Comment 32274

By mikeonthemountain (registered) | Posted July 03, 2009 at 17:31:10

I was on bicycle on York Blvd a minute or two after the crash just as emergency vehicles were arriving. Seeing that wrecked car sitting in front of me was deeply disturbing. Now it feels spooky riding to work past that spot every day. A week before that a car almost rear ended another on Plains Road and the driver reflexively swerved ... into the bike lane 10m in front of me. A cyclist in Vaughan was killed the same day. Many horrific accidents in recent days/weeks. Bollards or a curb between the road and bike lane may have saved the cyclist on York but would not have saved the sedan ... an SUV careening out of control presents a logistical difficulty at best.

Vehicles have commanded a nearly total command of the public space ... how creepy though that it is a deliberate product of social engineering. But nothing is impossible to reverse, except people in this region are definitely having difficulty coming to agreements and it shows, whether it is roadkills or garbage piling up.

I wonder if Roman roads were like this ... picture the prince in his Chariot careening down the roadway, gold plated rims with spikes and all, trampling the farmer on his way to market on his ox-and-cart, while screaming at him to 'get off the road you * leper!' ...

That statement by the Amsterdam police officer is the best transportation related statement ever. People are kept off highways so that cars have high speed corridors between urban cores. The urban cores are filled with people of all kinds, who will continue dying horrifically if we do nothing to modernize like Europe and some cities here are doing. Why oh why can't we have a more progressive approach where anyone can still drive anywhere they need to, but cars are not allowed to overwhelm everything. We freak out about removing one lane but they are used to only having one lane. I think it is going to change eventually anyway but what a waste of life in the meantime.

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