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A Brooklyn filmmaker bicycling to work in the rain was killed yesterday morning when he fell off his bike and tumbled underneath a truck on West Houston Street in Greenwich Village.
The victim, Derek Lake, 23, a graduate of the School of Visual Arts who had recently finished directing his first feature, was declared dead at the scene after he was crushed beneath the
wheels of a tractor-trailer going west, as it edged alongside a construction site that had narrowed the busy roadway from three lanes to one.
Mr. Lake was the third cyclist since 2005 to be killed on Houston Street, a six-lane crosstown thoroughfare that draws a large number of trucks and has a high number of accidents involving cyclists.
There were 24 fatal accidents involving bike riders last year across the city, the Police Department said.
Officials did not have figures for any part of this year, which would include the death on Sunday of Dr. Carl H. Nacht, a 56-year-old physician who was hit by a Police Department tow truck last Thursday as he and his wife rode their bicycles along the Hudson River Park bike path.
Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a cycling advocacy group, said these and other recent accidents underscored what he called the continued hostility
that bike riders face from motor vehicles in New York City, where protected cycling lanes are rare and cars and their often-aggressive drivers rule the road. "The average New Yorker probably thinks you have to be a little bit crazy to ride a bike in New York, and that's a shame," Mr. White said. "Biking shouldn't have to be so perilous."
Although Mr. White praised the Transportation Department for installing a dedicated bike lane along Eighth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets recently, he said bicyclists still faced a free-for-all on most of the city's streets. About 120,000 people a day use bicycles in the city, according to the organization, a 40 percent increase from a decade ago.
The accident that killed Mr. Lake occurred at 9:30 a.m. as he made his way to work on a silver mountain bike he bought three weeks ago, according to the police. Camerino Ovando, 43, a truck driver headed west on Houston Street, said he saw
Mr. Lake make a right turn from La Guardia Place and wobble along a steel plate covering a construction trench before falling beneath the trucks' wheels. "The bike went to the right, and he went to the left," he said.
Under city contracting regulations, such plates must be flush with the pavement and be made skid-resistant. Over the weekend, the company in charge of rebuilding Houston Street, Tully Construction, was issued six citations for failing to maintain its plates. But Bill Ryan, a spokesman for the company, insisted that there was no plate at the spot where Mr. Lake fell.
The driver of the truck was not charged in the accident but was given summonses for six violations involving his vehicle's equipment, the police said.
Mr. Lake was raised in a small town outside Elmira, N.Y. He lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant and worked at a small multimedia production company filming and directing the filming of corporate and
private events and promotions, according to his friends. Last year, he wrote and directed "Sans Pertinence," a short feature about the tribulations of four American soldiers who capture a German prisoner near the end of World War II.
Edwin Mullon, the president of Visionary Interactive, Mr. Lake's employer, said that Mr. Lake was thrilled on Friday to learn that his movie had been accepted into yet another film festival. He said he hired Mr. Lake after seeing a short film he made when he was just 16. "I was just so astonished by his talent," Mr. Mullon said. "I thought, one day he's going to be a great director."
In last Thursday's accident, Dr. Nacht, a physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital
Center, was riding home from dinner in Chelsea when a tow truck unexpectedly turned into the bike lane at 38th Street and 12th Avenue, according to his wife, Mary Beth Kelly, who was with him at the time. Despite signs telling drivers to yield to pedestrians and cyclists, she said the tow truck did not slow down as it headed toward a riverfront tow pound. The driver was not cited, although the police said the accident was still under investigation.
Ms. Kelly said she and her husband had roamed the world on bicycles for the past 35 years and had made weekly jaunts to Brooklyn. Even in winter, Dr. Nacht made the daily ride from his home on 103rd Street and Riverside Drive to his office on West 66th Street. "He knew what he was doing," she said. "We thought because we were on a bike path, we were safe."
