Forty-two-year-old Ernesto Guzman was riding the e-bike on the Upper East Side around 4:30 p.m. when he was hit by a black SUV that fled the scene.
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Guzman was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The driver fled, police said, and the SUV was found unoccupied two blocks from the crash scene with damage and its airbags deployed.
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Danny Harris, the executive director of the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said Guzman was at least the 20th person to be killed in traffic while riding a bicycle in New York City this year.
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Harris said Guzman was killed by "a driver wielding a 5,500-pound Chevrolet Tahoe SUV" and that delivery workers are at risk "because of constant exposure to impatient drivers piloting multi-ton assault vehicles on streets designed to move and store cars."
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"Delivery cyclists have been on the front lines of this pandemic, and food delivery remains one of the most dangerous jobs in New York," Harris said. "Guzman's death is not an accident, but the predictable and preventable result of the mayor slashing the Vision Zero and Green Wave Plan budgets and delaying the rollout of the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program and the Streets Master Plan. The New York City Department of Transportation has the tools to deliver safer streets, but as long as the mayor holds them back, all New Yorkers are stuck with a system that prioritizes the convenience of drivers over human life."
(The Associated Press contributed to this report)
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