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Hundreds of bicyclists ride Memorial Drive to remember man killed by an SUV driver who jumped a curb - and to demand action
By adamg on Sat, 09/28/2024 - 11:03am
Critical Mass riders on Memorial Drive; note memorial 'ghost bike' on right. Photo by Ron Newman.
Critical Mass normally holds a large social bike ride on the last Friday of every month. Yesterday, participants rode in memory of John Corcoran, a bicyclist who died when a driver on Memorial Drive jumped the curb and slammed into him on the sidewalk near the BU boathouse during Monday's afternoon rush hour - but they also rode to demand DCR finally do something to make its parkways safe for people not encased in two tons or more of steel.
SnoopJ reports Critical Mass usually avoids DCR roads as far too dangerous, but organizers decided they had to send a message about Corcoran's death:
DCR has no excuse for letting this murderous infrastructure stand this long.
Memorial Drive is a policy failure.
Peter Cheung, a Boston-area bicycling advocate, videoed another rider hauling the white memorial "ghost bike" that would be placed where Corcoran was hit.
Cheung photographed the new memorial in place:
Riders started in Copley Square, then rode across the BU bridge and onto Memorial Drive.
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Comments
There will be a ghost bike
There will be a ghost bike ceremony today at 2pm for him as well
Boston Critical Mass rides monthly
on the last Friday evening of each month, starting in Copley Square. After years of dormancy, a new generation revived it last March. You can find out more about Boston Critical Mass on their Instagram page and their Linktree page.
Here's how you can help make Memorial Drive better
Pedestrians have died on Memorial Drive, drivers keep getting into dangerous crashes—basically, it's too fast of a road.
If we expand the park paths, and shrink the travel lanes, cars will go slower, and it'll be much safer for everyone, including people in cars. And it's possible to do this very quickly with Jersey barriers; Seattle, NYC, and Baltimore have all used them to make safer spaces for people on bikes and pedestrians.
If you want to help, use this form to write to your elected officials; this is a state road so it needs pressure on state officials: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/make-memorial-drive-safer-now/.
Paris got rid of a similar
Paris got rid of a similar road that used to go right along the Seine, and it’s a better, safer, city for it. We don’t need 4-6 lanes on each side of the river plus 8 lanes of the nearby Mass Pike. Reduce or eliminate storrow and or memorial highways, they are a menace that destroys Bostonians ability to easily access the river and add considerable pollution to the Charles.
Paris! Paris! Paris! Paris!!!!!!!!!!!!
You might as well say Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
1. Paris has an f-ton of highways.
2. The Paris road you speak of was sunken along the river. You can see it in the first Bourne movie. You neglect to point out that there is a medium speed roadway like Memorial Drive above the flood wall which carries a lot of traffic.
2. Paris has some streets which have been placed with no vehicular traffic. Great. Those streets are like Newbury Street, Marlborough Street or Shawmut Ave., not Memorial Drive.
3. Paris has excellent compliance with pedestrian / traffic signals. No Idaho stops or no stopping because I am on a bike things from my observation. Laws are generally obeyed by those using the components.
4. Despite all this, Paris still has over 15 pedestrian deaths a year.
What happened to John Corcoran is terrible and the silence from the cops on the person who hit him is 100% BS and apparently typical State behavior. However, Memorial Drive and Storrow Drive are not going to be made vehicle free. Memorial Drive should be calmed further. No cars though? Get over it fast. You are not the only stakeholder.
Paris 2012 versus now
In 2012 we went on a bike trip in France.
I would not have biked in the city then given homicidal drivers and crazy traffic.
I went again in 2019. This was before COVID and yet they had tamed the traffic beast and the insane drivers enough that I felt safe riding.
2024 they have gone further, or so it appears.
Point is, this didn't happen because drivers decided to behave. It happened because of a concerted effort to take the city back from cars and for people. This was shaped by infrastructural changes but also backed by enforcement. The difference was subtle, but clear between the 2 times that I visited. Political will is what is needed, and that swings the right way when people speak up.
At least when we are still allowed to vote.
lose a lane like mass ave.
Memorial drive and Storrow are 6 lanes. Make them 4 lanes.
Point of order John
That scene in the Bourne Identity was filmed just below Quai de la Tournelle: https://movie-locations.com/movies/b/Bourne-Identity.php
Just above the flood wall is where you can find the road you were speaking of. Can you tell me with a straight face that this roadway is anything like Memorial Drive? There are only two lanes of traffic, parking and a bi-directional bike lane here: https://tinyurl.com/5n6zrp2a
(I think one of the scenes from Ronin was filmed in this exact area as well, I might be wrong though!)
Now of course there are stretches of this road that do look more like Storrow/Memorial as they connect with the f-ton of highways that ring around the city, not through it. Oddly, you neglected to mention that.
STILL no motorist ID?
I find this infuriating. The typical withholding of the identities of people who kill pedestrians and cyclists continues, as if the killers are the ones in need of protection.
WHO killed John Corcoran?! Why is their identity being withheld? Is it just to discourage the press and public from following the "investigation"? I guess that can be embarrassing as it peters out into nothing, providing no justice or resolution.
We already know that they won't be charged with anything unless they were OUI. They face a minor traffic ticket at most. So at least release the name and let everyone know who did this!
It’s completely disgusting
It’s completely disgusting that the killer is protected like this. America has such a messed up relationship with guns but at least we find out the names of shooters. This countries car culture is even worse than its gun culture.
What are the facts?
