Will Healy - Blue Island, IL/incident in Chicago, IL


Ten-year-old Will Healy was looking forward to the Critical Mass bike ride last Friday because he wanted to see Berwyn's Spindle statue.

Instead he took spent the evening getting examined at Stroger Hospital.

As Healy, three of his siblings and their parents rode in the 1300 block of West 18th Street, a burgundy Cadillac attempted to push through the mass of about one hundred bikers, police said.

The car hit Healy, who flew onto the hood.

"Then the car lurched and he cartwheeled onto the road," said his mother, Jane. "Someone from the crowd dragged him into the gutter otherwise he would have been run over for sure.

"He looks pretty spectacular today, purple and yellow bruises everywhere. Luckily he was wearing his helmet, so there were no head injuries ... I think a guardian angel was looking out for him."

According to his mother, Will's bike was dragged under the car for several blocks, and several other participants' bikes were damaged.


Peter Sagal's Cracked Helmet
Peter Sagal's Helmet

So I went for a bike ride yesterday morning and got whacked by a car. She hit me with her left front fender, I think, not sure, but it was LOUD. I spun up in the air, came down on my back on the ground, possibly hitting the car again on the way down. I hit my head pretty hard on something, or somethings, but I was wearing my helmet and it cracked instead of me.

The doctors thought that I had merely bruised and battered myself, but a second look at the CT scans, and my occasional screaming whenever I tried to sit up, convinced them that I had in fact broken off pieces of two vertebrae in my lower back. Fortunately, they were relatively unimportant pieces, and I recovered quickly. But: looking at the helmet, and remembering the blow to my head as I hit first the car and then the ground, convinced me that without it, I'd either be dead or severely disabled. My friends have already purchased a new, identical helmet for me, and I'm looking forward to putting it on my head for a ride soon. And I will never, ever again ride my bike without a helmet on, not even my casual pedals across town. I'd rather look dorky than be dead.


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