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Photos: Killed Cyclists Remembered With Ghost Bike Memorials
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 19, 2012
Modified Mar 19, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 19, 2012
Modified Mar 19, 2012
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While remembering those cyclists and pedestrians who were killed over the course of the past year, cyclists and pedestrians occasionally found their own lives endangered yesterday, during the 7th Annual Memorial Ride and Walk. On Staten Island, the mother of a cyclist killed by a hit-and-run driver last month told the Staten Island Advance that while putting up her son's memorial, she and others were nearly hit by a speeding driver, at the same spot where her son died. "We almost got run off the road," Nancy Tillman, mother of RJ Tillman, told the Advance.
Tillman, a nursing student, was killed as he biked home from Wagner College one evening last month. The driver has not been found. The winding roadway where he was killed is particularly harrowing, and drivers are known to speed around the curves with reckless abandon. "We can't even stand on this road right now and have a true moment of silence, because it's almost like if you're a cyclist or a pedestrian, you're a second-class citizen," said one Staten Island resident. "And the time has come where it has to stop."
24 cyclists were killed in 2011. Yesterday there were bike rides in all five boroughs to remember the dead, with flowers and white painted ghosts bikes installed at locations where cyclists died. On McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, activists walked along the busy roadway, pausing often to pay respects to the many lives lost along boulevard. At the day's end, the various rides and walks coalesced outside the 90th Precinct station house in Williamsburg late, where a ghost bike was installed to represent all the killed cyclists and pedestrians who didn't make the news.
“In Brooklyn's 90th Precinct alone, four bicyclists were killed in the past year, more than any precinct district in the city,” Leah Todd, a volunteer with the New York City Street Memorial Project, said in a statement. “While the number of New Yorkers who ride bicycles multiplies, the NYPD has been at best slow to acknowledge our changing streets. At worst, the NYPD's incomplete investigation of the crashes that kill bicyclists and pedestrians is a major part of the problem."
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ghost bike memorial ride
ghost bikes
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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