A 13-year-old boy suffered lacerations to his forehead after being struck by a car while crossing Pitkin Avenue mid-block near 1580 Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville, according to the NYPD. The boy was taken by paramedics to Maimonides Medical Center and is expected to recover, police say. No charges had been filed in the crash as of Saturday evening.
Police say the vehicle involved was a 2015 Hyundai traveling eastbound on Pitkin Avenue, driven by a 36-year-old man. Investigators say the driver remained at the scene after the crash, as reported by News12 Brooklyn. The boy is recovering at a hospital, according to the NYPD.
The lack of criminal charges tied to the boy's mid-block crossing traces back to a 2024 change in city law. New York City's Local Law 98, passed in October 2024, decriminalized mid-block street crossing and crossing against traffic signals, stripping police of the authority to issue criminal tickets or summonses for jaywalking, according to the New York City Council. That law still requires pedestrians crossing outside a crosswalk to yield the right-of-way to oncoming vehicles.
The change in pedestrian law does not erase driver responsibility, however. Under New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law Section 1146, drivers have a statutory duty to exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian on a roadway, including those crossing outside a crosswalk, and must sound their horn as a warning when necessary, per New York State's open legislation records. Failure to meet that standard can result in traffic infractions or license points regardless of where a pedestrian was crossing.
A Corridor Already Flagged for Danger
The crash site sits within the boundaries of the NYPD's 73rd Precinct, which patrols Brownsville and Ocean Hill from its headquarters on East New York Avenue. Pitkin Avenue itself carries an official Vision Zero Priority Corridor designation from the city, a label reserved for streets with historically high rates of severe pedestrian injuries and vehicle crashes, according to the New York City Department of Transportation. The city's default speed limit on streets like Pitkin Avenue is 25 miles per hour, a Vision Zero policy set in November 2014 meant to cut pedestrian mortality roughly in half compared with crashes occurring at 30 mph.
This is not the corridor's first serious incident this year. In January, a woman was killed in a hit-and-run crash on Pitkin Avenue near Mother Gaston Boulevard, marking the 73rd Precinct's first traffic fatality of the year, as Hoodline reported at the time. In April, an e-moped rider suffered critical head trauma after colliding with an SUV at Pitkin Avenue and Hinsdale Street, an intersection crash in which the driver similarly stayed at the scene, according to Hoodline's coverage of that crash.
A Neighborhood Still Waiting on Safety Fixes
A June urban policy report found that high-crash Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Brownsville and East New York have relatively few slow-zone miles and intersection safety treatments compared with their elevated crash risks, a gap Hoodline detailed in its report titled Deadly Streets Leave NYC Neighborhoods in the Crosshairs. That disparity in infrastructure investment adds weight to community concerns every time another serious crash happens along the same stretch of road.
Citywide, the stakes for children are especially high. Traffic crashes have historically been the leading cause of injury-related death for children under 14 across New York City, according to NYC Vision Zero data. That statistic helps explain why crashes involving young pedestrians, like the one this week on Pitkin Avenue, tend to draw such intense public attention.
Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, where the boy was taken, operates Brooklyn's only dedicated, accredited Level 2 pediatric trauma center and recently opened an expanded Children's Emergency Department in late 2025. Routing the injured boy there rather than to a closer general emergency room reflects the specialized care such units are built to provide for young trauma patients. It remains unclear whether the NYPD's ongoing investigation will examine the Hyundai's speed or the driver's reaction time before the collision.
