"Road Terrorist"

MONTREAL – After yet another serious car-vs.-bike collision Monday, Quebec is struggling to come to terms with safety issues involving bike paths, roads and highways.

Between Friday and Monday, four cyclists died and another was critically injured in crashes involving cars and trucks. Each incident happened under different circumstances.

There are no simple solutions to the potential danger of mixing bikes and cars, said Jean-François Pronovost, director general of Vélo Québec Association, which represents 5,000 cyclists.

He said well-designed bike paths and paved shoulders on highways can save lives, but there are other variables.

“It’s a question of infrastructure and behaviour,” he said in an interview. “You can have good infrastructure with bad behaviour, either from cyclists or motorists, and there will be an accident.”

The three crashes:


* Friday morning, three female cyclists, members of the Club de Triathlon de St. Lambert, were killed after a pickup truck plowed into them on Highway 112 in Rougemont.

* Saturday night, a cyclist was struck and killed by a car on a rural highway in Val Morin. The motorist faces an impaired-driving charge.


* Monday morning, a cyclist in his early 60s was involved in a crash with a car in Trois Rivières. The cyclist was riding against traffic and was not wearing a helmet. The road featured a city bike path but the cyclist was not on it, Trois Rivières police said. Doctors fear he won’t survive his head injuries, police said.

On Monday, friends and strangers continued to post sympathy notes on the triathlon club’s Facebook page and planned to remember the fallen triathletes at a vigil Wednesday for cyclists killed on public roadways.

The husband of one of the Rougemont victims sent a letter to media outlets Monday.

“Today, I struggle to find a reason to go on without my wife who was unjustly taken by a ‘road terrorist,’ ” Patrick Lacroix said in the letter.

“If we were in the United States, the driver responsible for destroying our lives would already be before the courts. The simple reality is that we are responsible for the safety of others when we wield a weapon, the automobile.”

Lacroix’s wife, Sandra de la Garza Aguilar, 36, was one of three women killed Friday on Highway 112. Three other cyclists were injured but survived. All six were on racing bikes whose tires are not made to roll on the gravel found on highway shoulders.

Police say the cyclists appear to have been riding in single file on the highway, near the shoulder. The shoulder on that section of Highway 112 is not paved.

“By pure chance, work was just about to start on this stretch of road,” Lacroix said, referring to Quebec’s plan to repave that stretch of highway and add a paved shoulder.

“The Quebec government is criminally responsible for negligence,” Lacroix added.

Quebec coroner André Dandavino has said he is looking at whether cruise control was a factor in a lack of attentiveness by the truck driver, who was headed home after working a night shift.

In his letter, Lacroix said he was surprised to learn police did not administer an alcohol test on the truck driver. “If we add the fact that the driver is a young volunteer firefighter, so a colleague of the police, I won’t be surprised that the file will be closed quickly,” Lacroix said. “The next time you kill someone while driving your car, invoke fatigue.”

Last week, a Sûreté du Québec spokesperson said police did not suspect alcohol was a factor. On Monday, SQ spokesperson Ronald McInnis confirmed the truck driver was not tested for alcohol.

Under the Criminal Code, before they can administer an alcohol test, police must have reasonable grounds, such as alcohol on a driver’s breath or erratic behaviour by the driver, McInnis noted. He said the driver in the Rougemont crash exhibited no symptoms of alcohol consumption.

Police are still investigating the crash, McInnis said.

In 1995, Quebec said it would pave all unpaved highway shoulders, but only when the roadway itself is due to be repaved and only in cases where the highway is used by 5,000 or more vehicles daily.

Transport Quebec is responsible for 21,507 kilometres of roadways where the shoulder is not paved, said spokesperson Mario St-Pierre. He said he could not say how many of those kilometres cover roads used by 5,000 or more cars daily.

Another 15,688 kilometres of Transport Quebec roadways have paved shoulders, St-Pierre said.

Vélo Québec helps oversee the development of the Route Verte, a 4,100-kilometre bike route network, much of it in rural parts of the province where bikes must share the way with cars and trucks.

Pronovost said if a highway is used by more than 1,000 cars daily, it won’t be included on the Route Verte unless it features a paved shoulder.

