Amazon's first Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was killed in a traffic collision with a van operated by an Amazon subcontractor carrying the company's packages, according to an explosive report from ProPublica and BuzzFeed News.

In 2013, Covey was 50-years old and the mother of a young son when she was riding her bicycle in a suburb south of San Francisco.  A delivery van operated by OnTrac, which Amazon was employing at the time to deliver packages, veered into her path.

"I heard a scream, immediately followed by a crash," the van's driver testified.

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos spoke at Ms. Covey's funeral.  But instead of inspiring the company "to rethink the way it handled safety issues", the report cites people familiar with conversations among senior executives in Amazon's logistics division regarding Covey's death as "just another traffic accident" - in other words, not related to the company's drive to deliver more and more product to consumers in less time.

Since Covey's death, Amazon has come under increasing scrutiny for workplace safety after a series of deaths in its warehouses that have continued through this year.  Others have died on the roads as Amazon absolved itself from responsibility because delivery drivers are technically working for subcontractors and not the company itself.

As for Ms. Covey's death, Amazon rejected the notion that it had put speed ahead of safety.  It also blamed the journalists, casting the new investigation as "another attempt by ProPublica and BuzzFeed to push a preconceived narrative that is simply untrue.  Nothing is more important to us than safety".