On December 1, 2006, a man named Eric Ng was killed on his way home from work. He had been biking along the Hudson River, on what was then, and remains now, the most heavily used bike path in the United States. A car swerved onto the bike path, collided with Ng, and killed him. He was only 22 years old. It would later be revealed that the driver was drunk and had just left a holiday party. He had been speeding and left the road for the bike path to avoid a traffic jam. The man was given an “indeterminate” prison sentence of 3 1/2 to 10 1/2 years. At Clarkson Street, Ng’s friends installed a “ghost bike” to commemorate Ng’s life. Stripped down and spray-painted matte white, the bike gave the eerie impression of being a photonegative, a visible absence.
Jessie Singer attended the driver’s sentencing. Ng was her best friend, and she had painted New York City’s first ghost bike in 2005, not long before losing him. In her new book, There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster―Who Profits and Who Pays the Price, Singer summons the feeling of nervous dread that enveloped her that day: “The wood-walled courtroom [was] divided into victim and perpetrator like a wedding no one wants to attend.” In expressing his contrition, the killer told the court how sorry he was “for this accident that happened.”
