The recent death of Metro Councilman Buddy Amoroso in a bicycling accident in St. Francisville hits home for Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel.
“Like the late councilman, I, too, am a cyclist,” Riegel writes in her latest column. “Some of my fondest memories of living in Baton Rouge these past 13 years are of long, weekend rides down River Road towards Prairieville and around the lush, winding roads near Alligator Bayou, or up in the gentle, rolling hills of West Feliciana Parish.”
It doesn’t matter how stressful a week Riegel had or how busy the week ahead. A few hours on the bike on the outskirts of town—where the air is heavy with the smell of rich south Louisiana earth and the landscape is dotted with weathered structures from decades past—is her favorite way to relax and rejuvenate.
These are among the reasons Amoroso also enjoyed riding—a subject he and Riegel would discuss from time to time during the course of an interview for Business Report. Though they never rode together, they had several mutual friends in the cycling community and would occasionally swap stories about interesting routes, Riegel writes.
“The older I’ve gotten, the more aware of the dangers I’ve become,” she says. “Maybe it’s just a sign of aging. I don’t know. I do know that the week Amoroso was killed, I was on the Florida Panhandle’s Highway 30A, where I’ve ridden my bike every year while on the annual family vacation for more than a decade.”
This year, Riegel couldn’t stop thinking about how risky it suddenly seemed. Though 30A’s drivers are generally respectful of cyclists, the amount of traffic along the rapidly developing coastal highway made me feel particularly unsettled.
“On the drive back to Baton Rouge, I found out about the senseless accident that killed Amoroso and seriously injured his friend. I felt sick,” she writes.
The councilman’s tragic death is yet another reminder that we can do much better, she says.
In the weeks since the tragedy, the local cycling community has engaged in what has become an all too familiar exercise of hand-wringing, public conversation and social media chatter. Members of groups like Bike Baton Rouge and the Baton Rouge Bike Club have taken to their Facebook pages and made the rounds on local media to advocate for better laws and tougher enforcement.
“But will anything change?” Riegel asks.
The community that has remembered Amoroso with such eloquent eulogies and public statements, she says, now owes it to his memory, his family and his constituents to do more to make the Capital Region’s roads safer for cyclists, which will enhance the quality of life for everyone.
Read the full column. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
