Eleven years ago, I got a call that no one ever wants to get: My husband had gotten into a bike accident and was in the hospital.

I ran as fast as I could to the hospital to find my husband in triage, lying on a stretcher with a rubber cast around his neck. The first thing he told me was that he wasn’t sure what would happen — and that he wouldn’t blame me if I left him. I was too squeamish to look at him closely, but out of the corner of my eye I saw his mouth was full of blood. Another person, a young woman, lay on a stretcher nearby. She too had gotten into a bike accident that morning. As doctors moved parts of her body, asking what she could feel. Nothing. She’d been paralyzed.

These are the risks cyclists take to navigate Philadelphia. My husband was lucky enough to get out with a

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