A 25-year-old woman riding a Divvy bike who died Friday morning following a crash involving a flatbed truck in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood is believed to be the first person killed while riding a bike-sharing bicycle in the United States. 
 
 The crash happened about 9 a.m. near Sacramento and Belmont avenues, said Officer Jose Estrada, a police spokesman, citing preliminary information. The truck and the bicyclist were both traveling north on Sacramento, when both turned east at Belmont and collided, Estrada said. 
 
 The woman was taken in critical condition to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center and later pronounced dead, Estrada said. She was identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office as Virginia Murray, 25, of the 1200 block of North Marion Court in the Wicker Park neighborhood. 
 
 The woman's death is believed to be the first bike-share fatality in the United States since the first bike-share program started in Tulsa, Okla., in 2007, according to Paul DeMaio, principal of Washington, D.C.-based MetroBike, a bike-share consulting business. 
 
 Brandon Chew / Chicago Tribune Flowers lay where a women was killed while riding her bike the day before at the corner of Sacramento and Belmont avenues on July 2, 2016. Flowers lay where a women was killed while riding her bike the day before at the corner of Sacramento and Belmont avenues on July 2, 2016. (Brandon Chew / Chicago Tribune) (Brandon Chew / Chicago Tribune) 
 
 “This is really unfortunate. My heart goes out to the family members and friends of the person who was killed. Hopefully this will lead to the hastening and the growth of networks of bike infrastructure not only in Chicago but throughout North America.” 
 
 In a joint statement, the Chicago Department of Transportation and Divvy expressed their “deepest condolences to the rider’s family and loved ones.” 
 
 Nearly 8 million rides have been taken on the Divvy system since the bikes were brought into Chicago in June 2013. 
 
 “It’s a tragic reminder that we still have work to do to make our streets safe for everyone,” said Jim Merrell, advocacy director for the Active Transportation Alliance, which promotes safe biking, walking and transit. He said the Alliance looks forward to the release this fall of the city’s “Vision Zero” plan, the goal of which is eliminating traffic fatalities. 
 
 “We believe all fatalities on our roadways are preventable,” said Merrell. 
 
 The police department’s Major Accident Investigation Unit was investigating. 
 
 A Mineta Transportation Institute study released in March found the rates of collision and injury among bike-sharing participants were lower than the rates among regular bicyclists. 
 
 Transportation experts have attributed the lower collision and injury rate to a number of factors, including the shared bike’s bulky, heavy design, which cuts speed, discourages risky maneuvers and increases visibility. 
 
 Bike-share programs have proliferated to over 32,000 bikes in about 100 U.S. cities over the last nine years, including Evanston and Oak Park, which got Divvy bikes this week. There have been bike-share deaths in other countries, including Canada and Mexico. ||||| A Manhattan investment banker and former Israeli army staff sergeant became the Big Apple’s first Citi Bike fatality Monday morning when he was hit by a bus. 
 
 Dan Hanegby, 36, of Brooklyn Heights was riding on West 26th Street near Eighth Avenue in between a coach bus and a parked car when he lost control of the bike and fell to the ground at around 8:20 a.m.,police sources said. 
 
 Hanegby, a married father of two who worked as a director of the investment banking division for Credit Suisse Group, was then struck by the bus, sources said. 
 
 “They were very close, the bus and him… unfortunately he lost his balance and went under,” said Luichys Caba, 32, a building superintendent whose West 26th Street building caught the crash on surveillance footage. 
 
 Emergency responders rushed Hanegby to Bellevue Hospital where he was pronounced dead about two hours later. 
 
 The operator of the bus remained at the scene. 
 
 “He’s a good man. He’s a good father. He’s a good husband. I can’t believe this,” Hanegby’s neighbor on Columbia Heights said of him. 
 
 It was the first time since Citi Bike was rolled out in the Big Apple in 2013 and over 43 million bike trips that a user of the bike-share program was killed. 
 
 “This morning a rider on a Citi Bike bike was involved in a fatal crash. Together with the City of New York, we wish to express our heartfelt condolences to the rider’s family and loved ones on this terrible tragedy,” Citi Bike spokesperson Dani Simons said in a statement. 
 
 His death was also the second fatality in over 102 million trips to have been taken on a bike-share bicycle in the US since 2010 – when the first modern bike-share systems in the country were established, officials said. 
 
