The plain wooden coffin of Yakub Aminov was held high above a mob of friends and his relatives. It was borne safely out of Congregation Beth Gabriel yesterday and down 67th Avenue in Rego Park, Queens, toward a cemetery.
The living Mr. Aminov, 59, was not in such safe hands Monday night. About 8 p.m., returning home from Yom Kippur services, he walked across Queens Boulevard at 67th Avenue and was struck by a sport-utility vehicle whose driver sped off, the police said. Suffering severe head trauma, he was taken to a hospital, where he died. 

Norbert and Estelle Chwat, who live just off the boulevard, a few blocks from Mr. Aminov’s home on 67th Avenue, never knew him. But the news of his death hit them hard.
 
“We feel every one of these senseless Queens Boulevard pedestrian murders like the loss of a loved one,” Mrs. Chwat, 82, said. “What are we, up to 90 pedestrians killed now? I’ve lost track. You’d think us, of all people, would have the proper tally.”

The boulevard, which varies from 8 to 12 lanes and runs from the Queensboro Bridge down the spine of western and central Queens, has long been a battlefield of vehicular transit.

And the Chwats, of all people, would know about Queens Boulevard’s history. For the past decade, they have been tracking pedestrian deaths, beginning in the 1990’s, when there were up to 10 deaths a year. That statistic earned it the nickname the Boulevard of Death.

The Chwats founded a civic group called the Forest Hills Action League to draw attention to the fatalities and helped organize an annual memorial ceremony to honor the dead. 

These days, the Chwats are mostly confined to their apartment, on 72nd Avenue in Forest Hills. But they continue to document the deaths and agitate by phone and mail.

“Before we die, if we do nothing else, we want to get the city to re-engineer what’s wrong with this thing,” she said. “The problem is that it is an expressway running straight out of Manhattan through a residential neighborhood.”

According to the City Department of Transportation, there were 72 pedestrian fatalities on Queens Boulevard from 1993 to 2000. In 1993, there were 24, and in 1997, 22. Now, at any given intersection on the boulevard, one is likely to see withered bouquets left for loved ones killed there. One year, someone began drawing chalk outlines to represent for every body lying on the boulevard.

A department spokeswoman, Kay Sarlin, acknowledged that Queens Boulevard was one of the city’s most dangerous roads in the 1990’s. But in recent years, she said, improvements on the roadway have increased pedestrian safety. They include the addition of more than 400 signs urging pedestrians to cross with care. At some intersections, they read, “A pedestrian was killed crossing here.” 

Ms. Sarlin said the department has also extended the crossing time for pedestrians during peak periods in accident-prone areas, erected barriers along the median and increased efforts to reach out about pedestrian safety, especially at centers for the elderly. Pedestrian deaths have dropped significantly since then. There were six fatalities in 2002, six in 2003, two in 2004, and two last year, Ms. Sarlin said. But to the Chwats, any death is one too many.

“All these politicians and city officials come and talk about solutions, but they do nothing,” Mr. Chwat, 81, said. “To them, the traffic has a problem with pedestrians.” 

In fact, according to the police, Mr. Aminov was struck because he was crossing against the light. The police said he failed to heed the pedestrian signal when he stepped off a median into a westbound lane just as a silver-colored S.U.V., which had the green light, approached the intersection, already marked by a small memorial for a 14-year-old girl killed by a speeding car in 2000.

Yesterday afternoon, the police said they had discovered an S.U.V. with a shattered windshield shattered and broken headlights near Saratoga Avenue and MacDonough Street in Brooklyn. But the vehicle’s owner, whom the police did not identify, was questioned last night at the 73rd Precinct station house and released, the police said.

Mr. Aminov was the second pedestrian to be killed on Queens Boulevard this year. His synagogue, Congregation Beth Gabriel, filled yesterday as his family and friends gathered for his funeral, and the circumstances of Mr. Aminov’s death hung heavy on their hearts. 

“You can’t cross in one light,” said Carl Mercurio, a neighbor of Mr. Aminov’s for six years. “It’s just so many lanes going across. You can’t cross the street without running.” 

Referring to the improvements in pedestrian safety city officials have made to Queens Boulevard in recent years, Mr. Mercurio said, “They’ve done a lot, but obviously not enough.”

Mr. Aminov, an émigré from what is now Uzbekistan, came to the United States in 1991 and loved Brooklyn, according to one of his three sons, Arkadiy Aminov, 29.

Mr. Aminov drove a cab that he owned with his brother, raised pigeons in his backyard and doted on his only grandson, 3-month-old Joshua, relatives said. 

Tunes from his saxophone — a gift from his sons earlier this year and a reminder of his past in the old country, where he played in a band — could be heard by passers-by on the street, according to Mr. Mercurio. 

“He was the guy who loved life,” Mr. Mercurio said. “I couldn’t get past the house without a vodka and something to eat.” 

The Chwats have filled an entire closet with binders and folders of material on boulevard deaths. There are endless albums of newspaper clippings, traffic studies, maps, engineering studies, petitions and letters to elected and city officials. There are detailed minutes from meetings of community boards and precinct councils. There are graphs of pedestrian traffic broken down by year, hour of day and intersection. There are copies of poems and homilies and prayers inspired by the boulevard’s deadly reputation. 

There are fliers in languages including Russian, Bukharan, Chinese, Arabic and Spanish.

“Did you know a great many of those who died, if not most, were immigrants?” Mrs. Chwat asked. She held a folder labeled “Petitions to Weiner,” meaning Representative Anthony D. Weiner of Queens. “This is 4,000 signatures here alone,” she said.

There are also many clippings with photographs of bodies covered with sheets and laced with police tape next to mangled cars. The headlines speak for themselves:

“The Quick and the Dead.”

“Deadly Crossing.”

“Motor Mayhem.”

“Traffic War Zone.”

“Human Bowling Alley.”

“Death in the Afternoon.”

“Cross If You Dare.”

“Again.”

“Oh, forget it,” Mrs. Chwat said. “They’ve run out of headlines.”

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