rant
I had a cyclist today cut off the four cars in front of me and then weave in front of me narrowly missing my front tire as he blew a red light! I honestly felt like hitting the accelerator and letting him have it....he scared the crap out of me.....figured he's in the wrong so if I hit him...he can explain to the cop and the doctor in emergency what the hell he thought he was doing.
and last night a drunk driver rammed into a the car of a teenage girl, killing her in front of her parents
http://www.canada.com/news/Teen+dies+fiery+crash+front+home/1985457/story.html but you won't see anti-driver editorials and message board threads, weeks of front page headlines, calls for increased licensing.. it's usually treated as an everyday unlucky event (described as a 'mishap' by The Star and typically referred to as 'accidents'), despite it being a heinous criminal act (drunk or not drunk).
People really have to put this whole cyclist thing in perspective.... Thousands each year die or are seriously in Canada each year on the streets, and there are hundreds of thousands of collisions caused by bad drivers, but there is no call for increased licensing, no generalization of all drivers as bad and reckless like there is with cyclists, and no serious consequences as the perpetrators will only get
3-4 years in jail even for killing multiple people while driving drunk.
When even minor solutions are proposed to punish or reduce bad driving there is a huge resistance. People get angry when the blood alcohol max is lowered, angry that there are upcoming cellphone bans, angry when there are restrictions for young drivers, angry when speed limits are reduced in cities (despite clear evidence that it saves lives), angry when there are hefty punishments for extreme speeding and dangerous driving, and angry about 'getting caught' speeding or any other violation of the law (and go to court to fight it despite clearly being guilty). The violation of the Highway Traffic Act by speeding is done by 99% of drivers, but is deemed as acceptable by the general public, and is promoted by police and engineers which tolerate (while other countries have a 3km/hr tolerance) or even accommodate these things by increasing speed limits and lengthening signal lights. People will shrug off things like texting and driving either sheepishly or as if they have the skills to do so, despite all sorts of evidence against it and despite that they are supposed to be concentrating on driving a 2000 lb piece of metal around at high speeds.
People aren't biking on the sidewalks because they don't care (except for a few idiots) or they are some kind of anarchists, they're biking because they fear for their lives ridings on the streets with high speed and high volume traffic, drunks, people on cellphones, people eating and drinking, or people like you who would even consider using your car to injure or kill someone who got in the way or angered you while driving.. When a a person on a bike is killed by a person driving a car, it seems like people will assume the cyclist is at fault or partially to blame (i.e.
shouldn't have been out there), call for all sorts of new rules/licensing for cyclists, and complain about cyclists in general as accident-causing lawbreakers (
despite the facts). Even if you are following the rules, you will experience getting honked at, brushed by, have stuff thrown at you, and have your life flash before your eyes as a door opens in front of you. Other countries have designed their infrastructure and laws to help people on bicycle and on foot, but Canada is far behind (and has much higher rates of road deaths). That type of safer cycling infrastructure also encourages people to follow the rules because it feels and is much safer and more convenient, and isn't designed primarily around cars with cyclists and pedestrians as afterthoughts.
Of course cyclists shouldn't run red lights, weave in and out of traffic, and ride on the sidewalks, I'm all for enforcing the rules, but put it into perspective... cyclists are not these lone anarchist group of lawbreakers, there are plenty of drivers also do things like that (e.g. 10,000 tickets from red light cameras a year in Toronto; 10,000 people in Ontario have charged under the stunt driving law) except when a driver does it someone can easily be killed or severely injured as thousands are each year..
Of course you can drive drunk and kill and be back on the streets
enjoying life within a few years instead of being in prison for life for killing someone. You can open a car door into a cyclist and kill them and only get a $110 fine. You can run a stop sign and
kill another person and simply be fined $500-$1500. You can get 19 drunk driving convictions before you finally kill someone and the justice system does something about it. Yet there is no true outrage, no multi-page message board threads, no wide public call for increased licensing and sentencing, no generalizing of all drivers as red light runners, and few front page headlines. There is a far bigger outrage at lost convenience when the government tries to change the law to make the streets safer.
The biggest problem is that most people are drivers, and they put themselves in the shoes of the other person. They think of the times that they have accidently run a stop sign or tried to make it through a red light and don't think of these things are criminal or malicious. They wouldn't want to go to jail for 'accidently' running down a cyclist or pedestrian because they were distracted or absent-minded. I heard this myself around the office when a
guy ran down 5 cyclists (in a bike lane) in Ottawa and left the scene. People were actually sympathizing with him. That is the biggest problem, that these things are seen as accidents when they are actually preventable and that bad driving that risks other people's lives isn't taken seriously.... relatively few people bike regularly on city streets, so it's a lot harder to sympathize with a cyclist, most people's notable experience with cycling would be getting annoyed at having to slow to pass someone or seeing a reckless person riding around. If there is a cycling-driver collision, people who drive more will likely sympathize and with the drivers and make assumptions about the cyclist, and those who bike a lot will sympathize with the cyclist and make assumptions about the driver (just look at that Bryant death and the cyclists memorial vs the radio talk shows)... it shouldn't be like that.. road rage, dangerous driving, bad driving, and drunk driving should be condemned no matter what party is involved.
Lest you think I'm some angry hairy bike messenger who doesn't pay taxes, I drive far more than I bike, never ever wear spandex, and think things like Critical Mass are dumb.... but it really bothers me how much "cyclists" are generalized, marginalized, and dehumanized, and their safety is trivialized for the sake of convenience. And it especially bothers me how driving a car and killing someone with a car are not taken as seriously as they should be.