 The first fatality, Virginia Murray, was killed when she was struck by a flatbed truck last July while riding one of Chicago’s “Divvy’’ bikes. 
 
 Hanegby, who was born and raised near Tel Aviv, joined Credit Suisse in 2014 after a seven-year stint at Morgan Stanley where he was a vice president, according to his LinkedIn profile. 
 
 He was a staff sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces between 1999 and 2002. 
 
 Hanegby, once an avid tennis player who started playing at the age of seven, came to the US to attend Binghamton before transferring to Brown University two years later. 
 
 By the age of 16, he was ranked as the No. 1 tennis player in Israel – a title he held until he was 18, the age in Israel when compulsory military service begins, the Brown Daily Herald reported. 
 
 “I hate to lose in tennis, but there are other things in life that are worse,” Hanegby told the campus newspaper. “No tennis win can compare to that feeling of knowing you helped to stop the next suicide bomber. I would definitely do it again.” 
 
 During his time at Brown University between 2003 and 2007, he was captain of the men’s tennis team where he played singles and doubles. 
 
 Additional reporting by Abigail Gepner and Danielle Furfaro ||||| Leaving bouquets and trading tales of their own crashes and close calls, the city’s bicycle community today rolled up in a steady stream to the spot in North Baltimore where 41-year-old Thomas Palermo was struck and killed by a motorist yesterday, many of them puzzling over how the collision could have occurred in such a seemingly bike-friendly spot. 
 
 “I always feel so safe when I get there,” said Katie Gore, of Joe’s Bike Shop in Mount Washington, after laying bunches of flowers at the stone wall that was fast becoming a memorial to Palermo. 
 
 The stretch of Roland Avenue where the incident occurred, near the Bellemore Road intersection, is wide – with two traffic lanes and a bike lane in each direction and a grassy median between them. The road surface is relatively smooth and there is no road reconstruction taking place here, as there is further south on Roland. 
 
 But in a way, that’s the harsh message of this most recent bicyclist fatality, said Gore’s husband Joe Traill: that cyclists’ safety depends on something even tougher to fix than laws and bike infrastructure – motorists’ behavior. 
 
 “If everyone was riding the speed limit, it shouldn’t matter the condition of the roadway,” Traill said, his face red with emotion. 
 
 “If everyone was respecting the three-foot-law, it shouldn’t matter the condition of the roadway,” he said. “If everyone was following the law about not texting while they drive, it shouldn’t matter the condition of the roadway.” 
 
 “It’s the same message we’ve always had, we just have to say it louder,” Traill said. 
 
 Gore explained that their shop in Mount Washington is nearby on Falls Road (right down hilly Bellemore) and that the initial report of an unnamed 41-year-old male cyclist struck a particular chill when she heard it yesterday: “that describes a large number of our customers.” 
 
 Motorist Left the Scene 
 
 According to Baltimore Police spokesman Det. Jeremy Silbert, “officers were called to the 5700 block of Roland Avenue for a report of a car accident” that took place at about 2:37 pm Saturday. 
 
 When police arrived, Palermo was still alive and was taken to Sinai Hospital, where he died from his injuries. 
 
 The motorist, meanwhile, had fled the scene and returned only after she was reportedly chased down by other cyclists. Police described the driver as a 58-year-old woman who had been heading south on Roland Avenue. They said the decision about whether to charge her would be made after consulting with the city state’s attorney’s office. 
 
 (In an odd coincidence, CBS NFL writer Jason LaCanfora, who happened upon the scene and gave an account of it, had his own experience with drivers leaving an accident scene when his wife was injured by a hit-and-run driver while jogging.) 
 
 Gore, Traill and other cyclists who saw online photos of the deeply indented and smashed windshield of the Subaru wagon involved in the crash, said it spoke volumes and left them with little sympathy for the motorist who initially fled. 
 
 “There’s no way you could not know you’d hit somebody,” Gore said. 
 
 “He was alive after it happened. She might have been able to help or call for help if she’d stayed on the scene,” said Lora Peters, who was walking by, looking for the spot where the fatal bike crash occurred. 
 
 Hearing about it yesterday had left her deeply disturbed, Peters said. 
 
