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rfmcdonaldPostmedia News' Rene Bruemmer describes what sounds like a frightening situation on the streets of Montréal.
Montreal’s latest ghost bike was installed in early September on a street corner in Rosemont where Justine Charland St-Amour died too young.
The 24-year-old, who had just completed her studies in occupational therapy at the Université de Montréal’s medical school, was an experienced cyclist who grew up in a family where cycling was the main form of transportation. At 2 p.m. on Aug. 22, she was waiting for the light to change on Iberville St., about a kilometre northwest of Olympic Stadium and not far from her apartment, as a dump truck idled beside her. Later, St-Amour’s father-in-law would tell La Presse he considers Iberville St. so dangerous that when he’s on his bike, he avoids it — “like the plague.”
When the light changed, St-Amour started forward, and the truck driver, who could not see her in his blind spot, turned right. She died at the scene. Police declared no one was at fault.
Hers was the sixth ghost bicycle, painted all in white, eerie, haunting and sad, that advocates have erected in the last three years in Montreal to commemorate cyclists killed. Five of them died in collisions with a truck. The other, 27-year-old Bernard Carignan, was killed a year ago when he swerved to avoid a car door and was hit by a vehicle on St. Denis St. in Rosemont.
St-Amour’s death came during a particularly bloody week in which four other cyclists were hospitalized after collisions, one of them an 18-year-old who was critically injured after being hit by a van crossing the Berri St. bike path to enter a parking garage.
Montreal prides itself on being one of the most progressive and successful bike cities in North America, with 733 kilometres of bike lanes and counting and a million cyclists. But the rash of serious accidents has raised an unsettling question: Has cycling’s popularity outpaced the infrastructure needed to ride safely?
