At about 1:30 last Thursday afternoon, a 19 year old PNCA design student, Tracey Sparling, was killed when her bike was hit by a cement truck as both vehicles accelerated at a green stoplight. Bike lanes are on the far-right side of the road; in some intersections that means it is on the inside of a motorized vehicle that might be turning right at the same intersection. It seems that as the light turned green, Tracey drove straight as the cement truck driver turned right, directly into her.

Even though I did not personally know her, as a PNCA student and Portland biker myself, I felt it necessary to attend a memorial bike ride for her on Friday evening. It was a somber but awe-inspiring experience, as nearly 400 bikers showed up to slowly pedal the 15 blocks to the Ghost Bike that marks the site of the collision. I grabbed the above photo from BikePortland’s Flickr which, I would estimate, was taken about 15-20 minutes before the final crowd arrived, and it still only shows a portion of the riders there at the time. I can be seen about 1/3 of the way in from the right, in the green helmet, black jacket, and ripped, paint-stained pants, sitting on my bike.

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