NORTH BETHESDA, Md. — Hundreds of cyclists took to the streets in D.C. and Montgomery County for the Ride for Your Life event Sunday.
The event started last year to honor Bethesda mother Sarah Langenkamp, who was hit and killed while on her bike on River Road. This year, the path the cyclists took honored several who have lost their lives in traffic.
The Ride for Your Life took the cyclists past several ghost bikes, placed at crash sites where people have lost their lives in recent years.
"People are dying on our roads, and actually last year more people died on the roads in America than the last 40 years," said Dan Langenkamp, Sarah's husband.
Sarah Langenkamp was a US diplomat and mother of two boys, who was hit by a truck while riding in a bike lane, in August 2022.
"Everything is different in our lives right now," said Dan Langenkamp. "Making cereal in the morning is different because Sarah's not there to be there with us, homework is different, school is different, just our lives have been totally turned upside down."
In September, the driver who hit Langenkamp, Santos Martinez, was fined $2,000 and sentenced to 150 hours of community service, the maximum penalty under Maryland law.
Cyclists say punishments for traffic deaths are minimal.
"I think that kind of penalty just shows somehow, we don't respect life," said Langenkamp.
"We don't have the legal structure in place to provide ways to hold people accountable for that unsafe behavior in many instances," said Kristy Daphnis, of Montgomery County Families for Safe Streets.
The ride is aimed at calling for immediate safety measures on roadways, including narrower lanes for drivers, lower speed limits and barrier markers at bike lanes, as well as a change in the priority of road design from speed to safety.
"Here is somebody who suffered the consequence of poor road design, and we need to invest in making the system safer," cyclist Peter Gray said.