A 49-year-old e-bike rider died Wednesday morning after slamming head-on into another e-cyclist inside a protected bike lane in the Bronx's Claremont section, a route built just a few years ago to make the corridor safer for cyclists. Darou Diop was riding north on Park Avenue around 6:50 a.m. when he collided with a 50-year-old e-cyclist heading south in the same lane, near East 171st Street.
The crash happened at Park Avenue and East 171st Street, according to a report citing the circumstances of the collision. The stretch of Park Avenue where Diop was riding is a two-way bike lane, meaning cyclists and e-bikers travel in both directions within the same protected corridor. Diop was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he later died, while the other e-cyclist was taken to the same hospital and treated for a hand injury. Police made no immediate arrest and were still investigating the collision, according to the same account. Diop lived about a mile and a half south of the crash scene.
A Bike Lane Built to Prevent Exactly This Kind of Crash
The irony cuts deep for anyone who has followed the recent history of that stretch of Park Avenue. A road-safety project added protective bike lanes along the corridor from Tremont to Fordham, part of a broader effort covering East 165th Street to East 188th Street, according to News 12 Bronx. The plan called for shortened crosswalks, improved visibility, and a reorganized roadway meant to curb speeding, with completion originally estimated by the end of 2024.
The city's Department of Transportation told the outlet that the work was still being built out. “Implementation is ongoing and we continue to build critical safety infrastructure in the Bronx,” the agency said, describing the corridor as a north-south protected bike lane. Wednesday's fatal crash occurred in the two-way Park Avenue bike lane, where cyclists travel in both directions.
A Citywide Pattern of Head-On Crashes
Diop's death is not an isolated case. The report notes that the growth of electric micromobility devices, which include e-bikes and e-scooters, is creating new safety challenges for two-way bike lanes across the city. On September 7, a 77-year-old e-scooter rider named Thomas Bakas was killed in a nearly identical scenario, colliding head-on with a 47-year-old cyclist in a two-way protected bike lane in downtown Brooklyn.
Police said Bakas was riding a stand-up e-scooter in the two-way lane on Schermerhorn Street when he collided with the cyclist near Smith Street. According to the New York Daily News, the cyclist was merging into the bike lane after darting between two parked cars when he struck Bakas. Neither man wore a helmet. Bakas died at New York Presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, while the cyclist stayed at the scene and faced no immediate charges.
Another deadly head-on crash unfolded on May 28, when 39-year-old Francis Delvalle was riding a Teverun Blade GT II motorized stand-up scooter, described as illegally fast, on the Ed Koch Bridge's northern outer roadway bicycle lane. Police said Delvalle, traveling west around 8:20 a.m., collided with Dmytro Stechenko, who was riding a traditional pedal bike in the opposite direction. Both men died from their injuries.
Queensboro Bridge and Southern Boulevard Add to the Toll
The same fatal collision described above involved a motorized scooter and a bicycle heading in opposite directions on the Queensboro Bridge bike path around 8:30 a.m. on a Thursday, according to ABC7 New York. Since May 2025, the bridge's north outer roadway has been reserved for bikes only, with pedestrians routed to the south outer roadway.
Closer to Wednesday's crash site, the Bronx has already been mourning cyclist deaths this year. A May 20 Ride of Silence was dedicated to the memory of 47 cyclists and e-bikers killed in Bronx traffic collisions since 2005, according to Transportation Alternatives, as reported by the Norwood News. A ghost bike installed at Southern Boulevard and Mosholu Parkway, the latest installed in the Bronx as part of the NYC Street Memorial Project, memorialized e-bike rider Charles Ovono Oluwole, who died in October 2025 after colliding with a metal pole on Southern Boulevard. In an earlier Bronx case, an e-bike cyclist was fatally struck on Southern Boulevard by a driver who fled on foot in June 2021.
No charges have been announced in connection with Diop's death, and investigators have not released further details about what led to the collision at Park Avenue and East 171st Street.
