We Love the City

Category: Cycling

  • Regular People Doing Regular Things on Bikes

    Do you wear regular clothes?

    Yes, I know: That’s a meaningless question. You’d expect a person’s wardrobe to vary based on their job, their leisure activities, and their personal style. 

    But this sort of question seems to be a thing among certain cycling circles these days. There is, understandably, and attempt to normalize urban cycling, to depict it as a regular thing people do to get to work or buy groceries, instead of a fringe activity indulged in by crazed bicycle couriers and die-hard athletes in branded lycra. And I get it: There are a lot of stereotypes about cyclists, and combatting them is an important part of building safe infrastructure and letting cars & bikes get along on the streets.

    But increasingly, this argument seems to take an elitist, judgemental tone; in seeking to make cycling mainstream, it attempts to mainstream all cyclists.

    (more…)

  • What car commercials can teach us about bicycles

    What car commercials can teach us about bicycles

    How do you get more people to give up their cars and ride bikes?

    Danish cycling advocate Andreas Rohl attended the Ontario Bike Summit last week, and as a representative of a city with quite a lot of bicycle usage, he had a few things to say on the subject. In the National Post, he said:

    “I like to say we have no cyclists in Copenhagen. We have citizens who use bikes to get from A to B.” (more…)

  • Making Safe Cycling Laws Meaningful

    With a provincial election in the fall, Ontario politicians are starting to line up their platforms. Yesterday, NDP leader Andrea Horwath unveiled her party’s environmental policies, and most of the attention seems to have gone to a proposal that would require drivers to give cyclists at least one meter when passing.

    It’s not a new idea – 19 America states have a similar law. But while “passing at a safe distance” is the sort of thing most people can get behind, it’s hard to say how much the law is needed, or how effective it might be.

    (more…)

  • Making Up Facts: Not just for mayors any more

    Making Shit Up is the new standard for getting things done in Toronto. If you’ve got an issue, there’s no need for things like research or facts. You can just make up claims, and apparently many media outlets will print them, regardless of any actual connections to reality.

    First, we have this letter to the editor clamoring for bicycle licensing:

    My fine for causing an accident like that to Ms Nedobi would be steep, both monetary and point-wise. My insurance would increase and I would have to compensate the victim, yet the cyclists get away with minor conviction, if any.

    This is particularly funny because The Star just ran an article a month ago about how careless driving penalties are lightweight whether you’re in a car or on a bike. Remember: The Highway Traffic Act applies equally to cars and bicycles in most cases.

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  • How Dangerous is Riding a Bike?

    Helmets credited for drop in cycling head injuries. That seems like an obvious story, right? As Greg Webster, director of primary healthcare information for the Canadian Institute for Health Information says, “it intuitively makes sense.”

    But intuitively, it made sense that the sun orbited the Earth, because that’s what you see when you have a limited perspective or are only looking at a certain set of facts. There are two pieces of compelling data in the study:

    • There were 4,325 cycling-related injuries in 2009-10, compared to 4,332 eight years earlier. Meantime, the number of cycling-related head injuries stood at 665 last year, compared to 907 in 2001-2002.
    • Among the most severe cycling injury admissions of the past decade (those requiring admission to a special trauma centre), 78% of those hospitalized with a head injury were not wearing a helmet when their injury occurred

    (more…)

  • On the Subject of Bikes, Cars, Pedestrians, and The Law

    In my experience, cyclists have three approaches to the rules of the road:

    • Fully obey all laws all the time. These people are very rare.
    • Cautious rule breakers: They may not follow the exact letter of the law, but still remain considerate and aware. This is where things like the Idaho Stop comes in: They may not come to a complete stop at every stop sign, but they’ll approach the intersection with caution, yield to any traffic or pedestrian with the right of way, and then proceed. This group represents the overwhelming majority of cyclists, as well as the majority of drivers, pedestrians, and human beings in general.
    • Don’t give a fuck: These cyclists ignore signs and lights, have no understanding of the rules of the road, and are most likely to be perceived as jackasses by everyone around them.

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  • For Safer Cycling: Learn to Ride Your Bike

    Once again, Toronto is under siege. No one is safe, not seniors, not nuns, not dogs. No, I’m not talking about Hell’s Grannies; it’s far worse than that. Yes, gentle readers, it appears that people are riding bicycles on the sidewalks.

    My initial reaction to these seemingly semi-annual stories is to ask  for any evidence that sidewalk cyclists are truly a problem. Is there any record of how many pedestrians are struck by cyclists, or how many serious injuries are caused by such collisions? A recent study of Toronto cyclists (PDF) found that only 5% of cyclists rode on the sidewalk, though that study was confined to the downtown area. In last year’s bike safety blitz, police handed out 27 tickets for riding on the sidewalk – a fairly small number compared to the 211 busted for running red lights and stop signs.

