Staff Blog
Ride of Silence, redux
With all the deserved furor over the death of Officer Gary Skerski, another tragic, senseless death has flown a bit under the radar. Just days before the Ride of Silence (reported here, and covered here and here ) to commemorate bicyclists killed in traffic, a six-year-old boy, Riley Boyle of Bryn Mawr, was killed on Martin Luther King Drive when a motorist crashed through the gate "closing" the drive; the gate swung open and hit Boyle, killing him.
Almost unbelievably, UPenn student Felicity Paxton visited the scene to pay her respects two hours later and witnessed a van strike the exact same gate going an estimated 50 mph.
Though Wednesday's Ride of Silence drew more than 200 cyclists and maybe as many as 500 according to Bicycle Coaltion of Greater Philadelphia exec director Alex Doty for its solemn procession through town, it's obvious that motorists aren't the only ones who need to be made more aware of cyclists; the people in charge of updating the city's traffic infrastructure (bike lanes, barriers, etc.) need to identify trouble spots, such as the gates on MLK at Sweetbriar.
As the BCGP's John Boyle says in his Philadelphia Bicycle News blog:
But sometimes inattentive drivers crash the gates, in April of 2004 a car hit the gate that swung into 6 cyclists, sending 3 to the hospital. It's time for the city to think of a better solution for keeping traffic off the drive.
[...] More here. [...]