4Cyclist hit, dragged by car on St. Denis around 3pm Thursday afternoon. First she was doored, which threw her into traffic, where she was hit and then dragged. She’s now in critical condition. A reminder that these things can happen in plain daylight too. I hope she pulls through OK.
4Night-flight plans temporarily grounded | Trudeau airport night flight detour satisfies few: Follow up to the story the other day about night-flight routes in question over Laval, St-Laurent and Lachine.
4STO hikes Outaouais transit fares, blames fuel prices: as of September 1st, they’ll charge $3.15 per trip.
4Autobus et métro appelés à l’aide | Québec en veut plus | Quebec takes steps to beef up public transit by asking transit agencies to come up with ideas for expanding their service come September. This in response to rising gas prices, which may create new riders.
4Aidez-nous à trouver les pires endroits sur la route: TVA is collecting info about the worst roads around Quebec. Not sure what they’ll do with it other than report on it, but it could be interesting.
4Triste capital des chats errants: I have to admit I don’t really understand the assertion that “Les principaux responsables de ce phénomène de surpopulation seraient tout ceux qui à la maison ont un chat.” Maybe it’s my French — can anyone explain what this truly means?
4Des craintes pour la sécurité | Un autre incendie criminel au bar Le Stéréo | Les pompiers déplorent la fermeture de la rue Ste-Catherine: In light of recent fires on Ste-Catherine, it looks like the street closure has a few major opponents. Surely the closure does make firefighting more difficult, but there are streets all over the world that are closed year-round. Also in the Village: How loud is too loud? Tripling fines for noise complaints has Village bar owners hoping for some restraint.
4Storm claims top $56 million: Holy crap, not bad for 20 minutes.
4Piétons happés mortellement pendant qu’ils marchaient sur la route 158, dans les Laurentides.
“Bluer blues” photo by Racineur on Flickr.
10 comments
Damn, the poor cyclist. Same thing happened to me last June (http://tinmansthoughts.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/busted/), but I guess I got off lightly.
Terrible about the cyclist… I hope that she’ll be ok.
The thing about the cats is : they’re blaming cat owners for abandoning their cats when they move into a new place that doesn’t accept pets. Some abandon them at the SPCA, some just move away and leave the cat behind.
Also, not neutering ones’ pets tends to exacerbate the feral cat problem – males must be neutered early, or they will wander. The more they wander, the more wild they get. There is a whole community of feral cats in my neighbourhood – likely started with one shy female who had a litter and who got left behind in the move … and off you go.
Many people will rent a new place that says “no animals” without asking the landlord if it’s ok if they have one or two cats. Most landlords will say yes. ASK!!!
What some seem to want to prevent is having dogs in a second-floor or third-floor place…or lots and lots of cats that shit in every available space in the yard. Not that I have anything against dogs, but many young ones whine and cry all evening until their people come home, and many bark all evening, or are left barking on the balcony.
Basically, if you make it clear that you’re a responsible pet owner, landlords will allow your animal. (In fact, I believe they cannot disallow your animal, but best to check with the Régie on that one).
The cat thing is dumb.
Direct translation: The main people responsible of this overpopulation phenomenon would be all those who have a cat at home.
It’s really hard to imagine what context could be put around that to not put the blame on me (I have 2 cats at home) even though my cats never go outside the apartment.
I imagine that in reality the main people responsible are those who let un-neutered female cats go outside and then dump the kittens in an alley.
Yesterday, heading north on the 55 bus, I saw what I can only describe as an idiot rollerblader refusing to yield to the bus as it pulled into a stop. He continued to skate alongside even though he only had inches to spare. At one point he almost lost his balance and fell under. He screamed rather crazily but kept going, as if possessed by some death wish. I saw him further north. He wasn’t even a particularly skilled blader: to stop, he had to catch and hold on to a stop sign. What the hell was he thinking back there? WAS he thinking?
Second example: this spring, I was heading north on the 80 (or 535) when a young female cyclist was playing a similar cat and mouse game with the STM bus. It began in the section of Park that bisects Mount Royal. There was a dedicated bike path just a few feet away but for some reason she refused to take it. The bus couldn’t go around her in the heavy traffic and we hung back, our driver impatient. Then we reached Mount Royal Avenue. I was wondering if she’d do what I’d do: namely, hang a right and proceed up the leisurely bike routes up Esplanade or Jeanne Mance. Uh uh. She kept going, refusing to yield to the bus.
Finally, around Villeneuve our driver pulled alongside and pretty much cut her off. She wasn’t touched by the bus, but only by inches. She almost fell off.
She scrambled up to the bus stop to tell the equally furious driver that she had a right to the road, too. I couldn’t make out the whole exchange, but the big burly driver basically told this young woman to fuck off and drove away. As we departed, I saw the woman speaking to witnesses. I’m sure she filed complaint.
I was pretty freaked out. What had I just witnessed? The driver had come damn near to knocking her off her bike. The cyclist, on the other hand, refused to take readily accessible bike paths during rush hour, holding back traffic so as to assert her right to the road.
I guess my point is: people, my fellow cyclists, sometimes we do bring this shit on ourselves. Stay off the busy streets like Park and Saint Laurent. There is no point to be proven, fighting for space alongside motor vehicles. It’s a battle that can’t be won. Let them have the busy arteries: keep to quite residential streets or paths wherever possible.
