CYCLING ZEALOTS: Drivers Are People, Too

“We have let the city know we do not support most of what they are saying. Unfortunately, they are laying blame with the vulnerable people, who don’t have the power against those who are driving the multi-ton vehicles.”

Bike Ottawa president Dave Robertson

Robertson needs to understand that the City of Ottawa is not the enemy of cycling.

The city has bent over backwards trying to meet the often unrealistic demands and misguided ideals of Bike Ottawa … often at the expense of more pressing needs. Doubtful many members of Bike Ottawa will be living in sprung housing. Equally unlikely is that many of the shivering refugees living in those drafty dwellings will be clad in lycra like the oppressed people on bicycle paths. And the refugees, having been shot at, will be happy to be here in a country where much of the violence comes on football fields and in hockey arenas.

Refugees are real vulnerable people. People sleeping on Murray Street sidewalks are vulnerable people. Let’s hope they don’t get hit by a bike careening down a sidewalk beside a bike lane.

And yes, cyclists are vulnerable sharing roads with heavy cars and trucks. And yes, drivers make mistakes and cyclists suffer. But cyclists are far from faultless. Many have never seen a rule of the road they didn’t break. Road rules are for cars, not for bikes. The city is asking cyclists and motorists to work together to be safe. That’s reasonable. But that’s not good enough for Bike Ottawa. Evil cars are at fault despite the fact that most drivers are extremely careful around cyclists. Some drivers are exemplary citizens except for their godless folly of driving. Stop the madness. Drivers are people, too.

The cycling lobby is full of great propagandists. One remembers the example of a cyclist killed on the western parkway a few years ago. Rather than mourn the cyclist, the bike lobby breaks out its ghost bikes and turns the death into a circus. Subsequently, the police found the cyclist was at fault. But no matter. The bike lobby is right and the grieving driver is ostracized, vilified and traumatized by a public convinced, wrongly, that the motorist was responsible for the death. Oh well, collateral damage on the road to some mystic two-wheeled nirvana.

The city has been more than generous with the cycling community. The $20-million complete street of Churchill Avenue where cyclists are as rare as the spotted owl. The Commanda Bridge was erected for the cycling community instead of for ridiculously inexpensive light rail in a municipality that has a transportation crisis. Your agent cannot get someone to walk with him across the bridge because they are afraid of being hit by cyclists. Bike lanes have sprouted up on  innumerable arterial roads. It goes on and on.

All this in a city with eight months of snow tires and four months of potholes. The winter is punctuated by a summer of  extreme heat or torrential rain or both. Not exactly a community well-adapted to biking. Charleston, South Carolina, yes. Ottawa not much. This is not a biking city like Helsinki. Ottawa makes Helsinki look like the sun and fun capital of Europe.

Don’t get me wrong. I support biking. I support myriad sports, a couple of which I played very well, most I put new meaning in the word average and a few that were just abysmal. Sixty years of sweating and chugging which continues to this day … though a bit slower in my dotage. Don’t tell me about the value of exercise. I’ve lived it. Let’s see Bike Ottawa folks do what I do at my age.

What bothers me is not cycling. Who cannot support cycling? It’s fun, useful and good exercise. God bless ’em all.

No the problem is extremism. Telling Bike Ottawa members to vote to support pro-cycling measures to skew important surveys by the National Capital Commission. Blaming the blameless. Road rules for somewhat else. And just being holier than thou. An almost cult-like devotion to cycling.

Keep telling the city and taxpayers that have spent millions on cycling that they are not doing enough. See how that works out. That will come back to bite you.

Greedy, greedy never gets.

Ken Gray

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