A routine afternoon on a quiet stretch of 162nd Street in Flushing, Queens, turned tragic this week when a moped carrying two 13-year-old boys collided with the driver’s side door of a parked car just as it was being opened. What followed was a chain of events that left one teen dead and another in the hospital, and it’s the kind of story that hits hard precisely because of how ordinary the setup was right up until the moment it wasn’t.
Surveillance footage from the scene shows a car pulling into a parking spot. Moments later, the moped carrying both teens came down the street and struck the door as it swung open. According to investigators, the moped’s driver swerved to avoid the door, lost control, and the bike then collided with a truck that was also traveling southbound on the same street. The passenger was thrown from the moped and came into contact with the truck’s rear wheel. That teen later died from injuries sustained in the crash. The driver survived and is currently recovering in the hospital.
The crash happened just after 12:30 p.m., in broad daylight, on a street where neighbors say fast-moving mopeds aren’t unusual. As of this reporting, no arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing. Police have not released additional details about the moped’s owner, whether it was registered, or what specifically caused the loss of control beyond the swerve to avoid the door.
Local residents who spoke with reporters described a mix of shock and a kind of weary familiarity. Several mentioned having seen mopeds moving at high speed through the neighborhood before, a detail that, while anecdotal, lines up with a broader pattern many cities have wrestled with as moped and e-bike use has grown.
What Investigators Are Looking At
The sequence here matters. This wasn’t a head-on collision or a case of reckless overtaking; it was a parked car door opening into the path of a vehicle that didn’t have much room to maneuver. The moped driver’s evasive swerve is what put the bike in the truck’s path.
That’s a detail worth sitting with, because it speaks to how little margin exists on narrow city streets when multiple things go wrong in quick succession.
People are wondering why teens are allowed to operate mopeds and have started debating if it should require a license. Said one comment: “Even though it was the driver’s fault for opening the door without looking, the people and/or kids that ride these scooters think they are indestructible. Sad thing, nothing will change as a result of this.”
The “Dooring” Problem Isn’t New
What happened here falls into a category traffic safety researchers call “dooring,” when a parked vehicle’s door opens into the path of an oncoming cyclist, moped rider, or motorcyclist. It’s a long-recognized hazard, and many cities have pushed driver education campaigns (like the “Dutch reach,” where drivers open their door with the far hand, forcing a shoulder check) specifically to reduce it.
Whether that applies here isn’t yet clear from what’s been released, but it’s a useful piece of context for why this kind of crash happens more often than people might assume.
A Tragedy Without Easy Answers
There’s no tidy lesson to wrap this up with, and it wouldn’t be right to manufacture one. A child is dead, another is recovering, and a community is left processing a crash that started with something as mundane as a car door. What we do know is that the investigation is still active, and more details, including whether the moped was registered or whether any charges will follow, are likely to emerge in the coming days.
For now, the most accurate thing to say is also the simplest: this is still developing, and our thoughts are with the families involved.
Dooring is not a new problem that has suddenly been discovered.
53 years ago when I started cycling in the US, car doors opening without warning or time to stop were a well known hazard.
Perhaps it is time to make the practice of hitting passing traffic with car doors illegal.
Negligent manslaughter charges and heavy news coverage of those charges in cases like this where the motorist kills somebody by not checking for bicycles, motorcycles, mopeds, or other passing traffic should be the law instead of a civil lawsuit to have a very well paid lawyer argue with another very well paid lawyer in front of a judge being paid by the local government to determine if the person who *attacked* passing traffic with a car door should pay the expenses involved in the resurrection of their victim.
The actual damage is often life long disability even if they live.
As someone who was a cyclist for 49 years in a country where bicycles, motorcycles, and mopeds are required BY LAW to use the public roadways, I faced this hazard everytime I rode on a street that allowed parallel parking on the street. Even in 1973 it was not a new problem. It was a well known, well documented, hazard that nobody but ambulance chasing lawyers cared about.
Perhaps it is time to start making it illegal with penalties ranging from a traffic ticket for attempted dooring up to verrry long prison sentences for homicide by car door.