Hit-and-Run Driver, Exiting a Highway, Kills Queens Pedestrian

A driver struck and killed a Queens pedestrian late on Thursday as he crossed a street near a highway exit ramp that dumps cars into a residential community.

According to police, the man, whose name and age were not released, was crossing the exit ramp of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at Broadway — in the marked crosswalk — at around 9:20 p.m. when a driver, heading up the exit ramp from the southbound highway struck him, causing severe head and body trauma.

The driver fled on 69th Street, according to police. EMTs took the victim to Elmhurst Hospital, where he died.

The intersection in question is notorious in Woodside because it features exit and entrance ramps to the highway intersecting with residential streets and wild and untamed Broadway. Between Jan. 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2021, there were 93 reported crashes at that one intersection, or 23 per year, injuring one cyclist, five pedestrians and 25 motorists, according to city stats.

Beyond the immediate danger of the highway exit ramp, Broadway itself is a strip of excessive road violence. Over the same period along just the two-mile stretch of Broadway between Northern and Queens boulevards, there were 1,231, or roughly 300 per year, according to city statistics. Those crashes injured 54 cyclists, 114 pedestrians and 219 motorists, killing two pedestrians.

Like 2021, this year has been horrifyingly bloody on the streets of New York, with close to 100 people dying in crashes through June 2, according to the year-to-date chart provided by the Department of Transportation: