10/05/2016
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (3:24 pm)
Danehy Park (3:43 pm)
Another person was recently killed while riding a bike. This death - excuse me, accident - occurred in Porter Square. I rumble through there a few times a week on foot or on wheel but, no matter how many times I look at the ghost bike, it is impossible to get used to.
The public memorial services and tokens of remembrance left at the sites of these pointless deaths bring the slimmest silver linings to otherwise impossible clouds. What strikes me is how often those in attendance show up having never met the departed. They come simply out of a shared reliance on a particular mode of transportation.
The automobile industry accepts somewhere north of thirty thousand American deaths as 'the cost' for keeping cars on roads. The cycling community accepts exactly zero deaths. I don't think this is why 'strangers' often attend memorial services for lost cyclists but I'm struck by the thought regardless. Thirty thousand or zero?
Important changes grow out of the friction between those who insist- that's the way it is- and those who counter- that's the way it was. No matter how much room there is in the middle, it'll never be a comfortable space to occupy.
