At a 'Ghost Bike' ceremony, a memorial to a Georgia cyclist and a call for safer roads

Caption

Michael Ryan's ghost bike rests on the low bluff above the spot on State Highway 22 in Jones County where he was struck and killed by a car in December 2025.

Credit: Grant Blankenship/GPB News

On a drizzly Saturday, a few dozen people gathered around a white bicycle — white frame, white tires, white wheels — which was leaned against a pine tree on top of a grassy bluff above four lane state highway north of Macon.

It was a Ghost Bike ceremony, to pay their respects to a fallen cyclist.  

Michael Ryan was on his bike when he was struck and killed by a car near the top of a rise on State Highway 22 near in Jones County, a few miles north of the Macon-Bibb County line, in December of 2025.  

Bonnie Gehling put the event together to honor her friend Ryan, on behalf of the Georgia Wilderness Society to which they both belonged. Gehling said it had only been four years since the club had done this for another friend.  

"What I’d like to ask you to do if you want to is to say something about Mike if you have something you want to say." said Gehling, the organizer of this Ghost Bike ceremony.  

Ryan fought for decades for safer roads in and around Macon, even a few miles south of his ghost bike, on this same roadway. He was a citizen member of Macon’s government-affiliated Pedestrian Fatality Review Board.  

His sister Judith Ryan Graff said he'd ridden his bike on every continent except for Antarctica.  

"Here he dies on a Georgia highway and that is a cruel irony in my book," she said. "It really is."

Caption

Right, Atlanta cycling activist Dave Mathews had three ghost bikes to dedicate, including two in Savannah, on the same day he delivered Michael Ryan's to Jones County north of Macon. Left, a plastic rose adorns the stem of Michael Ryan’s ghost bike.

Credit: Grant Blankenship/GPB News

More and more people have been riding bikes in recent years. But after falling for decades, cyclist deaths began rising steeply over a decade ago nationally and don’t appear to be slowing. 

Ryan was one of the over 1,000 people killed on a bike last year in the United States.  

After the ceremony wrapped, Dave Mathews, an Atlanta cyclist who'd brought Michael Ryan's ghost bike, got back in his car with two more on the roof. He was headed to Savannah, where Caila Brown leads the advocacy group Bike Walk Savannah.  

"You know, one of the bicyclists who passed away in 2024 after being hit and killed was my friend Forrest," Brown said. "He rode his bike every single day. He loved commuting by bike. He was commuting into — I believe he was going to his job downtown."

Brown's friend was one of 26 cyclists killed in Georgia in 2024. The number jumped to 29 the following year — and Georgia has the ninth-highest rate of cycling deaths in the country. That's according to the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  

Brown said her friend was killed on a six-lane section of U.S. Highway 80 which was striped off for bike lanes but lacked any real physical barrier between cyclists and cars. She said there is a ghost bike at the spot.  

"Having a ghost bike out there does a lot to encourage people to slow down and really bring attention to the problem area," she said.  

While attention is good, Brown said, what needs to happen are changes in the design of the roads where people die — more features that protect cyclists from being hit at all.  

"At the same time, people are asking, 'Well, why was he biking out there? Because cars are going 55 plus miles per hour. I wouldn’t want to be biking out there,'" Brown said. "We have to physically change the facilities so we can physically change that conversation."

For many, the stereotype of a cyclist is someone on a city street who chose to go without a car. But about half the time people are killed on bikes in Georgia, it’s not in cities at all, but in unincorporated areas like suburbs or out in the country. Most deaths of both pedestrians and cyclists occur on state highways and arterial roads maintained by GDOT. 

For example, Chatham County leads the state in cyclist deaths with 15 between 2016 and 2025, according to Georgia Department of Transportation data.  Nine occurred on major arterial roads, some as far away as 15 miles from Savannah’s historic downtown. Meanwhile, other spots near major roads at the edges of downtown are apparently so dangerous that more than one person has been killed in essentially the same place over multiple years. That's why the map below only has 14 dots. 

Caila Brown said when you see deaths on bikes on those big arterial roads, you can infer things about the riders.  

"Those fatalities are individuals who can't own a car or who can’t maintain a motor vehicle," Brown said. "There are so many people who don't have another transportation option."

In her work with Bike Walk Savannah, Brown works with GDOT toward solutions to some of these dangerous roadways. She said it's not like GDOT doesn’t know the kinds of road designs that are safer for cyclists and pedestrians. 

"The problem that we come up with, with state projects or state routes, is that a lot of things that have been programmed for those state routes have been programmed for 10 years," Brown said.  

She said that slow bureaucratic churn makes it very hard to inject new thinking into road design.  

But not long ago, with his friend Lee Martin, Macon safety advocate Michael Ryan did push for — and won — a measure of progress on the highway where he was killed.  

"Michael was the very first person that I got involved with protesting against the Macon Bibb County Road Improvement Program of 1994," Martin recalled.  

Where Highway 22 drops into Macon-Bibb County, is a block-long stretch with fast food on both sides where about half a dozen people on foot were killed over a decade. Martin and Ryan pushed for elevated concrete islands — medianettes — in the middle of the four lanes. They are tall enough to damage a car that runs over them but short enough to be a safe space for pedestrians to pause in the middle. Early data from GDOT, which installed the medianettes, suggests they are working.  

"I’m grateful for that," Lee Martin said days after his friend’s ceremony.  

But he also said that after 30 years of fighting for safer roads, he’s done.  

"Yeah, I’ve given up," he said.  

Caption

Dave Gardner was the last to leave his friend Michael Ryan's ghost bike memorial after its February 2026 dedication.

Credit: Grant Blankenship/GPB News

In the initial police report after Michael Ryan’s death, Ryan was cited at being at fault in the crash. The driver of the car which struck him from behind was not. Rudy Mendes, education program coordinator with the advocacy group Bike Walk Macon, said that note in the report is no shock.

"As a cyclist, we have just as much right to be on the road as a vehicle — because we're considered a vehicle, right?" Mendes said.

But often, Mendes said, law enforcement aren't aware of that. Every year Mendes trains law enforcement officers on the rights of cyclists on the road.

"There's one video we show of a cyclist going past a driveway and a car cuts in front of him," Mendes said.

In the video, after the cyclist is cut off by the car, they flip over their handlebars.

"And the police officer always interprets the cyclist as being at fault," Mendes said. "They see it as a person on a bike and a car and they feel like the car has the right of way."

That’s why Mendes said a cyclist’s only real protection in the moment is knowledge, skill and the ability to make themselves visible to drivers. 

As Michael Ryan’s ghost bike ceremony was wrapping up, friend Dave Gardner asked if he could make one last remark before the group left to meet up at the Mexican restaurant up the road.  

"In remembrance of Mike, it’s my opinion that the best thing that we can do to honor him and his memory is to keep pushing these politicians for safety," Gardner said.  

Gardner continued, gesturing to the ghost bike behind him and shouting to be heard above the traffic below: Don’t let them forget — this is the result of not having safe places to ride.