Sadly, Chicago saw its first bike fatality of 2025 on Memorial Day, when a Hummer driver fatally struck Yader Castaneda, 18, while he was riding an electric Divvy bike-share cycle in the Loop.
According to the initial Chicago Police Department statement, on Monday, May 26, at around 4:53 a.m., Castaneda was cycling on Randolph Street. As he crossed Michigan Avenue, he was involved in a collision with the motorist, 65, whom the statement said was traveling "southbound, through a green light."
The bike rider was taken to Northwestern Hospital in critical condition, according to the CPD. He was pronounced dead and hour later. According to the Cook County medical examiner's office, he lived in southwest-suburban Plano.
The driver, who was uninjured, was charged with failure to reduce speed to prevent a crash, police said.
The Illinois Traffic Crash Report, completed by responding officers, provides more details about what reportedly happened. It states that when police arrived at the scene, Castaneda was lying in the street on Michigan receiving medical care from first responders.
Friends of Castaneda were on the scene, the crash report states. They told police they were also riding bikes at the time of the collision.
According to the report, a police observation device camera recorded the Hummer driver heading south on Michigan with a green light. As Castaneda entered the intersection, he "went against the traffic signal, traveling westbound on Randolph, and which time [the motorist] struck [Castaneda], causing [the cyclist] to eject out of the Divvy bike he was operating."
The report states that there was visible damage to the Hummer. The driver was taken to Northwestern for a DUI test, and results were pending.
According to an online obituary, Castaneda had recently graduated from Plano High School and worked as a "talented" barber at a shop in nearby Yorkville.
A Sun-Times article on the case by David Struett identifies the driver as Peter Aleck, a resident of southwest-suburban Frankfort who owns a plumbing company based in south-suburban Homewood. Aleck said he was on his way to a gym, and was the only motorist stopped at the traffic light on Randolph.
"[Castaneda] must have thought there was no one coming," the driver told Struett. "I must have been halfway through the intersection. I thought it was a car."
Although Aleck said he did not see the approaching cyclist, and the police report says he was "distracted," he told the Sun-Times that was not the case. He insisted that he was looking "straight ahead" before the collision. "It’s terrible," he said. "I feel really terrible about it."
Christina Whitehouse, founder of the civic tech platform Bike Lane Uprising, noted to Struett that while Randolph/Michigan is next to Millennium Park, with high bicycle and foot traffic, it's a hostile intersection for vulnerable road users. While Randolph has bike lanes heading to and from the lakefront trail, Michigan has ten mixed-traffic lanes. There's no crosswalk on the south leg of the intersection, which means people walking from the Chicago Cultural Center at the southwest corner to the park at the southeast corner must cross three streets instead of just one.
Here are a few more thoughts about this tragic case. Without assigning blame for the crash, if the police statement that Aleck had the green is accurate, that indicates that Castaneda made a mistake by disobeying his stoplight. The electrical assist for electric Divvy bikes tops off at 20 mph. Randolph rises from Michigan east to the former Millennium Park bike station, so the downhill slope may have contributed to Castaneda's speed. But even if it's true the cyclist made an error, he didn't deserve to pay for it with his life.
And it's clear responding officers also believed Aleck's behavior played a role in the death, since the report states that the driver was distracted, and he was charged for failure to reduce speed to prevent a crash. That indicates police felt he might have been able to avoid fatally striking Castaneda.
Moreover, Aleck was driving an SUV whose design greatly reduced the bike rider's chances of survival. Identified by the Sun-Times as a 2024 EV Hummer, it's one of the heaviest consumer automobiles currently on the market in the U.S. Its poor sight lines and wall-like front end may have also been contributing factors.
While the City of Chicago doesn't have the power to ban such vehicles, it does potentially have the ability to make driving them more expensive. Paris recently tripled the price of parking an SUV, and Washington D.C. charges their owners a premium for city stickers. That might make them less popular vehicles here, which could help reduce our city's crash fatality rate.
It goes without saying that everyone should travel safely and considerately, regardless of whether they're walking, biking, or driving, and without being distracted, intoxicated, or reckless. But it's also true that there's a big difference in how much responsibility you have to avoid killing other road users if you're operating a 70-pound e-Divvy versus a 9,063-pound Hummer.
Read the Sun-Times article here.
Fatality Tracker: 2025 Chicago pedestrian and bicyclist deaths on surface streets
Pedestrian: 10
Bicyclist: 1
Streetsblog Chicago’s traffic death numbers represent fatal crashes on Chicago surface streets, based on media reports and/or preliminary Chicago Police Department data.
2025 Chicago pedestrian fatality cases
• On January 5, 2025, a Jeep driver fatally struck Alex Rivera, 32, in the 2600 block of West 60th Street in the Chicago Lawn community area.
• On January 24, 2025, a hit-and-run SUV driver struck and killed Halyna Hudzan, 66, on the 700 block of North Oakley Boulevard in West Town.
• On February 1, 2025, a truck driver struck and killed Hattie Mickell, 76, walking in the street on the 0-100 block of South Western Avenue on the Near West Side.
• On March 14, 2025, a motorcycle rider fatally struck Camryn Green, 26, as she crossed the street in the 6500 block of Higgins Avenue in Norwood Park.
• On March 17, 2025, a sedan driver sideswiped another car, then jumped the curb and fatally struck Jamie Cerney, 38, on the sidewalk of the 5200 block of West 63rd Street in Clearing.
• On April 7, 2025, a pickup driver fatally struck a 72-year-old man trying to cross DuSable Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road in the Loop.
• On April 29, 2025, an allegedly intoxicated sedan driver fatally struck a woman, 25, on the sidewalk near 13th Street and Lawndale Avenue in North Lawndale.
• On May 13, 2025, an allegedly drunk SUV driver fatally struck a man, 76, on the 7000 South block of Western Avenue in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood and fled the scene.
• On May 16, 2025, a semi truck reportedly disobeyed his traffic signal when making a right turn and ran over and killed a 44-year-old man in the crosswalk at Cermak and Ashland avenues in Pilsen.
2025 Chicago bike fatality cases
• On May 26, 2025, a Hummer SUV driver fatally struck Yader Castaneda, 18, at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue in the Loop.
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