NYC's Bike-Share Program Has First Fatality

New York's bike-share program just had an unwanted first: A 36-year old Citi Bike rider was killed Monday after colliding with a charter bus in Midtown Manhattan.The death of investment banker Dan Hanegby is the first fatality in the history of the city program, which has had more than 43 million rides since it began four years ago. According to the New York Times, Hanegby, a director of investment banking at Credit Suisse, was riding on 26th Street about 8:15am when he swerved to avoid a parked van and crashed into the bus. Police say Hanegby fell off the bicycle and under the bus’ rear tires, and was pronounced dead a short time later at the hospital. "They were very close, the bus and him," a witness tells the New York Post. "Unfortunately he lost his balance and went under.”

Hanegby grew up in Israel and had been his nation's top-ranked tennis player as a teenager before joining the Israel Defense Forces. He served from 1999 to 2002, moved to the US in 2003, and eventually transferred to Brown, where he captained the tennis team, per a profile in the Brown Daily Herald. At the time of his death, he lived in Brooklyn Heights with his wife and two young children. Citi Bike, the largest bike-sharing program in the country, started in 2013 and now has 593 stations and 10,000 bikes in New York City. It averaged nearly 44,000 riders a day in April. Hanegby was the sixth person to die on a bike in the city this year, reports the New York Daily News. (More bicycling stories.)