But he said cycling on a highway can be safe, even without a paved shoulder. “It’s a question of the period of the day, the quality of the pavement, a lot of factors. It’s like every road. It’s impossible to have a patrol every day of every week on every stretch.”

ariga@thegazette.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Open Letter

--an open letter to the motorist who nearly killed me last Friday morning, from a bicycle rider

Dear Ma'am,

We first met at a four way stop in suburban Burnaby. It was Friday morning and, I guess, we were both on our way to work. As I was to your right, I proceeded to turn right, while you waited your turn and proceeded straight. We were both headed down the hill, we both had to stop at the bottom to wait for traffic to clear. I was in front of you, but surely not blocking your view. You could not have failed to notice there were cars parked along both sides of the narrow street, allowing a space where only one vehicle could safely travel at a time.

When you leaned on your horn I was not too upset. Sadly, this is an all too common occurrence, usually a sign of ignorance and impatience, no matter what vehicles we choose to drive. However, when you revved your engine and proceeded to illegally pass me within four inches of my elbow, that is what upset me. Your choice to dangerously pass me was as much a threat as you pointing a gun out your window. Your choice to deliberately endanger my life raised my anger. Go figure.

Perhaps you were unclear about why I was in the middle of the travel lane. As I cannot trust that people will look before opening their doors into traffic, I cannot be as close to the parked cars as you might like. Should someone fail to check and open their door in front of me, my choice is to crash into a hard sharp metal object and the person exiting their vehicle, or swerve out into traffic, right in front of you. Sorry, but neither of these is good, so I will always choose the third option--to be in the middle of the street where I can see and be seen, where a car door heedlessly swung open will have no effect upon me.

I am not in the middle of the lane to show off the beauty and superior efficiency of my vehicle. I am not there to deliberately slow you down. My reason for being there is purely selfish I will admit, it is for my own safety. I am in the middle of the road because it is not safe for you to pass. When it is safe, I will most certainly pull to the side to allow you by. Until then, please be patient.

If you would have exercised two seconds of patience, I would have turned left at the next intersection. I did not want you tailgating me any more than you wanted me slowing your progress. Maybe you were running late, but if I ended up under the wheels of your truck due to your reckless negligence, what delay would that have caused you? Would you have even stopped?

If you had exercised two seconds of patience, we would have both arrived at work happier people, instead of being angered and frustrated for the duration of our commute and beyond.

When you stopped and rolled down your window, I enquired if you were deliberately trying to kill me. From my perspective this is what you were attempting to do. I seriously doubt this was your intention; I'm sure friends and family regard you as a nice person. However, for a lack of two seconds of patience, you could have negatively changed both our lives forever.

Your only reply was, "Share the Road." Perhaps you are confused about what this means. It does not mean I should cower in the gutter and allow your environment killing dinosaur to roar by heedlessly. It does not mean I should put my safety in jeopardy so that you can arrive at the next stop sign two seconds earlier.

Bicycle riders have no choice but to share the road, so this is mostly a plea to motorists. Just because you choose the most selfish of transportation options does not mean your time is more valuable than mine, it does not mean you have any more right to the road than I do, and it certainly does not give you any right to deliberately endanger my life.

yours,
on two wheels,
David

SPUD*

*SPontaneous Unplanned Dismount


Most people who ride bicycles are very aware of the dangers of automobile traffic, so it is somewhat ironic I should be the victim of a hit and run bicycle/bicycle collision. Here's what happened:

Smoked on Sunday

Last Sunday (July 6) I was riding my road bike westbound on Lougheed Highway. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just out for a lazy Sunday spin. I am a very experienced cyclist. I was wearing a helmet and operating a well tuned and perfectly functional bicycle. I was travelling about 20-25 kph, slightly off the traffic lane, about six inches off the fog line. I was positioned exactly where I feel I should have been. There was a fresh green light in my favour, it had just changed as I approached the intersection. I ensured that no approaching car travelling in the opposite direction was going to turn left in front of me.

From my right hand field of vision, a man on a bicycle appeared in an instant and within a second he collided into me. He appeared to make no effort to avoid this collision. He was travelling southbound down a very steep hill on Beta St. in Burnaby.

He obviously made the conscious decision to ignore the yellow light, ran through the red light and was planning on travelling down the highway on the wrong side of the road in the wrong direction. Coming down the hill and around the corner this man cut through the lane of opposite traffic on Beta St., and apexed his turn in the crosswalk/corner of Lougheed and Beta.

