Today on my bike ride home, I saw a man wearing a neon yellow t-shirt, neon helmet with a flashing red light, two neon panniers. The shirt read (on both front and back):

“Can you see me NOW.”

Sure, it made me chuckle a bit, the sassy pointedness, knowing motorists will read his shirt, and some will laugh, some will know he’s talking about them. Some, though, may realize the more somber fact that once every few months in Boston, there is a cyclist fatality.

There’s a lot of victim blaming when it comes to cyclist-motorist collisions, which is what the man’s shirt is pointing at — well I didn’t see you, so it’s your fault.

My friend was hit in Columbus, OH, a city ten times safer than Boston to bike in (my assumption based on lived experience). She was passing through the intersection, on a share road, and a motorist turned through the intersection without yielding. She didn’t press charges officially; she just wanted her bike repair and ER visit to be covered.

Cyclists call this “banging a right.”

When I moved to Boston, I felt extremely fortunate to have a bike route to work each day. I’m on the road for half a mile, and then three miles on Southwest Corridor Park, an off-road biking path. The ride is beautiful, saves me $4.50 each day, and takes half the time as the T (Boston’s metro), but how safe are bike commuters?

Boston has made improvements over there years, there is no doubt, especially since the death of a Boston surgeon, who was run over by a truck driver on Massachusetts Avenue. Since then, the dialogue around bike safety has skyrocketed, and Boston invested in a protected bicycle lane on Mass Ave.

But even protected bike lanes don’t save cyclists when motorists ‘bang a right.’ This is my worst fear with the Southwest Coordinator Park, motorists who don’t yield when turning right (or left, really) and crossing over the bike lane. The signs warning motorists to yield are small and bent and either not heeded or not seen. New signage and neon paint for the road crossing would be an inexpensive way to make the path safer, and installing right-turn-only lanes where motorists must wait the arrows… well, that’d be the dream.