The mother of a teenage driver involved in one of two fatal bike accidents in 2016 vehemently protested plans last week to install a “ghost bike” at the Public Safety building.
Julie Lynch spoke a the Board of Selectmen meeting on September 25 about the pain that both families have gone through since the accident at the intersection of Bedford and Virginia Roads claimed the life of Westford resident Mark Himelfarb in August 2016. Details of the accident were not released while it was being investigated by local and state police and the district attorney’s office—a process that took 13 months before the DA’s office announced on September 12 that no charges would be filed.
The cyclist, while riding north on Virginia Road, “crossed over the yellow centerline deviating from the marked lanes of northbound travel and encroached upon the motorist’s path of travel,” according to the release, adding that the collision occurred in the southbound side of the road.
Shortly after the accident, Concord resident and cyclist Erik Limpaecher installed a “ghost bike” on his own initiative near the accident with a placard saying “M. Himelfarb, father of 2, 8-17-2016, Come to Full Stop,” according to an August 23, 2016 Globe article. Lincoln officials immediately removed the object because it was a safety hazard but also out of respect for the feelings of the driver, who was not at fault.
In June 2017, the family of the victim in the other 2016 accident, Eugene Thornberg, said they would create and donate a ghost bike to remind both motorists and bicyclists about the need to safely share the road. The monument will include a plaque with wording that is not specific to either accident.
But Lynch, the mother of the Virginia Road accident driver, tearfully protested to selectmen that ghost bikes serve to memorialize the bicyclists who are killed and neglect the feelings of the driver and his or her family, especially since the driver is often not at fault. (The Squirrel has also published this letter to the editor she originally submitted on September 23.)
“A middle-aged bicyclist broke the law” by crossing over the center line and striking the side of her daughter’s car, Lynch said. “It was traumatic, it was awful. My child performed CPR.”
Her daughter’s license was suspended while the investigation was ongoing, “and she spent her entire senior year making up excuses to her friends about why she couldn’t drive” because the family was told not to discuss the accident, Lynch added. “They treated her like a criminal for 13 months.
“From the information I’ve seen, most of the serious bike accidents are caused by the bicyclists, not the operators,” Lynch added. “We’re memorializing cyclist error.”
Lincoln “has really gone out of our way as a town and a police department” to be sensitive to all parties involved, Town Administrator Tim Higgins said. The ghost bike “is not meant as an editorial comment, it’s not meant as a memorial to any individual—it’s helping to educate the motoring public and the cycling public about the importance of safety.”
Lynch also objected to locating the ghost bike at the Lincoln Public Safety Building. When Higgins said that he had made sure the first ghost bike was quickly removed from the accident site, she cried, “She won’t drive that street any more—it doesn’t matter! But she does drive by the police station… Nobody talked to me about how she would feel about seeing a ghost bike but I think she deserved to be asked.”
“Your summary of the facts [of the accident] is spot on,” Higgins told Lynch. “We struggled with this issue to get the information out to the community. While the investigation was going on, we were not at liberty to reveal some of the details.”
The investigation into the Thornberg accident revealed that motorist was also not at fault. The bicyclist had pulled up alongside a row of traffic at a stoplight; just as the light turned green, he fell off his bike under the wheel of an stopped truck next to him and was killed when the truck moved forward.
