DC Ride of Silence 2019


The Ride of Silence is an annual ride occurring on the third Wednesday of May in locations around the world. It is in memory of cyclists who have been killed while biking. This year, DC's bike community suffered a particularly devastating loss -- a driver killed Dave Salovesh last month. Although I didn't know him personally, he was a dedicated activist for safer bike infrastructure in DC.

It's only more recently (within the past year) that I've gotten involved a bit in the local biking community (#bikeDC, as well as #bikemoco/#bikerockville, which I've been trying to make a thing), so this was really the first group ride of any sort I've participated in. It was an impactful experience.

Thanks to everyone who worked hard to organize the ride beforehand, and thanks also to the people who marshaled/stopped car traffic at intersections and led the group during the ride so everything went pretty swimmingly, even though we only had a police escort for the first few blocks of the ride. (thanks to all of the ride marshals/leaders; if I'd recognized more of them aside from [Daniel] Schep and Mr. T, I'd mention them by name as well).

Thank you to the person who handed out papers for us to attach to our backs/bags before the ride (as shown here)

Additionally, thanks to everyone who showed up and just participated in the ride (I saw/recognized Matthew/@riotpedestrian and Daniel Marcin) -- something like this wouldn't be possible if no one showed up. I'm not sure how many people exactly showed up, but my rough estimate is at least 100?

The route went through all four quadrants of the city, passing a number of ghost bikes.

Earlier in the day, people did #DataPBL (protected bike lane) at various bike lane locations around the city using the How's My Driving app: accumulating data on bike lane violations. View a map of the results here.

Scenes from the ride: I took many photos, some of which actually turned out relatively well. See photos here in this Twitter thread @rachelvetica

(Daniel) Schep's Zero Vision DC Clock

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