On the Ride of Silence (2021)

Introductory remarks before the 2021 DC Ride of Silence. As prepared for delivery, May 19, 2021.

For those who are not familiar, the Ride of Silence is an annual, worldwide event, held at 7pm local time on the third Wednesday of May in hundreds of cities, in dozens of countries around the world. In the US, at least, May is Bike Month, and this week is Bike Week—as you may have heard, Friday is Bike-to-Work Day, and even if this year you aren’t going in to an office to work, I encourage you to go out for a spin Friday morning and get that t-shirt.

But tonight is an opportunity to pause during the great joy of Bike Week and Bike Month and honor and remember those who cannot be here to celebrate with us.

We weren’t able to ride together this time last year, so tonight we honor the 4 people killed while riding bikes in DC in the last two years—Jim Pagels, Armando Martinez-Ramos, Michael Williams, and one unnamed neighbor—and the over 800 killed while riding in the United States each and every year. As the national Ride of Silence coordinating site puts it, “Although cyclists have a legal right to be on the road with motorists, [drivers] often [aren’t] aware of these rights, and sometimes not aware of the cyclists themselves.” This ride is a combination of funeral procession and a statement: People on bikes are here, where we have every right to be. We are here and these are our streets, too; we are not going anywhere. See us.

But, as a friend of mine wrote a couple years ago, “Vision Zero isn’t a cycling program. It looks like that here because [the cycling community] is vocal about it, but the tens of thousands of people a year who die in car crashes all deserved better laws, practices, and designs.”

And so tonight we also honor the roughly seventy people killed on DC roads in the last two years, the approximately a thousand people killed on Maryland roads, the 1500 or so people killed on Virginia roads, the over seventy five thousand people killed, and the many, many more gravely injured, on American roads in the last two years. Whether biking in a street, motorcycling on a road, driving on a highway, walking along an avenue, or just sitting on a bench in a roadside park, they all—we all—deserve better.

We begin tonight here, across from the Wilson Building, DC’s city hall and statehouse, and we’ll pass by the US Capitol, because we need better laws from both our local and national leaders. Our ride tonight will end in Navy Yard, outside the headquarters of our District and US Departments of Transportation, because we need better designs from both our local and national engineers.

<Congressman Mike Thompson joined us and was invited to speak.>

We will ride slowly and silently, as in a funeral procession. Please turn on your lights, at their low and steady setting if you can. Much like a funeral procession, if the front of the ride reaches a yellow or red light, we will stop; if the light changes while we are crossing, we will continue, as a mass. However, if we do get separated or stretched out, we will pause and regroup. Please keep alert and aware of the people and pavement around you! While we have tried to avoid known construction areas and bad roads, you may encounter plates, utility cuts, and other hazards. Be aware of who’s around you if you need to dodge a pothole, and use hand signals to point out problems to the riders behind you.

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About 40 people joined the four-mile Ride of Silence in honor of the four riders killed in DC since 2019’s Ride. Special thanks to Rep. Thompson and his staff, to Michael Kaercher for bringing us together, to the ride marshals for keeping us safe and together, and especially to Rachel Maisler for all your help and support.