Ride of Silence unites cyclists for safety

At 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, Christov Churchward and three friends were riding their bikes.

“We… At 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, Christov Churchward and three friends were riding their bikes.

“We were being as safe of bikers as you can be,” Churchward said, adding that all four bikers had their helmets on as well as front and back headlights to increase visibility.

But it wouldn’t be enough.

As the friends tried to cross the intersection at a green light at Liberty Avenue and Ligonier Street in Lawrenceville, a Jeep came speeding through the intersection, crossed traffic by turning left and collided with one of Churchward’s friends. The vehicle fled the scene, Churchward said. His friend survived the collision.

When Churchward learned about the Ride of Silence on Monday, an international event in which bikers ride in solidarity with injured bikers to raise awareness for bicycle safety, he felt a duty to attend when the Pittsburgh branch of the ride occurred on Wednesday.

The Ride of Silence has been taking place in cities all over the world since 2003, when Larry Schwartz was killed by a bus while riding his bike in Texas, according to the event’s website.

For Pittsburgh’s third annual Ride of Silence, about 60 riders gathered at 7 p.m. and took the 10 mile ride from South Side though Oakland and into Downtown. Event organizer Jim Logan said Pittsburgh started to join the event in 2010 in memorial of Don Parker, a husband and father who was killed while riding to work that same year.

Both young and older riders wearing bright multicolored biking gear gathered in the parking lot behind REI and talked cordially for about 15 minutes before leaving on their solemn ride.

For Logan, a Pitt alumnus, bicycling is part of life. Logan is an ultracyclist, someone who participates in rides between 100 and 750 miles, and the president of the Western Pennsylvania Wheelmen, a club for biking enthusiasts in the western part of the state.

According to Logan, the Ride of Silence has four central messages: to honor cyclists injured or killed on public roadways, to raise awareness of cyclists on the road, to demonstrate responsible road sharing and to show that cyclists are not going away.

“We’re here, we want to obey the law and we don’t want to get killed,” Logan said.

Logan knows firsthand how dangerous riding can be for bikers. When he was training for an ultracyclist ride once, a car hit him as it made a turn. As Logan came down a hill a car passed him and made a quick left turn in front of him within the 4-foot cushion provided to cyclists by Pennsylvania law, Logan said.

“I woke up an hour later on a bodyboard on the wrong side of the yellow line,” Logan said.

May is National Bike Month, and groups such as Logan’s are organizing all over the country to bring awareness to the issue of bike accidents which are all too common. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half a million people are taken to the emergency room every year for bicycle-related injuries.

On average, 700 of those people will die. And a majority of these accidents involve children. The CDC also reports that children 15 years or younger account for 59 percent of all bicycle-related injuries in U.S. emergency rooms.

Oakland is no exception.

In 2009, Rui Hui Lin, 38, was killed in a hit-and-run on the corner of Meyran Avenue and Louisa Street. The Pitt News reported in a 2010 article about a first-anniversary memorial for Lin that he was about to bring his pregnant wife and 5-year-old daughter over from China when he died.

At the Ride of Silence, riders wore one of two differently colored arm bands — black to support those injured or killed in bicycle accidents and red if the rider had personally been injured in a biking accident.

Lucia Aguirre, a 35-year-old architect, was riding in her second Ride of Silence with a red armband this year. Aguirre said that she was commuting back from work and was stopped at a traffic light when a car coming the wrong way down a one-way street hit her.

After the accident, the driver fled the scene and Aguirre laid on the ground in pain for three full minutes in the middle of rush-hour traffic. No one stopped to help. It was only when Aguirre pulled herself up that she realized she was bleeding, although not in need of immediate medical attention.

“Ever since then … I don’t want to say I’m angry, but I always try to participate in these kind of events,” Aguirre said. “I always feel that the only thing I can do to honor these people is to ride my bike.”