A silent ride through the streets of Durham sends message for cyclists and pedestrians
John Hill and John Rives are friends and avid cyclists who regularly ride together. On Wednesday evening, they joined about 60 others for a ride with more meaning and purpose than most.
It’s called the Ride of Silence, an event held around the world to remember people killed while riding a bike or walking on streets and highways.
The ride is part memorial service, part public demonstration. The cyclists pedal slowly, in silence, and together so others will see them and know they are there.
“I just think it’s a good way to remember,” said Rives, retired from the City of Durham. “We don’t need to be invisible out here. We need to be seen.”
The riders happened to gather the day after federal researchers released estimates of the number of cyclists and pedestrians killed nationwide last year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said 985 cyclists were killed in 2021, up 5% from the year before, and that 7,324 pedestrians were killed, up 13%.
“In Durham County, every 16 days, someone who is walking or biking is killed or seriously injured in traffic violence,” John Tallmadge, executive director of Bike Durham, which organized Wednesday’s ride, told riders before they started. “We don’t accept that this violence is an unavoidable byproduct of our transportation system. We don’t have to accept it.”
It will take changes in behavior by drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, Tallmadge said, but also streets and roads designed more for safety and people and less for cars and speed. Durham City Council member Javiera Caballero then noted that the city’s proposed budget includes $6 million for sidewalks, trails, bike facilities and reducing speed in school zones.
“I have kids who bike and walk all over this city,” Caballero told the riders. “And so I know the fear that many of us face when we get on our bikes or use our sidewalks or lack thereof and chose a different option besides cars.”
Ride is part of a national movement
The Durham Ride of Silence was one of more than 200 held across the country and one of seven in North Carolina, according to national organizers. Riders began at CCB Plaza downtown and made a five-mile loop out to Ninth Street and through the Trinity Park neighborhood.
Simone Hamlett of Durham was attending her second Ride of Silence. Hamlett, who works in human resources at Cisco and is an organizer for the Durham chapter of the national group Black Girls Do Bike, said she wanted to remember those who have been hurt or killed on the roads and send a message to others.
“I just want drivers to slow down and see us,” she said. “And I want improved bike facilities in our cities and towns.”
Some riders wore black armbands to remember particular cyclists or pedestrians who were killed.
For Rives, the band was for Chris Mangum, a construction executive he knew during his years working for the city. Rives said he only learned Mangum was a cyclist when he read in the newspaper that he had been killed when a driver made a left turn across his path on Lassiter Mill Road in Raleigh in 2013.
Other riders, like Hill, wore red armbands, to signify that they had survived a collision with a car or truck. For Hill, it was a mid-morning in November 2017, a week after his 77th birthday, on Ten-Ten Road in Wake County. He spent three nights in the hospital and couldn’t ride for two and a half months after a woman hit him from behind.
“The police didn’t even give her a ticket,” he said.
Just before the riders headed out, they heard two readings of a poem that Mike Murgas wrote after attending the first Ride of Silence in Dallas in 2003. That event was for a cyclist who was killed when he was hit by the mirror of a passing bus. The poem has become a staple at Ride of Silence events.
School board member Alexandra Valladares read it first in Spanish, followed by the English version from county commissioner Heidi Carter.
“Tonight’s ride is to make others aware,” the poem’s final stanza begins. “The road is there for all to share. To those not with us or by our side, may God be your partner on your final ride.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 1:17 PM.
