The motorcycle club Zoom meeting started with death.
Yes, the host, a colleague I met once before announced he lost his daughter in a motorcycle accident 4 days earlier.
Age 27.
Driver turned left in front of her.
Died instantly.
What to say? What to do? That he was at the meeting was a testament. Cannot imagine what he was going through inside, but outside he was carrying on.
Motorcyclists often derisively and mockingly call automobile drivers “cagers.” This time my derisiveness is real – with anger. Locked (literally) in multi-ton steel cages – drivers are protected and insulated.
But, I need to remind myself. We are all cagers – at least in Maryland. Winter weather makes all but the foolhardy cagers. This is not southern California – where it never rains (or snows).
If not careful, we can be cagers in the derisive sense of the word. A hundred years ago, lawmakers debated the distractibility of windshield wipers. Then came radio, then 8-track and cassette tapes, then CD players. In this golden age of entertainment, we sit insulated in a temperature-controlled environment while texting, scrolling, podcasting, applying make-up, making phone calls, and yes I have seen it – reading.
We drive along whistling dixie and it does not matter - till it does. In a blink of an eye a life is lost.
I know nothing of the circumstances of this crash other than the driver turned left in front of the young woman. An all-too-common form of motorcyclist accident. Often drivers say they did not “see the cyclist” (motor or pedal). Cyclists (motor and pedal) know the risk - there is no small accident on a cycle (motor or pedal).
How to make cagers aware? How to teach them to look for cyclists (motor and pedal)? In Europe cyclists (motor and pedal) are much more numerous and cagers look from them. In the U.S. not so much.
Let’s start here. Tell your friends, colleagues, and co-workers – 3 words:
“Look before left.” #LookB4Left!
How about you? How can you help? Share a story!
