Ghost bikes are memorials of those who have been struck or killed by a vehicle. The ghost bikes didn’t start as memorials. They actually started in Amsterdam in the 1960s with the “take a bike leave a bike” program where bikes were available to anyone for free. The bikes were painted white. Then in 2002 in California Jo Slota saw all these abandoned bikes in San Francisco so he started painting them white for an art project. In 2003 when a man saw a biker get hit in a bike lane by a motorist he placed a white bike for a memorial that said a cyclist was hit here. When he saw the effect that it had on drivers, the ghost bike memorial program was born.
The ghost bike project is a worldwide program active in over 23 countries. In Seattle, ghostcycle.org has been collecting data since 2005. They’ve placed 40 ghost bikes over the years to represent the areas with the most bike accidents. Since it began friends and family of accident victims have started putting up ghost bikes. On ghostcycle.org there’s even a whole page on how to make a ghost bike and install it.
In some states, city officials and waste management have started removing the ghost bikes. In New York City the department of sanitation began disposing of old and broken down bikes including ghost bikes. Some people in NYC objected because they felt like the city was trying to control their grieving process. One of the most interesting cases was in Washington D.C. when the city officials removed a ghost bike and the next day there were ghost bikes chained to every lamp post in the area for a total of around 22 bikes.
The idea of ghost bikes is to bring awareness to drivers of the dangers that cyclists face every day. The program is also trying to bring awareness in the state like in the recent accident where a Seattle man died from biking off an unmarked set of stairs on a bike trail. Why were there stairs on a bike trail? That’s a question for the parks department. I tried to contact them by email but no one answered.
References
http://gothamist.com/2010/06/21/ghost_bikes_targeted_by_sanitation.php
http://www.bikerumor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/ghost-bike-fred.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_bike
http://ghostbikes.org/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002415555_ghostcycle02m.html
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