How did this collision occur? A witness said it seemed like he drove up on the sidewalk, if so, how and why did he? Did their car’s lane assist follow the bike lane up onto the sidewalk? Was there an even faster westbound biker who may have gone deeper into the roadway passing bike traffic causing the driver to swerve right? (Probably, but not definitely not.) What is the current state of that paint? What did the driver swerve around and why weren’t they paying attention?
"He was about a hundred feet ahead of me," Alexandrescu told StreetsblogMASS. "Then I saw the Mercedes SUV coming up over the hill... It seemed like (the driver) swerved onto the sidewalk, he hit the biker head-on. The biker was on the sidewalk, not on the road, when he got hit, and went flying over the hood of the car."
My biking patterns have changed and I haven’t biked past Goose Park since they put a bike lane in the roadway/ramp feeding Memorial Drive. All riders kept to the sidewalk mainly. That bottleneck sucked shit and often you had to stop for oncoming bikes depending on many variables and etiquette. It’s a tight squeeze. This is a location of negotiated human interaction. What did adding a terminating bike lane do to the dynamics of interactions here?
What is the consensus among riders who have biked the exact location for years before the bike lane was painted in the onramp and also biked for years after the paint was added? Did it make for a better ride? Did incidents go up, or down? What was the deliberative process before painting this particular lane? Why is it so hard to fine interactive maps for bike collisions in Cambridge?
I don’t know if there is a fix for this particular bottleneck. Why can’t we widen the sidewalk towards Goose Park? It would need to be a suspended structure. Find an amicable way to make that work by lease, agreement, or sale&c.. Add speed bumps out to the boat house and replace the bike lane with rumble strip and find a way to squeeze in a railing. Maybe there should be more bridges over the Charles to make the rotary there less of a nightmare at certain times of the year.
This is probably the most horrific, traumatizing life-altering event for this driver, passengers and their family. Riptides are “killers.” Heat and cold are “killers.” Things in nature without agency can be called “killers.” One can say someone did “kill,” or “killed,” but when you say a human being is a “killer” reads to me like you are accusing them of “murder,” calling them a “murderer,” which as I write this gives me the idea that that may be reason enough for authorities to protect the driver’s identification. I mean I have no idea. I have no basis to judge the driver, or anything in this case.
THE FACT IS THAT HE WAS ON THE GODDAM OFF ROAD PATH
Get that through your exhaust addled head.
THE FACT IS THAT JOHN COCORAN WAS MURDERED BY A NEGLIGENT MOTORIST.
No matter what fucking tech you have, THE DRIVER IS RESPONSIBLE. Period.
There’s no need for ad
There’s no need for ad hominem attack.
It is an absolute outrage that a bicyclist died. And, it’s understandable in the heat of this outrage to say the driver is a murderer, but it’s wrong to say that.
Maybe you’re right I shouldn’t pick nits.
Stop JAQing off.
Stop JAQing off.
Yes, absolutely no need for
Yes, absolutely no need for the attack, but Swirly is generous like that - always willing to give extra.
Sometimes ...
A little extra is very needed.
Like when trying to crack through something very dense, like a Brazil nut.
Ah, yes - the "Say
Ah, yes - the "Say inflammatory stuff that fits your concerns, in order to shape the public conversation" approach.
How very J. D. Vance of you.
Maybe don't
You're feel to free however you want about Swirly, but she's absolutely right to not indulge the JAQoff, and to call it what it is. And you are digressing from the point, just as the JAQoff is.
Nice try, honey
I'm sure that your family thinks that you are Teh Smartest Boy Ever - but they never met a logical fallacy they could detect.
Like an angry drunk skunk.
She sprays in anyone’s general direction.
Oh Hi Lee
I see you there. Now run along to your parents - dinner's ready.
not ad hominem
exhaust addled head= Car Biased interpretation
It is not a personal attack. she is drawing attention to the illogical bias that prevents you from acknowledging the causation. Your argument's fallacies are formal failures of causation and an informal appeal to ignorance.
The driver reported that that they lost control of the vehicle. The law requires that they maintain control of the vehicle. The reluctance to call it murder is dangerous. The auto industry and the insurance collude to prevent safety because they save money in the short term. If the presumption of responsibility is switched to the driver, the powerful lobbies will be forced to support safer street design.
He's an enabler
You know all the excuses that people make for drug addicts in their family or friend group?
They have a lot of parallels in the excuses people make for homicidally negligent or violent drivers.
Can't ever be that special person's fault, nosiree!
but in this case the special
but in this case the special person makes money for certain industries, which I suppose is also true of addiction.
Close the onramp to Memorial East Permanently.
It is too narrow to accommodate cyclists, pedestrians and cars.
Not necessary
It can be made much narrower, entering Memorial Drive at a sharper angle. That would leave plenty of room to widen the sidewalk and add a bike lane.
That onramp is not necessary.
That onramp is not necessary. It is bizarre how much death people will accept for a few seconds convenience.
The MBTA's CT2 bus uses this ramp
They can figure out something
They can figure out something else.
All that speculation
And not once did you consider reckless driving. Pretty telling.
Are we any closer to witness
Are we any closer to witness reports being corroborated? What exactly happened?
That's the last thing you want
Corroboration of witness reports is the last thing you want. It would ruin your fun.
I am not aware of any doubt
I am not aware of any doubt of those reports. The video won't be released without foia.
Trying not to stereotype here
But the fact that the vehicle involved is a Mercedes SUV does not shock me.
Nor I, but ….
… I wonder how long we will be made to wait before the driver is publicly identified.
Clearly many many people want to know who and why. When will the killer come out of their flashy fiberglass cocoon?
This killing has affected so many who did not even know the victim personally.
No kidding
No kidding. Run down when you weren't even on the road? Whatever punishment is levied, it's no consolation to the dead and no protection for the living.