‘Ghost bike’ removed for menacing car drivers

"We felt an obligation to go out and remove that obstacle," said department spokesman Rick Feller.

"At worst, it can be an object that, if there's an accident at that intersection, can present another item that flies through a window or somehow otherwise injures people," Feller said, citing the laws against placing things in public rights of way.

The perfect car for the school run

As we know ‘ghost bikes’ and bunches of flowers at the roadside can be a dangerous distraction to Britain’s famously careful drivers and many councils require their removal. However, roadside guidance on what car would be nice to drive the kids to school provides important information. Selborne Road E17 (alongside a huge poster promoting booze, just across the road from the NO ALCOHOL ZONE sign).

'In Loving Memory'

I watched last night’s BBC2 documentary In Loving Memory on roadside memorials to road crash fatalities. It was basically a study of the sociology and psychology of the grieving process and how roadside memorials have substituted for more conventional religious memorials in a secular society. It included an account of the ghost bike set up in memory of London cyclist Eilidh Cairns.

It was a programme which I found thin in substance (the material could have been reduced from one hour to 30 minutes without losing anything), though at times upsetting to watch. We heard of opposition to roadside memorials from both local authorities and members of the public, who claimed they were ‘a distraction’. Some local authorities remove them on Health and Safety grounds. I would have liked to have seen someone who believes in the ‘distraction’ argument putting their case, but presumably no council officer or councillor had the courage to do so.

Me, I think anyone who wants to set up a roadside memorial should be allowed to do so. These memorials will all eventually go in the end as people grow old, die or move away, and if it helps the bereaved to cope, let them have them. They also provide a visible reminder of the road carnage that all the institutions in our society prefer to marginalise and sanitize.

The ‘distraction’ argument seems to me wholly spurious in a society which is not particularly concerned about the epidemic of drivers who steer with one hand while chatting on handheld mobile phones. SatNavs are likewise a distraction but again no one gives a damn. The idea that a ghost bike or a collection of flowers at the roadside might distract a driver seems to me ludicrous. No one in authority objects to giant hoardings promoting cars or booze, or advertising panels obstructively plonked down in pavements, which are designed to catch the eye of passing drivers.

The circumstances of how these road fatalities occurred was barely mentioned. In one case an eighteen year old girl ‘lost control’ of a car when it hit water at the roadside, aquaplaned, crashed into another car, and then burst into flames. Tragedies like this happen with sickening regularity but no one ever discusses the way in which teenagers are given control of vehicles which now have the power that racing cars once had, vehicles deliberately designed to go at speeds well in excess of the national speed limit and which teenage drivers are too immature and inexperienced to handle.

I noticed how one set of bereaved parents had a 4X4 parked in front of their house, suggesting that consideration of the health and safety of other road users was not something which had intruded into their grief.

At the site of the memorial to Ashley O’Brien there was a cycle lane. I noticed how a passing HGV drifted into it as it passed by, suggesting that the road was too narrow to safely accommodate a cyclist and an overtaking articulated lorry. But the programme wasn’t about that kind of thing.

As the old saying has it, ‘don’t mourn – organise’ – which is how that formidable and impressive organisation RoadPeace came into being.

BBC documentary about roadside shrines to road fatalities

By the sound of it, this documentary will include coverage of ‘ghost bikes’:

Wednesday 07 July

9:00pm - 10:00pm

BBC2

Behind each roadside memorial there is a story of personal grief.

Remembering Marie Vesco

The family of a teenager killed on her bicycle marked the second anniversary of her death by cycling from London to Brighton.

French student Marie Vesco, 19, died in a collision involving two other cars on the A23 in June 2008 as she cycled to the city with friends.


This fatality occurred at a classically lethal location, where cyclists on an A road meet a joining slip road, which they have to cross. Drivers on the slip road are inevitably driving at high speed and are unlikely to consider the remote possibility that a cyclist might lawfully cross in front of them.

This is the case where, allegedly, the first thing the killer driver did after the collision was call his lawyer. No charges were ever brought against him. And when friends of Ms Vesco put up a ghost bike at the site, the local authority instantly removed it on the grounds that it posed a danger to motorists.

Washington DC won’t allow permanent ghost bikes

Memorials are typically allowed to remain for 30 days.

What is to be done?

Nick:

After spending the last half a year researching and being very much involved in the Ghost Bike project as I create a book I have been moved by the unity within the cycling community not just on this forum but all over, while documenting and collating data I have decided to put across an idea.

I believe we should have a date set in our diaries where everyone takes part in a memorial ride in Central London. The point of the ghost bikes is not just as a memorial to that specific cyclist but to serve as a reminder and a memorial to all cyclists who have died. I believe this is what the ride should do as well, not only serve as a time to reflect on the vulnerablility of cyclists but also hopefully raise awareness.

I believe that if we implement a dress code such as black suits then this would be a striking image to see, and somehow have the names of the people who have been killed on the roads in London displayed throughout. I am aware that this idea is not very structured but I think it is something we should do, and I think that the Eilidh memorial ride touched so many people that we need to do this. Just an idea, open to discussion

This excellent idea will get no support whatsoever from the cycling-is-safer-than-you-think 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life' London Cycling Campaign.

CPS protest in Reading

THE heartbroken friends and family of a dead cyclist left this chilling reminder outside the Crown Prosecution Service’s offices in a renewed campaign for justice.