By my estimate and crude calculations of force, I figured this guy hit me with more than twice the force of impact than I had on him. (me: 140 lbs x 25 kph. the jerk: ~175 lbs x ~ 40 kph) You do the math. Its no wonder that he was able to walk away unscathed, as I took the brunt of impact.


When I saw this jerk on a bike there was no time to react. Collision was imminent and unavoidable. I hit my brakes and tried to avoid him to the outside (my left) but with no chance.

We collided with a mighty whack.

I didn’t lose consciousness, and ended up in the right hand traffic lane. I landed on my left side and was fortunate that my pedals both released and I didn’t get twisted up in the bike at all. Still I landed in a twisted position, but again, fortunately, don’t seem to be suffering any ill effects from that.

So I landed on my left hip and felt relatively unscathed, more angry than hurt, until I went to pick myself up and could not raise my hip off the pavement. I realised immediately that my leg was probably broken.

I saw that the other bike rider had been dismounted as well. He was almost directly behind me, I could see him when I looked back over my shoulder. I suppose I should have relaxed some and took a very good look at him, because I think the description I ended up giving to the police was pretty much useless. Also I had a small digital camera in my jersey pocket--but totally forgot about it, or I could have snapped a few candids of the jerk on a bike.

I was lucid enough to be righteously pissed and began a blue streaked harangue at the jerk. I think I less than politely mentioned what a stupid fool he was for his stupid and criminal actions. “You broke my f-in leg, you c***” was an oft repeated phrase. The jerk started to get up. “Stay there! Don’t you go anywhere!” I was screaming at him.

By this time I noticed that traffic had stopped on my side of the highway. I saw that a large SUV was stopped in the right hand lane, a vehicle that would have been my agent of doom if it had been passing me at the time of the collision. I clearly saw a blond woman in the passenger seat of a small silver car was stopped directly beside me, but in the left hand lane. She had a look of detached curiosity, even though by this time i was shouting for someone to help me, as I saw that the jerk was getting up and picking up his bike.

It seemed a police cruiser was there very quickly, the officers later said they were driving down the highway and moved up to investigate when they saw traffic had stopped. And although the police told me they spoke to some witnesses, they said no-one actually saw the collision. This is not too surprising, considering that it happened so quickly, and both cyclists and jerks on bikes are pretty much invisible to car drivers.

When I saw that the other bike rider was on his feet and pushing his bike back up the hill through the intersection, in the direction from which he had originally come, is when my visible distress became acute. I began to flair my arms about and yelling for someone to help. It seemed many people were quite content to sit in their cars and watch things unfold, as if it were on TV.

So I was flailing about, begging for someone to help, begging for someone to stop the jerk who I could see was getting away. I saw a man in glasses and a faded red tee-shirt approach from the stopped traffic. I asked him to stop the guy who had hit me, that he was getting away. Apparently the jerk’s bike was still functional, as I was later told he rode off through Brentwood Mall parking lot, and was not found by the bystander or police.

In time, fire fighters and paramedics arrived where I lay. The mandatory neck brace was put in place, my helmet removed, then they managed to get a spine board underneath me. One of the paramedics put his index fingers together in an L shape and said my femur was broken like this, and they were going to have to pull the leg bone back into alignment. So they attempted to fill me up with nitrous, but that doesn’t really mitigate the pain, just makes it seem not so important to you. Then they gave my left leg the big yank to rejoin the ends of the fractured bone.

I was taken to Burnaby General Hospital where a surgery was performed, round about eight in the evening. The collision occurred about 3:30. The surgeons put a rod in my leg to stabilize the bone and also some kind of clamp around the upper part of the break as there were longitudinal fractures up the bone towards the hip joint.

I spent four nights in hospital, fortunately without complication, only discomfort and pain. I’m back home now in my little north Burnaby apartment.

The real challenges begin now, though, as I live alone and don’t know too many people here in town. I seem to be managing so far, but everything now requires three times the effort. I am trying to remain positive.

Every medical professional I talked to asked if I was wearing a helmet, and of course I was, although the other guy wasn’t. He rode away, and I’m left appreciating what a nice day it would be for a bike ride...

So just another reminder to be careful out there (as if we need that) and to always wear your helmet. Most of us are very cognizant of the dangers of auto traffic , but remember too that the SUV with your name on it might just be a jerk on a bike.