Wednesday, 18 December 2013

A ghost bike means a person died here

Yesterday I was chatting to a friend on Facebook messenger (I know that isn't real chatting) and he happened to ask me "What these white bikes were all about.  What was the point of painting a bike white and chaining to someones house?"  I didn't realise that there were people who didn't know what this represented and what a Ghost bike was.

So according to wikipediaghost bike, ghostcycle or WhiteCycle is a bicycle set up as a roadside memorial in a place where a cyclist has been killed or severely injured (usually by a motor vehicle).[1][2] Apart from being a memorial, it is usually intended as a reminder to passing motorists to share the road. Ghost bikes are usually junk bicycles painted white, sometimes with a placard attached, and locked to a suitable object close to the scene of the accident.

In simple terms  a ghost bike means a Person died here.  The key word to use here is person as the word cyclist seems, to some people, to represent a petty annoyance on the road some thing that gets in their way and slows their commute home.



As long as some motorists think like this then more cyclists will die needlessly.

I applaud this movement and am quite sad that sites like http://ghostbikes.org/ are unable to keep an accurate record of all of the ghost bikes in the world.   If you are aware of a resource that does do this then please comment below and I will update this post.

If you see a ghost bike please share the image with your family, friends and colleagues and remember that next time you see someone on a bike they are someones; friend, mother, sister, brother, teacher, father, cousin, grandparent, or carer.  

If that still doesn't sink in then watch this video and then make a pledge.


Together we can make the roads a safer place for our children but first we need to realise that we are people...not cyclists and motorists.

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