Aug 04 2009
The War on Cyclists
In response to a minivan mowing over 5 cyclists on March Road, Kanata, a road I have cycled myself and decided to stay off of because of extremely reckless driving, the authorities have decided to take charge. That is, attack the victims.
This would be funny except that it is dangerous and, as is usually the case, Ottawa could learn from other jurisdictions to fix the problem but decides it knows better. See “Cyclists in Idaho have been legally permitted to treat stop signs as yield signs since 1982.”….”Idaho’s bicycle accidents decreased some 14 per cent in the year after the stop-sign law was enacted.” And remember, this is the Toronto Star, a newspaper that advocates all safety equipment become mandatory whether proven or not.
Luckily, The Ottawa government and the government in my home town, Toronto, have decided that Canadian are too stupid to follow such rules so we cannot have them. If you drive, walk or cycle, roads can be made much, much safer , but as a Canadian, your life is run by safety “experts” so you cannot benefit. The cry of the expert is, “well that may work in Holland, but it would never work in Canada”.
Government has three priorities when it comes to safety. (1) give the appearance of being safety conscience while doing nothing. (2) making lots of money from highly coercive fines from laws that endanger people. (3) watch people die and react to it by… Repeat.
To all those in Ottawa who got a ticket, please fight it. You can argue that cycling laws are dangerous to your health and can kill you. A principle of any law is that those who follow the law are not compelled to die from it, and it is a worthy argument. If following the law increases your chance of dying, which can be proven, the judge may decide that you are right and the law needs to be thrown out. We will all benefit.