Cyclist killed by car on Fort Lauderdale drawbridge, police said

The Seventh Avenue drawbridge over the New River in Fort Lauderdale was shut down for about three hours Thursday morning after a crash killed a bicyclist on the span, police said.

Around 7:29 a.m., first responders rushed to the 400 block of Southwest Seventh Avenue, where Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue paramedics declared the bicyclist dead, police said.

The incident impacted both car and boat traffic because the bridge remained in the down position as police investigated the cyclist’s death.

The crash was first reported as a hit-and-run, but “the driver returned to the scene,” said Detective Ali Adamson, a Fort Lauderdale Police Department spokeswoman.

Florida deadliest state for cyclists

Florida ranks as the deadliest state for cyclists in both absolute numbers and per capita rates, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,.

In 2021, the last year data is available, 197 people died cycling in Florida, the result of traffic crashes. That’s a rate of 0.90 deaths per 100,000 people in a state that had 21.8 million people in 2021, according to NHTSA. Most other states had cyclist death rates ranging from zero to 0.50.

California came in second with 125 cyclists killed in traffic crashes in 2021, followed by 91 cyclists’ deaths in Texas, according to NHTSA.

According to the cyclist advocacy nonprofit, the League of American Bicyclists, an average of 162 cyclists died annually nationwide between 2017 and 2021. The data used to get the group’s numbers was compiled from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.