New York Times, November 20, 1997
By MICHAEL COOPER
NEW YORK -- A fast-food deliveryman who was riding his bicycle on the sidewalk on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Tuesday night struck and killed a 68-year-old businessman who was leaving a restaurant, police said.
And while fatal bicycle accidents involving pedestrians are quite rare in New York City, the incident cast new light on cyclists who ride on sidewalks and in traffic with little regard for those around them or the law.
The victim in the latest incident, Arthur Kaye of Fort Lee, N.J., was leaving the Scaletta Ristorante on West 77th Street near Columbus Avenue at 9:20 p.m. when he was knocked down and killed by a deliveryman illegally riding his bicycle on the sidewalk, police said.
The deliveryman, Eduardo Delossantos, 24, who works for the Chirping Chicken restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue near West 77th Street, was given a summons at the scene for riding without commercial identification, said Robert Samuels, a police spokesman.
The Police Department's accident investigation squad took over the case Wednesday, and police officials said that they were weighing more serious charges against Delossantos and expected that at the very least he would be given a summons for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that the fatal accident had led him to ask the Police Department to step up its crackdown on bicycling infractions.
"Bicycles are a very big quality-of-life problem," the mayor said. "It may be the thing that was most mentioned to me when I was campaigning, particularly in Manhattan."
Councilman Andrew Eristoff, a Republican from the Upper East Side who sponsored the 1994 bill giving the police the power to seize bicycles from those who ride on sidewalks, said Wednesday that he would push for a new law that would hold business owners liable if the deliverymen they employ break traffic laws.
"What many people thought of as a quality-of-life matter has now become a matter of life and death," Eristoff said.
As food-delivery services have proliferated, so have the complaints of residents who say the deliverymen create a hazard on their sidewalks. "In my four and a half years in office, no other issue has generated such a level of complaints," said Eristoff, who estimated that he gets three calls a week on the subject.
The Police Department has issued 9,867 summonses to bicyclists so far this year, up from 6,111 summonses during the same period last year, said Deputy Inspector Michael Collins, a department spokesman. And earlier this month the department created a special unit of 10 officers on mountain bikes charged with keeping bicyclists off midtown sidewalks and cars out of designated bike lanes.
On Wednesday, 35 police officers in the 19th precinct on the Upper East Side conducted a previously scheduled crackdown on cyclists running red lights and riding on the sidewalk.
Kaye was the second pedestrian to be killed by a cyclist this year, police said.
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at messvilleto@yahoo.com