public service announcement

This Wednesday afternoon, before snow showers blanketed the area, a 22-year old man was struck by a taxi on Huntington Avenue in Boston near Forsyth Street. The taxi clipped the cyclist's rear wheel, sending him under the rear wheels of a dump truck full of scrap concrete. Despite a helmet and other protective gear, the bicyclist was pronounced dead once transported to Brigham & Women's Hospital. The cyclist was a recent Mass Art graduate whose artwork can be seen above, taken from where it hangs on my wall.

I know I have not been the most considerate driver towards cyclists in the past and expressed contempt for cyclists who think they 'own the road', but I've also been a cyclist who realizes that most drivers resent having to share any of the road with a guy on a bike and will make this known in no uncertain terms.

Boston is not one of the easiest places for cyclists to get around, despite efforts in recent years to improve bikeways made from old train railbeds. Critical Mass is planning on putting a ghost bike there to memorialize the killed cyclist. A ghost bike is a junker bike that has been painted stark white and affixed to the site where a cyclist has been hit or killed by a car driver.

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