Main Line Man Fights For Safer Roads After Major Bike Crash

LOWER MERION TOWNSHIP, PA — After being struck by a pickup truck in May 2016, Lou Savastani had a long journey to get back onto his bike and on the road. But the Lower Merion man did it after months of working to get back on the bike a year to the day of the crash.

Savastani, 51, now has a passion for road safety education.

"All I could think about was trying to take lemons and make them into lemonade," Savastani told Patch. "To bring positive change because of what happened to me."

On May 16, 2016, he was training for an Iron Man triathlon in Lake Placid, New York when he was struck by a pick up truck while on his bike.

"I was biking on road in Upper Merion and a pickup truck turned left and drove right through me," he said.

Suffering from a broken left knee, broken right hip, broken left shoulder, three broken ribs, and a collapsed lung, Savastani was airlifted to Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

He underwent three surgeries almost immediately and then spent nearly the entire year in a wheelchair.

To make matters worse, blood was not flowing to his broken hip properly, which resulted in Savastani getting a total hip replacement.

"It was a long road," he said. "I was at Jefferson for a couple of weeks and spent about a month and a half in a nursing home."

After he could walk, he took on physical therapy at Bryn Mawr Rehab.

Then on May 17, 2017 — one year after his brutal crash — Savastani and a group of friends rode from Cadence Cycling in Manayunk, down Martin Luther King Drive to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and back up to Manayunk.

Fast-forward to July 2019. Savastani successfully competed in the Lake Placid Iron Man.

But despite coming back and completing the triathlon, Savastani said he was still thinking about the crash.

He said the driver was cited for failure to yield and reckless driving.

Savastani said he did not feel that was a fair punishment for the months of trauma and work he had to take on due to his injuries form the crash.

"That's not out of line for what normally happens in this country," he said of punishments for drivers who strike pedestrians or cyclists.

Typically, he said, harsh penalties are imposed when a driver leaves the scene of the crash or is driving under the influence.

In Europe, he said drivers are often held more accountable than in the United States, most likely because our cities and towns are built around automobile use.

This is where Savastani's activism comes in.

He formed Lower Merion Safe Cycling in 2017 and is currently the chair of Bike Montgomery County.

Having cycled for about 30 years after getting into the sport to stay fit, Savastani has found a new calling in the cycling world to create safer roads for cyclists.

Savastani recently finished a draft of his Complete Streets Proposal for Lower Merion Township.

Complete streets are streets designed with the safety of all road users regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation in mind.

In the proposal he lays out statistics of vehicle crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists.

According to his data, between 2009 and 2018 there were 8,832 motor vehicle crashes in the township, and just over half have caused injury or death.

Of those 8,832 crashes, 296 have involved pedestrians and 91 involved cyclists.

He says increased traffic from commuters avoiding highways lead to more crashes.

Anecdotally, Savastani has noticed more speeding in Lower Merion and the surrounding areas.

Additionally, the Main Line Greenway is a major project in Savastani's purview.

The project focuses on a 20-mile loop route from Bala Cynwyd to Villanova with the potential to connect over 75 percent of area residents to community destinations via a network of low-stress, bicycle-friendly neighborhood streets.

Savastani, Kimberley Bezak of the Narberth Cycling Club, and Chris Leswing of Lower Merion Township will give a presentation on the Main Line Greenway at 5 p.m. on March 1 at Foley Center on the Maguire Campus at Saint Joseph University, after a 2 p.m. screening of the movie "Motherload," a documentary about cargo cycling.

Savastani is also working with Montgomery County to connect "low stress streets" for cyclists as part of the Bike Montco Plan.

On top of these concrete projects, Savastani is also advocating for a language shift when it comes to road violence.

"People are hit with a car, not by a car," he said.

He says common parlance tends to give agency to a vehicle, not the driver, in a crash and often points to victims for the blame.

"The way we talk about road violence makes it seems like it just happens," he said.

While taking on this bold advocacy role, Savastani still rides regularly.

He bikes nearly daily, only driving once or twice a week, to get around town and run errands.

As for his training, he cycles indoors.