Photos from the Westchester Cycle Club’s Ride of Silence

May

The Westchester cycle Club held a Ride of Silence to honor cyclists killed on by motor vehicles and remind everyone of cyclists rights to the road. Over thirty riders participated in the eight-mile ride from Scarsdale to White Plains and back at an average speed under 12 miles per hour.

Thanks to Pearson Constantino, who submitted this ride report.

The ride was excellent, beautiful weather. I counted about 35 riders, including myself, a couple of members from the Westchester Cycle Club and riders from Kraft Foods were also in attendance, riding in Memorial to a fallen Colleague Al Poggiogalle who was killed while riding his bicycle last year. ( See post below about Poggiogalle’s killer admitting to man-slaughter earlier this week. )

It was a deeply moving experience to see all the cyclists lined up riding, silently along with rather heavily populated traffic. The traffic response was Fair, thankfully we had a police escort which helped us remain safe and protected.

It is without question that rides like this are crucial. With people needlessly being run over, hurt or killed simply for going out for a bike ride is totally unacceptable and 100% avoidable. Cyclists and motorists need to communicate with each other so that our roads can be shared. Obviously a 2000 pound car can inflict a lot more damage than a bicycle could so the responsibility lies a little more on the motorists to yield to the cyclists, and really its more than just slowing down for a few seconds to get past us, its really slowing down and moving over for our lives. That to me is the most important part of any ride like this.

What it means to be part of an international event like the Ride of Silence; it’s a very positive feeling to know that there is a Global cycling community with a singular purpose to keep each other safe, despite, race, religion and politics, having that in common with folks in Cyprus, UAE, the Philippines and all 280 rides is truly inspiring.

Here’s some photos from last night’s ride. Please click on the photo to see others.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 1:37 PM by Randall Wolf. Print This Post | Email This Post

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