On March 7, 2019, Houston cyclist David Loya Jr., 23, was biking home from the University of Houston-Downtown, where he was a student, when he was struck at the intersection of Heights Boulevard and East Eighth Street by an HISD school bus. He died on impact.

“When he passed, he was doing what he loved to do the most, which was riding a bike,” says Loya’s father, David Loya Sr. The elder Loya remembers his son as someone who loved music (he was known to pull out his acoustic guitar when he was around friends and family) and who was passionate about helping kids, a fixation he parlayed into a job at an immigration center. His love for cycling was something he shared with his father, who also spent his youth biking around the Heights—Loya Sr. grew up in an apartment complex near the very intersection where his son was later killed.

If you pass by that intersection today, you’ll see a white bicycle chained to a telephone pole, decorated with synthetic flowers, crosses, and string lights. Candles are often placed in front of it. A plaque attached to the bike features a photo of Loya Jr. as well as the date he was killed.

In Houston, there are over 100 of these “ghost bikes,” marking locations where cyclists have been struck and killed by drivers. Although more than 400 miles of bike lanes have been built in Houston since 2017, the city is still very much laid out for cars. The lanes are not well connected, and many start and end suddenly, meaning cyclists must bike through traffic-heavy streets to jump from lane to lane. The situation is at its worst in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, which tend to have fewer bike lanes despite being home to more people who cycle as their main mode of transportation. In 2022, 11 Houston cyclists were killed through collisions with motor vehicles. According to BikeHouston, the 2022 number was surpassed in 2023 by August.

The first known ghost bike was placed in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2003, following the death of a cyclist there. Soon after, ghost bikes started popping up in other cities, including in Houston, but it wasn’t until the death of Chelsea Norman in December 2013 that the practice took off here. Norman, 24, was on her way home from a late-night shift at Whole Foods when she was struck near a bike lane in Montrose by an intoxicated driver, who then fled the scene. Norman died a few days later at a hospital. The person who killed Norman was eventually turned in by a friend and sentenced to 15 years in prison—not for hitting Norman, but for her failure to stop and render aid.

Norman’s death galvanized the local cycling community, and her friends and family decided to place a ghost bike in her honor. When local graphic designer Steve Sims learned about Norman’s upcoming ghost bike placement, he reached out to her family and offered to create a plaque. On the day of the placement, which followed a group ride, Sims met Richard Tomlinson, an active member of Houston’s biking community.

“Richard at the time thought that we should start putting out white bikes for everyone who had been struck and killed, not just waiting for the families to put out bikes,” Sims says. “Richard said that if people start seeing these bikes all around the city, they’ll understand how big of a problem it is.”

Tomlinson and some friends had an idea that would become the Houston Ghost Bike initiative. Tomlinson, who lived outside of Beaumont, stripped and painted bikes himself, then transported them into Houston on a trailer before placing them in locations where cyclists had been killed over the years, which he learned of through news articles. Sims joined in on the effort and started making plaques, because he thought seeing the name and face of the person the ghost bike was honoring would have a bigger impact.

One of these early placements was for Tyra Simmons, a cyclist who was on her way to a Walgreens in November 2009 when she was struck by a Toyota Tundra in eastern Harris County. The driver, who had been making a U-turn, wasn’t aware at first that he had struck Simmons, who had become entangled with his undercarriage after the collision. Simmons was dragged for a mile before the driver stopped to check what he thought was a flat tire. She died at the scene.

Tyra’s sister, Nicole Simmons, remembers her as someone who was free-spirited and who never met a stranger. “She was a loving and thoughtful person,” Nicole says. “She was someone who always looked out for others more than she looked out for herself.” Nicole, who learned from a friend in 2014 that a ghost bike had been placed in her sister’s honor, likes to visit the bike every year on Tyra’s birthday, and she and her children keep it decorated throughout the year to mark different holidays.

Bike placement formats differ depending on what the family wants. Sometimes that’s a memorial service held in tandem with the placement or a celebration of the victim’s life. The bike is then brought out and chained to a telephone pole or traffic sign before flowers are zip-tied to it and the plaque is placed. At that point, attendees are able to share a few words about the victim.

While many bike placements are small, family-centric affairs, one in October 2023 drew a crowd of hundreds. The placement was for Logan Dark, a 14-year-old Cinco Ranch High student who was struck and killed in a crosswalk in September as he was riding his bike to school. Dark’s bike placement was preceded by a group ride, which ended at the site where he was hit. According to Logan’s father, Josh Dark, around 250 people, most of them families with kids, participated. “That line just kept coming,” Dark says. “There were so many people coming, so many bikers, so many that would see this ghost bike and know that could have been [their] child.”

Dark remembers his son as someone who was extremely independent and who always had a smile on his face. “He was a very, very kind soul. We have four animals in our house—two dogs and two cats—and he’s the one that all the animals would just gravitate to,” he says. Logan, who was on the freshman football team at his school, was also an avid fisherman. “He was on his bike constantly, usually with three or four rods hanging out. He knew every pond within a four- or five-mile radius of our house,” his father says. In a touching tribute to his favorite hobby, many showed up to Dark’s bike placement carrying fishing rods.

Sims, who has experienced some heartfelt moments at bike placements, says this is often the first time a family feels they have been listened to and that their pain has been acknowledged. “In a lot of these situations, nothing is ever done,” he says. “These people are struck and killed and there isn’t one ticket or citation issued. That’s just horrible for the families. That’s why we keep doing this. We see these families over and over again waiting for someone to listen to them.”

While cycling deaths often don’t lead to charges, the driver who struck Dark could face repercussions thanks to the Lisa Torry Smith Act, commonly known as the “Crosswalk Law,” which went into effect in Texas in 2021. The new law requires drivers of motor vehicles to stop and yield to anyone “lawfully in the intersection or an adjacent crosswalk” and states that if, through criminal negligence, a collision in such an area results in “serious bodily injury,” the driver can be charged with a state jail felony.

Josh Dark is hopeful that the new law will help raise awareness among drivers that they can actually face serious repercussions for striking and killing cyclists, leading to safer driving and fewer people being struck. “For someone who loses a life, it doesn’t get much worse. And also, for that to be a violent act, like getting hit by a car,” he says. “You know, just to be able to throw your hands out and say, ‘Well, my bad,’ doesn’t seem like justice.”

Sims and his wife, Melissa, who took over the Houston Ghost Bike operation from Tomlinson in 2014, encountered a victim’s nephew after arriving to place a bike late that year—he was cleaning blood off the side of the road, because the deceased’s mother couldn’t stand seeing it when she drove by every day. “That made me stop and think about what we were doing. I talked to the man’s mother and asked her if the bike would be a bad reminder of it or if it was something she wanted,” Sims remembers. “She said she would want it, but that was a source of self-reflection for us and made us realize that we needed to make sure that we were always involving the family and other people who might be affected by the bike placement.”

Today, the Simses still keep track of the biking deaths in Houston, but they wait for family members to reach out to them before doing any bike placements. They have a pretty large collection of donated bikes in the backyard of their home that they paint themselves (with the occasional help of a Boy Scout group or some other community organization), so when a family reaches out, there’s usually already a bike ready to go.

Steve Sims hopes the visibility the organization is creating around cycling deaths prompts people in the community to practice more bicycle awareness and learn better ways to share the road with cyclists. “That’s why I put pictures of the people on the plaques,” he says. “I want people to know that this bike represents a real person. A real person and a real family that is hurting.”