    All the evidence against sidewalk cyclists seems to be anecdotal, like Councillor Mike Del Grande complaining about almost getting hit while walking his dog. Personal experience is important, and the government should listen to individual concerns, but public policy should be based on something more solid than “some people say…” Moreover, it tends to be a one-sided argument: Pedestrians are intimidated and inconvenienced, but few councillors seem interested in the reason why people are riding bikes on the sidewalk.

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  • Fear of a Bike Planet

    Are you afraid of bicycles? Scott Latimer is.He’s afraid he’ll hit one. He’s afraid someone else will hit one. He’s afraid that one might hit him. Me, I’m afraid of cars:

    (more…)

  • Cyclists, people on bikes, and responsibility

    Are you a cyclist, or do you just ride a bike?

    This is the semantic and philosophical question posed by Biking Toronto. The idea, initially floated by Publicola, is that cycling will become a more popular mode of transportation if it’s embraced as something casual and mainstream. Most people simply don’t care about cycling as an issue and aren’t committed to its development in any fashion – they just want to ride their bikes.

    It’s a nice theory: Lots of people just start riding bikes because they feel like it, and the government responds with supporting infrastructure. But it’s at best naive about how government works and  how people respond to new ideas, and idly glosses over a crucial issue: Having more people who don’t really care isn’t a good solution to anything.

    Instead, I find myself agreeing with Shawn Micallef’s column, which reminds us that the personal is political. If you ride a bike, you’re playing a role in the development of cycling infrastructure whether you like it or not. (more…)

  • Sidewalk Cyclists are the new Swine Flu

    Last week, a cyclist hit a pedestrian on a sidewalk in Scabrough, and the pedestrian died. It’s an incredibly stupid accident, and tragic that someone died, but is also the first incident of its kind to happen in some time, as far as I’m aware.

    That hasn’t stopped the Sun’s Joe Warmington from getting hysterical about it.

    A bit of background, in case you aren’t familiar with Toronto: Riding a bicycle on the sidewalk is banned by municipal by-law. Unless, that is, your wheels are a certain size – a fairly sensible exemption to allow children to learn to ride on a sidewalk. Of course, it doesn’t specify anything about children, so it’s all about wheel size. In this case, a 15-year-old was riding a bike with wheels the appropriate size for a sidewalk, so no crime has been committed. Right?

    This, understandably, gets Warmington’s goat. But it’s fair to note that no charges have been laid yet. It’s been less than a week since the accident took place – it’s not unusual for it to take much longer to sort out what charges should be applied.

    Warmington, of course, has a solution:

    Had that bike had a licensed adult on the pedals, perhaps dangerous driving charges could have been laid or even criminal negligence causing death.

    Warmington doesn’t seem to understand that a license has very little to do with whether charges can be laid. Criminal Negligence, for example, has nothing to do with licenses, cars, or bicycles:

    219. (1) Every one is criminally negligent who
    (a) in doing anything, or
    (b) in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do,
    shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons.

    Speeding down a sidewalk on a bicycle and not taking more precautions to avoid hitting a pedestrian could certainly qualify.

    Then again, the police don’t seem very keen on the whole “negligence” thing. Last year, a cyclist in Toronto was killed when a driver opened her door into his path. The charge? “Open Vehicle Door Improperly.” The punishment? $110.

    When the question of a negligence charge was raised, a toronto police officer commented, “If she didn’t look, would that be negligence? It’s very hard to label that as negligent.”

    In fact, no, it wouldn’t be hard to label that as negligence, since the Highway Traffic Act specifically states:

    165. No person shall,
    (a) open the door of a motor vehicle on a highway without first taking due precautions to ensure that his or her act will not interfere with the movement of or endanger any other person or vehicle;

    Which sounds like a pretty clear case of “omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do”.

    So rest assured, Joe: This has very little to do with licenses or wheel size. The Toronto Police just don’t seem interested in anything requiring creativity.

    Of coure, it really could be just a simple, stupid, tragic accident. No one knows how fast the cyclist was going, or what steps he or the pedestrian took to avoid the collision. If the woman had collided with a jogger, or tripped over a 4-year-old’s tricycle, the same thing could have happened, though likely without quite this level hysteria.

    He then goes on to demand an emergency city council meeting to deal with this epidemic of rampant hooliganism, and urges a coroner’s inquest. He’s dreaming on the first count, but is in luck on the second: There already was a coroner’s inquest into fatal cycling accidents! It happened more than ten years ago, and made many excellent recommendations.
    Now, lest you worry that it’s a cyclist-coddling report, there are things like this:

    That the Toronto Police Service, in partnership with the municipal Cycling Committee, expand targeted enforcement and education efforts towards specific behaviours (cyclists and drivers) which cause collisions, and use the media to raise awareness of these behaviours.

    (emphasis mine)

    I probably shouldn’t have to, but I feel I should re-state it anyway: This whole thing is a tragic mess, and the accident really shouldn’t have happened. But blowing it entirely out of proportion – and yes, I know it’s the Sun, I know it’s what they do – is simply bizarre. In 2005 (the last year for which I can find data), there were 684 fatal automobile collisions in Ontario, accounting for 766 deaths. Perhaps people could find better things to get hysterical about.