Shawn,
Your roller blader really does sound like a winner there, probably some tourist looking for the jazz festival! Of course playing cat and mouse with a bus is never a good idea, but do you know why that happens? Because bicyclists tend to travel at approximately the same speed as buses in urban conditions! Given that this is the ‘natural’ speed for many cyclists, why should they go looking for indirect and cumbersome alternatives? When you are a car driver going from A to B, do you choose the fastest most direct route, or do you choose the indirect way which has lots of obstacles and detours? Why should a cyclist be any different?
Because the bike lanes are safer you say? Are you a cyclist? Have you tried any of these bike paths that you are referring to? The one by the mountain is frequently occupied by pedestrians who do not exactly appreciate cyclists zinging by them at 20 kmh. And unfortunately there really are not any good options heading north after the mountain – all of the streets are one-way heading south, and no there is not any continuous reverse-direction bike lane on any of them. Ave du Parc may not be the worst choice, but as you noted playing chicken with a bus is not a good tactic. Probably the cyclist should have pulled over and stopped playing the game. Nonetheless, it is completely inexcusable for a driver to force a cyclist off the road. Ever. One slight error by either person and the cyclist is very dead. And for what? Because someone was in a hurry?!
I feel the same way whenever I see some idiot running into traffic to catch a bus across the street. So you might miss the bus, is that really worth putting your life in peril?
As for the quiet residential streets being safer for cyclists – I beg to differ. That is where you meet the crazed whacko drivers who chase after you and get violent. For real. Seriously. And why? Because you yell at them and claim your space after *they* blew through a stop sign and ran you off the road. Their logic: “What is your problem- the street is wide enough! Why should I stop for you?! Get the fuck out of my way!” I just called the police yesterday about exactly such an incident on a quiet residential street. This kind of thing happens to me on average once a week (also as a pedestrian)- and always on a quiet residential street.
Okay, I guess I had read the statement about the cats correctly. I just wondered if there was some subtlety to it — it makes no sense to me to blame people like me or Guillaume or other responsible pet owners (who make up the vast majority of pet owners.) In fact, I adopted two cats from the SPCA on Jean-Talon, and I would expect that they would thank me for that rather than tell me all this overpopulation is my fault. I can only wonder if this is a misquote or an badly-edited quote because it makes no sense to me.
Shawn: I can see this both ways. Perhaps the cyclist would have been safer on the bike path a few streets over. I personally don’t bike on Parc because it’s scary. But the fact remains that she was biking legally and that the bus driver had to know he could kill her in an instant. Frustration and road rage is no excuse for playing with someone’s life. Trying to scare someone by threatening their life is not the way to accomplish his goal. It will only serve to drive a bigger wedge between cyclists and motorists.
Michel: your story is both harrowing and weird. What doctor kisses her patient?!
Agreed, Shawn. Though… I wasn’t a witness, but I doubt this poor woman brought it upon herself. Still…
I worry about people being doored all the time as I witness them flying down busy avenues within the “door zone”… Horrific.
On the one hand there’s no excuse for not looking when you open your car door in a parking space; on the other hand, drivers are only human at best & their awareness of cyclists is still deficient, and cyclists can’t just claim the moral high ground on the theory that “don’t tell us to stay out of traffic – we ARE traffic!” Which, while technically true, overlooks that some traffic is more equal than other traffic (to paraphrase Orwell.) Taking an ethical stand in defense of cyclists’ rights by endangering yourself and then getting self-righteous like the woman contra the bus isn’t going to advance the situation.
No point to be proven indeed – or rather the point – your rights and vulnerability – gets drowned out by the passions provoked. It just brings out the worst in both sides. As cyclists you want drivers to sympathize with your vulnerability, not be annoyed by your adding one more stress point to their coping experience. If you can’t put yourselves in the drivers’ shoes, they sure ain’t gonna put themselves in yours.
Yes, but the fact remains that they are the problem and we are the solution.
Public transport is not the same – I always yield to buses, simply because they carry more people and are part of the solution too – although some bus drivers are very backwards about such issues – I was on a bus a while back and the bus driver was griping about a cyclist, though the latter was doing nothing illegal or foolhardy. Sometimes machismo is a factor, alas.
There should be a tram on avenue du Parc – going in an utterly straight line and not pulling over. More spaces for commuters, less pollution, a more predictable situation for cyclists, though the latter will have to learn from cyclists in Amsterdam, Strasbourg and Toronto how to safely deal with tramlines.
There is a problem with the configuration of the streets near Parc east of Mont-Royal. Why do they all run south? No, there is no alternative route there, unless you want to break the law and ride against traffic.
Also, there is the problem of cyclists wanting to go to a business on Parc, to shop (PA is a favourite) or do other business.
Maria, bad drivers AND bad cyclists are the problem. Just because someone’s on a bike doesn’t by definition make them part of the solution. I don’t really understand what you mean by only yielding to buses because they carry more people. Do you not yield to cars if they have the right of way?
By law, all vehicles have to yield to buses when they pull out of a bus stop. If a bike or car is not in front of a bus at an intersection, then they must yield to the bus as it pulls out. Many drivers and cyclists I see don’t understand this concept.
I do yield to cars when they have the right of way (or if they are such macho idiots that they would rather kill me than accord me the right of way), and of course I yield to buses. I’m a very middle-aged polite wuss and not a macha cyclist at all. But the most irresponsible, stupid cyclist pollutes less than the most polite, conscientious driver. That is what I meant by problem and solution – isn’t that obvious? Private cars have no business in the heart of cities. They are a major factor in pollution and global warming which is … er … a threat to human life and many other forms of life on the planet.