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Brooklyn Heights father first fatality while using Citi Bike

June 13, 2017 By Paul Frangipane Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Dan Hanegby. Photo taken from Dan Hanegby’s Facebook page
Dan Hanegby. Photo taken from Dan Hanegby’s Facebook page
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A 36-year-old Brooklyn Heights father of two was killed in Manhattan Monday when he crashed into a charter bus while riding a Citi Bike, marking the first death involving Citi Bike, officials said.

Dan Hanegby, an Israeli native, was riding on 26th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in Chelsea around 8:15 a.m., Monday, when he swerved to dodge a parked van and hit a bus driving next to him, the New York Times reported. Hanegby then fell off the bike and slid under the bus’s back tires.

He was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital Center.

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“This sad tragic death was absolutely preventable…the crash was not his fault,” said Paul White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit that advocates for safe bicycling. White says that protective bike lanes could have prevented the accident, in which Hanegby was squeezed for space.

As part of the city’s Vision Zero campaign, it is reported that four people were killed on bicycles in New York this year and 903 were injured.

A neighbor of Hanegby, Steve Adams, told the Times that he saw Hanegby wearing cycling clothes on weekends and riding a racing bicycle.

Hanegby was a director of investment banking at Credit Suisse and had studied at Brown University after he moved to the U.S. from Israel in 2003, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He lived in the Heights with his wife, Sasha, and his two children at 183 Columbia Heights.

Hanegby met his wife at age 10 when both were practicing tennis professionally. He was reportedly once ranked No. 1 tennis player in Israel before he quit to enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces as a staff sergeant.

The Citi Bike network that attracts large numbers of tourists to the bustling New York streets, has 593 stations in the city and 10 more docking stations were drafted for southern Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens on April 5.

“Bicycling is no longer a fringe activity in New York City, it’s a mainstream mode of transportation and it should be accommodated accordingly,” White said.


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