Bob Inglis: “the bicycling community in Greenville, South Carolina, and my own office had a tragic loss this week. Jeanne Menard was…”

“the bicycling community in Greenville, South Carolina, and my own office had a tragic loss this week. Jeanne Menard was a bicyclist and an enthusiast in Greenville who was struck and killed by a car. Maybe it was the fact that the sun was low in the sky, maybe it was a dirty windshield, maybe it was inattention, maybe it was all of those things. In any event, somebody who had given her time very recently to distributing helmets to school children in one of our parks was killed in our town. As a society, we want to promote a healthier lifestyle. We want people to ride bikes in order to relieve congestion on our streets, in order to make them healthier and just to have some fun. The problem is that we are not all attentive to those bikes. In South Carolina, there were 21 bicyclists killed in 2004; so far this year, 10. Nationwide, 600 bicyclists have been killed yearly in crashes with automobiles. I applaud groups like the League of American Bicyclists, the Palmetto Cycling Coalition, the Spartanburg Freewheelers and the Greenville Spinners, of which Jeanne Menard was a part, in their efforts to promote bike safety; and I hope that all of us will take the opportunity to spread the word in our own districts. ____________________”