In life, he was another anonymous bicycle deliveryman who traveled the streets of New York City. To many pedestrians he was no more than a nuisance, and to his customers, never fast enough.

In death, he was still anonymous. The news reports identified him only as Pedro Santiago, 45, who was riding his bicycle around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, when he was struck and killed by a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus on West 125th Street in Harlem. He was one of four people fatally struck by vehicles on the city’s streets last weekend, leading a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio to declare an “urgent need to make our streets safer.”

Mr. Santiago was among the forgettable faces of the workers in the service economy, the person who facilitated the lifestyle that New Yorkers take for granted. They cook, they clean. They make it possible for children to grow up thinking that when the doorbell rings, it is time to eat.

“All of us kind of use them a lot,” said Henry Rinehart, the owner of Henry’s, a bistro at 105th Street and Broadway, where Mr. Santiago once worked, “but they completely fall below the radar of the human scale, and Pedro is a really good example of that — educated, smart, very thoughtful.”