Thursday’s headlines

8 comments

1. Why is the Bryant case being labelled as bike vs. car? Remarks such as that from Christie Blatchford “The mismatch between car and bicycle is sufficiently enormous that the cyclist is inherently always right.” do nothing but inflame the situation. Darcy Sheppard did not die by the result of being a cyclist.

2. Re: the Sheppard/Bryant story. There is so much that we don’t know about this story. There likely are good arguments for a bike lane on Bloor. But the more details that come out about this particular story, the less clear it seems to me that a bike lane would have prevented this tragic outcome (or the horrible incident last year where a taxi driver severed a cyclist’s limb). At the risk of offending some on this site, I will say I find the willingness and zeal of some to use this man’s death to step up their lobby for better bike infrastructure as crass and opportunistic.

   What does seem to be clear is that a young man (a father of four young children) is dead, and no matter how ‘troubled’ he may or may not have been, no matter how he may or may not have contributed to the circumstances of his demise, there are people who loved him and will miss him deeply.

3. Mr. Sheppard died because both he and Mr. Bryant made some bad choices. Neither was exclusively at fault and were both of them alive, I should hope both of them would have to pay some sort of penalty. Reckless endangerment perhaps for Mr. Sheppard and unsafe operation of a motor vehicle for Mr. Bryant. But the fact of the matter is that only one survived and his action contributed to the death of another…so he’s the one who’s gotta pay. It’s fair and it’s pretty cut and dry…

   In a long-term sense, I have to agree that bike lanes wouldn’t have made one iota of difference in this case. BUT…they would have made the difference in countless other incidents where a cyclist was hurt or killed by a car.

   Toronto’s current scheme of “painted-line” bike lanes is horribly inadaquate and our acceptance of it in the bike plan is disgraceful. If we, as a cycling community accept these scraps we’re given, then it’s clear that even we don’t place enough severity on the issue of bike safety. Major streets need major bike lanes; separated and safer. Anything less is simply too much less.

   I wrote about this in regards to the Jarvis bike lanes in greater detail on my blog…click on my name to get there.

4. making this about bikes vs cars makes as much sense as saying liberals don’t support guns for self defense, but support using vehicles instead.

5. While a bike lane wouldn’t have prevented all the events that followed it, a bike lane very well may have prevented the minor collision that triggered the events.

6. Darwin, it may… and it may not have.

7. I have commented at length on this matter and feel that this is not necessarily about whether more bike lanes are necessary (in such a debate, I normally favour the driver).

   But rather than this be a car-vs-bike showdown, I see this more of a pressing issue: CIVILITY. Or rather the distinct lack of it. I’m not going to say who escalated it and such, but I note that our city is becoming a much ruder place to work, play, or get around. And this isn’t just always limited to cyclists or drivers, but everyone else in general, from pedestrians, to delivery people, to small business owners, etc. You get the picture.

   Calls for new bike infrastructure are nothing but a band-aid solution, the real solution is for people to get a grip and respect the rules of the road, whether it be driver, cyclist, or pedestrian. Had there been a modicum of civility, either on part of Sheppard, or Bryant, then I am sure that no one would have died on that day.

8. The point about Bloor and bikelanes is that it is a wide arterial which has no daytime surface transit. If a road like that has insufficient space for bikelanes then we should stop kidding ourselves about roads without a subway under them. Instead we bow and scrape to the Yorkville merchants, building a parking bay for Holts.