I have been brooding over this for decades. It really pisses me off.
If you listen to the media, which I desperately try to avoid, every accident reported is a cry for more laws, more controls and more Nanny State Rules.
Three recent events have prompted this rant.
1 - In Waterloo they love round-abouts.
Recently a school girl was struck and injured while trying to cross one of these.
We need more signs! We need to hang the politicians who built these! We need bridges over the round-abouts!
2 - In Toronto it is a non-stop-war "Car vs Bike"!
A young pregnant mother was killed on her bicycle in Toronto.
We need to ban BIKES! We need to ban cars! We need more bike lanes! We need to license cyclists!
3 - Racing (Or driving faster than your abilities allow ... the new natural selection method.)
Yesterday a woman was killed when her SUV flipped and burst into flames on the DVP as a result of driving at a high rate of speed.
We need to put speed limiters on all cars! We need to jail racers for a hundred years!
It is pathetic. Full stop.
All of the above incidents are not accidents. These are called collisions. There is no such thing as an accident. Well, sure, if a tree falls on your car while it is parked, yeah, ok that is an accident. Everything else is a collision.
We all find great comfort in seeking "who's fault is it?" when bad stuff happens. God forbid we accept, that as humans, we all make mistakes, we are sometimes distracted and we are generally ... stupid.
When you are out and about during your day, especially when it involves being in, around or near cars, please ... wake the fuck up! You on a bike or walking vs a car? You lose.
I saw a few things that were posted and written concerning the poor woman who was killed in Toronto. All of it well intended, none of it useful. Some of it downright dangerous.
One fellow, a bike courier, gave a lengthy instruction dissertation on "How to ride in the city." Well, if this is how you are supposed to ride a bike in the city, I am surprised we don't have a dozen fatalities a day! If you have read this couriers manual to defensive driving and believe it, sell your bike and walk - you will be a danger to yourself and others if you follow any of it.
I know a wee bit about bikes, and cars, and collisions and know a whole bunch about Dundas & Stirling in Toronto.
I grew up there, cycled daily through there. I was also a cop in that division. I studied driving, driver safety and accident investigation and spent over 400 hours just learning to drive properly. As well, I commuted on bike for years and raced road bikes for many of those years. For the record, I have driven since I was 16 - 44 years. No tickets, no collisions in a car or on a bike. I also will never, ever get into a collision. Why? Because I know how to drive properly.
There is a simple solution to all collisions. (You can use the word accidents, if the word collision and its inherent meaning that it was caused makes you queazy.) The solution is to learn how to operate your vehicle and slow down.
If you are in a hurry, slow down.
If you are angry and frustrated, slow down.
If you are not sure if someone sees you, slow down.
if you are a cyclist or a pedestrian and are not 100% sure you have free and safe right-of-way slow the fuck down.
In fact, it will NEVER kill you to just stop. It might kill you, if you do not.
But we don't. I see road rage way more prevalent than ever before, I see cyclists riding their bikes like they are invincible (a form of passive aggressive behaviour) and I see our overall ability to drive deteriorating year after year.
We do not need speed bumps. All we have to do is obey the posted speed limits. We do not need bicycle lanes. All we have to do is learn to ride bikes properly. Trust me learning to ride a bike properly is not difficult. And we do not need to put governors on our cars to stop them going over a certain speed. All we have to do is follow the rules of the road. Net/net - we need to learn how to drive. Or in the case of a bike learn how to operate a vehicle based on the rules of the road.
I investigated hundreds of accidents. Many involving cyclists. And looking back every accident was preventable. Easily preventable. One I remember was involving a young boy who was run over by a truck on Queen near Sorauren.
In the case of the boy who was killed, there was a simple solution to the tragedy. He had borrowed a friends bike. It had hand brakes rather than coaster brakes that he was used to. The bike also was too big for him. He took the bike out on Queen W at rush hour for his first spin and panicked in traffic. He started to peddle backwards to stop never having used handle bar brakes before. He fell off to his left into traffic and was crushed by a truck and killed instantly. There is more to this story ...
I was first on the scene. It was a very disturbing sight. I crawled under the back of the truck to see if there was anything I could do for the victim. Sadly, although I am not a doctor, I knew there was no hope. There was very little left of the boy. What was there was unrecognizable as a human being. I called the ambulance and rushed to the closest place of business, which then happened to be a pool hall and asked if anyone had anything I could use to cover the accident scene. A guy literally ripped a curtain down for me and I took it out and covered the boy. The accident teams arrived with the EMS the scene was investigated and the boys body taken to St Joe's. I had to find and notify the parents. I went up Sorauren to an address that the friend of the boy who owned the bike provided.
I went to the door, knocked and it was answered by the same man that had given me the curtain. Our eyes locked. He knew. At the scene he did not recognize the bicycle as it was not his son's. And as a result of the severity of the accident the boy was not recognizable.
The man collapsed.
I remember a dozen or so cases where I had to notify loved ones of tragedy caused by one of these "accidents." These images, like the image of the 10 year old boy under the wheels of the transport truck never go away. When I get behind the wheel of my car, or on my bike ... I know, I will never, ever cause anything like this to happen.
Maybe one way to get the message through to people who enjoy the privilege of driving and riding bikes is perhaps letting them see what happens when you are stupid, or careless, or distracted, or in a hurry or angry.
The consequences of something as benign as borrowing your buddy's bike can be life-changing.
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