Cyclists ignoring red lights and running them, screaming angrily as they pass the cyclists obeying the red light. Drivers too excited about their parallel parking job to look before opening doors in front of passing cyclists. Drivers taking rolling right turns without checking their blind spots, risking this.
These are just a few dangers I encountered while cycling the streets of Toronto. You quickly learn that cycling in Toronto isn't an exercise in road safety as much as it is playing the odds: the more time you spent on the roads, the more likely you will get into an accident.
And I did get into an accident when an idiot opened a door right in front of me, sending me sideways and forwards over my handle bar onto the street.
The easy argument is demanding more bike lanes, not just the painted lines that drivers tend to ignore, but the fancy lanes with the curb that separates the cars' lane from bike lanes.
"European cities," the Fancy Bike Lane People chant like a mantra, "is the perfect place for bicyclists. We should be more like them."
They're wrong. And that isn't my usual "Europe Does Things Better Than North America" contrarian rant. It's because they are actually wrong. Toronto's streets doesn't need more bike lanes, they need more respect.
On paper, Europe is not the Bicycle Utopia people say it is. Some streets are made of cobblestone, making them unpleasant to ride on. The bike lanes are often no more than painted lines on a busy street. Even in cities like Amsterdam – where paying rent and owning a car would be like putting all your money into a blender and setting the blender on fire – the streets are jammed with cars. (I know there are really nice cycling cities in Denmark and elsewhere in the Netherlands, but bear with me).
Simply put, building city infrastructure for bikes does not make that city bicycle-friendly, people's attitudes do. In most European cities, drivers check blind spots for bicycles because that's what you do if you don't want to hurt someone. They definitely do not go into psycho mode at the site of a cyclist on the street and drive as close as possible to them without making car-to-person contact.
Conversely, European bicyclists obey red lights with alarming frequency. This allows traffic going the other way can pass through the intersection unimpeded, without having to stop abruptly or do this.
Cyclists also don't scream obscenities at you if you happen to obey red lights or scream obscenities cars that pass them too closely (driver here often give cyclists a wide berth, even veering into the opposing lane).
And! On busier streets, bike lanes have been laid down with different coloured bricks on the sidewalks. If a pedestrian ahead of you is in the bike lane, you ring your bell and they get out of the bike lane and return to the walking lane.
In essence, drivers understand that cyclists belong on the road and cede some territory to them. Cyclists respect the fact that cars are four-wheeled death machines that kill people everyday, so understand they are not entitled to ignore the laws of the road.
Fancy bike lanes are never going to solve the Toronto's car and bike woes. Infrastructure simply does not change minds. People – drivers and cyclists – need to change their minds about who belongs on the road and show each other a little respect. That's how you build a bike friendly city.
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