A 30-year-old woman died Wednesday evening after a New York City Department of Sanitation truck struck her while turning on Bay Parkway in Brooklyn, officials said. The crash happened at about 6:40 p.m. as the truck was making a right turn and the woman was crossing from the southwest corner of the intersection toward the southeast. She was taken to NYU Langone with trauma and later pronounced dead.
The 41-year-old truck operator remained at the scene, and police made no arrests, according to ABC7 New York, which first reported the crash. DSNY is the city's sanitation department, and officials have not released further details about the exact location of the collision or the truck's direction of travel beforehand.
A Corridor With a Grim History
Wednesday's death is not the first fatal pedestrian crash on this stretch of road. On October 29, 2019 — almost exactly seven years earlier — 49-year-old Gilberta Hernandez was struck while crossing Bay Parkway with the light by a driver turning left from Benson Avenue, and she died two days later, Streetsblog New York City reported at the time. That same Streetsblog account found the Benson Avenue and Bay Parkway intersection had seen 28 crashes in the prior year alone, injuring two pedestrians.
The danger extends beyond that single intersection. A four-block stretch of Bay Parkway between 86th Street and the Belt Parkway entrance ramp recorded 144 crashes in a single year, injuring 21 people, including five pedestrians, per the same Streetsblog report. Since 2014, that strip has seen 582 crashes and two pedestrian deaths, the outlet found.
Planned Safety Upgrades Along the Route
City officials have outlined plans to redesign parts of Bay Parkway. According to the NYC Mayor's Office, the Department of Transportation will add upgraded pedestrian ramps, 18 new median islands, painted median and curb extensions, new left-turn lanes at 14 intersections, and left-turn restrictions at most other intersections along the corridor. Those improvements have been announced as planned work, though it is not established whether they were in place at the time of Wednesday's crash.
Scrutiny of Sanitation Trucks and Side Guards
This is not the first time a DSNY truck has struck a pedestrian in Brooklyn. An 81-year-old woman was hit by a DSNY truck near Fifteenth Avenue and 85th Street in Bensonhurst at around 8:34 a.m., according to PIX11, which reported the 2022 collision and said she was expected to survive her injuries. In that case, PIX11 said the 34-year-old driver was arrested and charged with failing to yield to a pedestrian — a different outcome than Wednesday's crash, in which police made no arrests.
Separately, a 34-year-old man was fatally struck by two trucks while crossing Pennsylvania Avenue in Brooklyn in July 2026, amNewYork reported; the first truck hit him while traveling southbound and fled the scene, while a second truck struck him moments later and its driver stayed put. New York City has required side guards or underguards on heavy commercial waste vehicles since 2015, with companies given until 2023 to comply, Streetsblog New York City reported. An underguard is described as reducing fatalities by 40 percent by preventing pedestrians, cyclists and smaller vehicles from being pinned beneath large trucks, the outlet noted.
Yet the city's Business Integrity Commission has said roughly half of trade-waste trucks have been granted exemptions from that requirement because vehicle design or operation made installation difficult, per the same Streetsblog report. The commission issued 312 such waivers in the most recent year discussed, down from 572 in the final year of the Adams administration. It remains unconfirmed whether the truck involved in Wednesday's crash had a side guard, underguard or waiver.
A 2021 study cited by Streetsblog found that every fatal New York City collision since 2010 involving a stopped commercial garbage truck that was then put into drive involved a cab with a conventional design. The outlet has also chronicled other garbage-truck fatalities over the years, including the death of 15-year-old cyclist Daria Serkov, who was struck in Manhattan by a trade-waste truck along with another teenager riding Citi Bikes.
