered Schick as “amazing.”
“She worked extremely hard at everything she did and put 100% into everything — her work, her kids, her husband,” said Sammons, 39.
“She was like a sun, a ball of energy,” said another friend, Christelle Dorrer, 39.