"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

Four E's of Safe Cycling

Education
Encouragement
Engineering
Enforcement