Memorial Ride

If this is to be a memorial ride - as in going for a ride to honour the memory of fellow cyclists - then yes, a weekend event would be best.

If it is to raise awareness of the ridiculously frequent deaths on the road, then we need to do it on a weekday rush hour with as much disruption as possible. The gist I got from reading this thread so far is that people want action, something to open up the eyes of those in positions of power to what is happening on the streets every day. To achieve that we need to do something BIG, and piss off a lot of people.

When I first open one of those threads and read the details, my first feelings are of dread, hoping the rider is OK, then that it is not someone I know, then I feel anger that it had to happen in the first place. There are many comments in those threads to the effect of "when will something be done to stop these preventable deaths".

Sadly it will take something epic to really achieve any change. Even sadder is that we will have to play the media game if we ever want to force a change. The more people who notice, the more that are affected, the better. Even if that means a few arrests for public order offences - it would just make more media coverage.

This is ultimately idle chat at this stage, but I mean what I say. All that anger and frustration that we feel when reading of another death needs to be channelled into some form of protest. And there is absolutley no need to pussy foot around worrying about affecting some people's commutes to work either. The girl killed in Oval this morning affected plenty of commutes, will there be any lessons learned from that incident, or will it be chalked up as another statistic like the rest?