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After a cyclist died, the city quiclky patches a road defect for which multiple complaints had been logged in the past

road defect killed cyclistA senior cyclist died in a accident caused by a road defect in Queens, NYC, last Thursday. 77 year old Lin Wen-Chiang was riding his bicycle on 40th Driver in Elmhurst when he hit a broken cave-in pavement  and fell off his bike. He suffered severe head trauma and died from his injuries.

6 complaints were previously logged in with the Department of Transportation as the cave-in pavement was never properly addressed

After the accident occurred, city workers were seen patching the defect which had been poorly addressed despite multiple complaints to the city.

The first complaint to the Department of Transportation was logged in on January 12 2021 and the DOT replied that it had reached out to the Department of Environmental Protection to address the issues and that it would inspect the problem again 60 days later.

12 days later on January 24 2021, another resident called the DOT to report a “pothole”  and the DOT said they fixed the problem.

However the fix did not work and in May 2021, two residents complained again that the supposedly fixed pothole had become a cave-in. Again the DOT said they would ask the DEP to fix it and that they would inspect it 60 days later. The issue was probably never addressed or not proprely addressed as  a new complaint was received on September 16 2021. Another complaint about the same cave-in was made to the DOT on October 28 2021.  10 days ago, the DOT received a complaint from a resident mentioning a “failed street repair”.

Last Thursday, this failure to proprely address the cave-in resulted in the death of a cyclist.

After the cyclist died, the defect was patched so hastily that it now makes a bump and causes another hazard for cyclists.

Lin Wen-Chiang is the third person to die in a bicycle accident in New York City since the beginning of the year.

Read more in Street Blog

The road defect can be seen on Google map (see picture)