Ghost Bikes

Saturday 27^th April 2013

Ghost bikes are cycles, painted or sprayed white, and then chained at the site of a place where a cyclist has been killed whilst riding.  This is almost always because s/he was hit by a vehicle. Sometimes the bikes are fully functional but often they are stripped-down, to deter theft. Local authorities often remove the bikes after a few weeks.  In one such incidence, local residents reacted by chaining twenty-two new ghost bikes to all the lamp-posts in that street. I recently saw a ghost bike, for the first time other than on-line.  It was chained to a road sign which we passed on our way to take part in a huge cycling Sportive in the New Forest earlier this month. This cycling event is the New Forest UK Cycling/Wiggle Spring Sportive.  About 2,000 riders take part over two days.  The event has been the subject of some local controversy with a small but vocal minority of local residents objecting to the event, presumably on the grounds of its size and the impact this number of cyclists has on the roads in the Forest. We’ve been riding this and other Sportives for three years now.   It is true that the cyclists in the event – and the same number again, probably, who are not in the event but just out riding for the day, do have an impact on the ‘flow’ of traffic.  Passing a group of riders – and the cyclists all leave in timed batches of about 20 at a time to avoid mass congestion – may delay a motorist for a minute or two, maybe a little longer.  That’s it.  There is no other impact. We were due to ride on the Sunday.  On the Saturday, we were in the Forest area anyway as we usually stay for two or three nights in a local B&B. It rained.  All day, very hard.  The show-ground which was the HQ for the event was flooded, the tents were flooded, the fields were mud-baths, cars were being towed off the grass.  Our event, for the next day was, wisely in my view, postponed so we are going back in June to do it then. Riders on the Saturday had a rough time of it, what with the torrential rain and the road conditions that this created.  Most had a hassle-free ride aside from that, though a few reported that the signage for the event had, here and there, been removed or tampered with. (NB: if you are cycling objector and you did tamper with the signs, this is surely very counter-productive.  At best all you can achieve is further ‘disruption’ as a few cyclists will be momentarily lost, but most have some form of sat-nav or at least a soggy map up the leg of their shorts).  There were a few banner-holding protesters, out-numbered by a few local bobbies.  Slightly further down the menacing spectrum, one group reported tacks being strewn in the road.  And right up there in the Attempted Murder camp, one group were directly driven at by two vehicles, forcing some of the cyclists off the road. I am sure the heroes who finished the ride in such awful weather felt epic afterwards.  And as I said, I think the protesters are a very small minority – and I can see that it might be a bit irritating to have to carefully pass several groups of cyclists.  Let me assure you, that as cyclist, a walker, a runner and a driver, I know how it feels to use roads in many different ways.  When I’m cycling, I really want the vehicles behind me to pass me safely and get on their way, which is why we never cycle side by side if there are cars, and always stop or slow down to let them pass as soon as possible if the road is narrow. But just one moment of deliberate hate, with the intent to kill a cyclist, in that event earlier this month, could so easily have led to a ghost bike being placed there, in the New Forest. Behind every ghost bike is a dead rider and a family and a host of friends and colleagues. There are quite a lot of sites on the Internet devoted to images and stories about ghost bikes.  Here is a link to one in New York that tells a little bit about some of the riders whose memories are kept alive with a lone white cycle.