Reading Cycling Club (RCC) members chained a white 'ghost bike’ smeared with fake blood to railings in Oxford Road, Reading.

Ghost bikes

The BBC belatedly wakes up to the existence of ghost bikes.

Highways Agency removes ghost bike on 'road safety' grounds

A swift follow-up to the story of the A23 ghost bike.

On Tuesday, the Highways Agency took it away, claiming it was a health and safety hazard as it would potentially distract drivers along the busy road.

Whereas gigantic roadside posters advertising everything from 4X4s to alcohol are not remotely distracting.

Ghost bike on the A23

“One year has passed and Marie has died for nothing, like an animal squashed on the road, with not a single sanction for any of the responsible parties.

(Do read the comments below the story, some of them very ugly ones.)

Marie was part of a group of twelve cyclists who left Brixton in the early hours of the morning to join the Smash EDO demo. They were on the A23 by Burgess Hill when an impatient gas guzzling imbecile swerved across two lanes straight into Marie, then another car hit her. She died instantly, there was nothing her friends could have done. The driver of the second car got straight on his phone as soon as he came to a halt - not for an ambulance but to call his lawyer.

Death in Greenwich

(pic from The London Paper)

She was called Adrianna Skrzypiec and she was 31 years old:

She only started cycling six months ago but she took her bike to work every day. She always told us she was scared when she was cycling on Woolwich Road, especially on the junction where she died.

“She was an incredibly careful cyclist. She always wore her helmet and she never went through red lights.

Ghost bike in Chicago

‘You see them all over the city’ says the newsreader on the video accompanying this story.

Memorial to Jason MacIntyre

The latest ghost bike.

(This is the case where the family are furious that the police never bothered to investigate whether or not the killer driver was using a mobile phone at the time he drove into his victim.)

New ghost bike in Islington

A SECOND "ghost bike" memorial has appeared in Islington - marking the spot where a 26-year-old cyclist was killed at a King's Cross danger junction.

Research assistant Rosie Wright, of Mildmay Road, Newington Green, was crushed to death by a lorry in March 2007 at the junction of Pentonville Road and Penton Rise, King's Cross, two days after buying a new bike.

Ghost bikes in New Zealand

On a grass verge beside State Highway 14 in rural Northland, propped against a road sign, sits a white bike, stripped back to its frame, forks and wheels. The scenery changes, but this bike is no different to the one chained at the corner of Houston St and Avenue A amid the busy traffic of downtown Manhattan, New York, or even the one painted pink and swathed in flowers placed at an off-road cycleway in York, northern England. Each, and others in 65 cities across the world, commemorates another victim in that unequal struggle between the motorist and the cyclist.

The history of ghost bikes

In the past year, ghost bikes have appeared in Wales, Oxford, Brighton and York, as well as in the capital. Many are the work of cycling groups that want not only to remember the dead, but to draw attention to the vulnerability of cyclists; bikes as both a shrine and a political statement.

In today’s Observer, Geraldine Bedell investigates the phenomenon of ghost bikes.

Crushed to death in Hackney

Campaigners have declared a "crisis" on our streets after a woman became the fifth cyclist to die in collision with a lorry in just two years. Lucinda Ferrier, 32, was struck by the heavy goods vehicle in Stoke Newington at 6.40am on Monday. An air ambulance rushed Ms Ferrier to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. She died shortly afterwards.

"This is a crisis and I am stunned by the frequency of these collisions," said Trevor Parsons, a co-ordinator with the London Cycling Campaign in Hackney. "It's time for Hackney in particular to set up a task force to look at this issue because the rate of these collisions is absolutely shocking. "We would like to see measures to minimise the amount of HGV traffic on the road and better trained drivers and better paid drivers, so they are under less pressure and can spend more time and care on our streets."

According to one press report:

It appears she slipped on a poor patch of road surface, clipped the curb just outside Stoke Newington and was then struck by the heavy good vehicle. Police believe she was travelling south down Stoke Newington High Street alongside the vehicle when she was hit and then pulled underneath. According to a post on cycling website 'movingtargetzine' council workers were busy resurfacing the area outside the train station late Monday night.

More here.

I was cycling along Middleton Road in Hackney recently when at the junction with Kingsland Road I suddenly came upon the ghost cycle put up in memory of Antony Smith, who was crushed to death here on 21 April.

This is the first ghost cycle I’ve come across, and it struck me as being stunningly effective. It’s a great pity that there are no ghost cycles in Waltham Forest, not least for commuter cyclist Michael McLean who was killed by a high-speed hit and run driver on Forest Road E17 last year (the killer driver seems never to have been traced). At the site where Michael McLean died, drivers continue to break the speed limit with impunity, and the Council has re-designed the cycle lane on the opposite side to accommodate lazy car parkers, in the process making cycling more dangerous.

What strikes me about the site where Antony Smith died is just how poorly designed this junction is. This is a major cross town cycling commuter route but there is no dedicated cycle crossing with a green phase for cyclists only. The ASL is pathetically small and inadequate. The railings on the corner provide the classic trap for cyclists who find a large vehicle suddenly veering towards them. And while I was taking photographs a whole series of vehicles came along and stopped in the ASL, displaying the characteristically casual contempt of many drivers both for road traffic law and for dedicated cycling facilities.