 “I would have been on my bike this morning but I had a kind of panic attack about it,” she said, recalling her own collision with a car two-and-a-half years ago. She said she narrowly avoided being struck when the vehicle made a left turn right across her path. Instead she crashed into the side of the car. 
 
 She noted that the incident occurred not in a congested, busy or poorly designed streetscape but in a quiet nearby residential neighborhood – “it was just right over there in Homeland.” 
 
 Yelled at and Worse 
 
 Other bicyclists who stopped to pay their respects had their own tales to tell about encounters with impatient and hostile motorists. 
 
 “I’ve been yelled at and egged. Yesterday, I had somebody throw cigarettes at me,” said Scott McNary. “Mostly this happens up in the county.” 
 
 McNary and companions Bob Compton, Phil Kennedy and Ethan McNary made a point of stopping at the crash scene on their way back from a ride to downtown. 
 
 With police still investigating Saturday’s crash, many who came to pay their respects yesterday noted that Palermo had a business, building bike frames and was an experienced cyclist. 
 
 “I’m sure he was minding his own business in the bike lane, right where he was supposed to be” said Howard Simon, of Remington, who said he rides on Roland Avenue frequently. 
 
 Others ran through the list of fatal crashes claiming cyclists’ lives in recent years (including John R. “Jack” Yates on Maryland Avenue in 2009 and Nathan Krasnopoler on West University Parkway in 2011) and urged prosecutors to hold drivers accountable. 
 
 Meanwhile, the bicycle advocacy group, Bikemore released this statement. 
 
 “Our thoughts are with the family and friends of Tom Palermo, who was killed while riding his bicycle on Roland Avenue. Tom was a passionate bicycle builder, a father, and a friend to many people who ride bicycles in Baltimore. 
 
 While details of the crash are still emerging, we know the driver of the car involved initially fled the scene, leaving Tom to die on the street. It is clear that dedicated bicycle lanes were not enough to keep even an experienced bicycle rider safe. 
 
 Bikemore urges the justice system to hold the driver who killed Tom accountable for her actions. 
 
 Bikemore will continue to advocate for Baltimore to follow the lead of other major cities and build physically-separated bicycle infrastructure to protect the growing number of people who ride bicycles for transportation and recreation. 
 
 Roland Park residents and Bikemore asked the city to improve the Roland Avenue bicycle facilities during the resurfacing project that is currently underway. Traffic-separated bicycle lanes could have prevented a crash like this. Unfortunately, these requests were ignored in favor of maintaining vehicular traffic speeds, speeds which likely contributed to Tom’s death.” 
 
 Not everyone who came to pay respects yesterday was a cyclist. A woman walked over from the nearby apartments and held up three small pots of poinsettias. 
 
 “Would it be appropriate for me to leave these?” she asked the four bike riders. They told her it was, and thanked her. 
 
 “It’s just horrible, what happened,” she said
– A 25-year-old woman taking advantage of Chicago's bike-sharing service died Friday morning after she and a flatbed truck turned at the same time and crashed— reportedly making her the first bike-share fatality in the US since the service first debuted in Oklahoma in 2007, a bike-sharing consultant tells the Chicago Tribune. Per DNAinfo, the woman on the Divvy bike, IDed by the Cook County medical examiner as Virginia Murray, tried to make a turn east from Sacramento Avenue to Belmont Avenue and smashed into the truck making the same turn; a witness says she was thrown 6 feet into the air before crashing to the ground. Murray suffered severe injuries to her upper body and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Bike-sharing programs—where riders pay a fee to pick up a bike at a self-serve station, then drop it off at another location when they're done—are increasing in popularity around the US, with the Wall Street Journal noting there are about 40 currently in existence. And while the Mineta Transportation Institute has noted bike sharing can be seen as being "inherently unsafe" for bicyclists (including riders not using helmets and not being familiar with a city's landscape), a study found "collision and injury rates for bikesharing are lower" than rates for regular cyclists. (Police say Murray was wearing a helmet, per the Journal.) Still, an Active Transportation Alliance director tells the Tribune that Murray's death is "a tragic reminder that we still have work to do to make our streets safe for everyone." In a statement, Divvy and Chicago's DOT shared their "deepest condolences to the rider's family and loved ones," per the Tribune, with the paper noting that Divvy has provided almost 8 million rides since it was introduced in the Windy City three years ago. (A GOPer thinks bike sharing is a conspiracy.)