There is no “War on the Car.” War implies a fair fight.
The conflict between bikes and cars is more like a skirmish between a weak civilian militia and a military giant. The giant has heavy artillery, while the militia is armed only with rocks and a whole lot of pent-up anger.
I’ve been an April-to-November cyclist for 10 years. I always ride defensively. I keep a full door-length between parked cars and myself. I wear a helmet. I can’t bring myself to wear that crossing-guard vest thingy at night, but I’ve got back and front lights. I do all this because I am mere flesh on a titanium frame, and a car is steel with a fossil-fuelled engine. If a bike battles a car, the car always wins. Always.
But these battles can be avoided. Motorists, I ask you: why do some of you oppose improving bike infrastructure? Don’t you want us out of your way? Wouldn’t you prefer that a chunk of concrete separate us? Sure, you’ll lose a lane of traffic, but you won’t have to worry about killing someone.
And if we weren’t riding bikes, we’d be in cars, further clogging your roads. Or we’d be in buses to which you’d have to yield. Or on foot, pounding on the hood of your car, aggressively letting you know, “I’m walkin’ here!”
I freely admit that the two-wheeled are not always perfect. On behalf of all Toronto cyclists, I apologize for the terrible things we do. That last-minute left-hand turn from the right-hand lane was a bad decision. We should have stopped at that stop sign. We should not have darted out in front of you, and after you rightfully yelled at us for it, we should have chosen a different finger to give you.
Motorists, we cyclists can be awful people to share your roads with, but I think we subconsciously do some of those terrible things to gain just a little bit of ground on streets where we have so little.
Our own mayor calls us a “pain in the ass,” and bike lanes are nothing more than slivers of road delineated by white paint that morons often used as idling zones. They’re so poorly maintained, riding along one can feel like it’s getting you pregnant. (I’m lookin’ at you, Sherbourne).
Throwing around the word “war” makes for good rhetoric on both sides, but the sad irony is that people are actually dying, and it’s not a war if the casualties are almost exclusively on one side. You don’t see too many white ghost cars marking the spot where a motorist was slain by a cyclist.
I have many friends who believe in the cyclist cause. They want to join our fight but will only help by supporting bike-friendly candidates and tweeting angry bursts at Mayor Ford because they’re too afraid of injury or death to actually mount a bike and take up some space on the road.
Biking scares me, too. Car doors open too quickly, and streetcar tracks are like slippery little threads. I hate being honked at simply for being there, and I have visions of flying over my handlebars and knocking all my teeth out every time I swerve through one of Toronto’s many archipelagos of potholes. But for now, the pros greatly outweigh the cons. I love that I’m fit. I love that I can turn down any street on a whim and discover a new Toronto treasure. I love that being on my bike always makes me feel like I’m nine years old.
Yet I won’t bike forever if something doesn’t change. Eventually, I will have children and will need to take them places, and I will not have my children separated from traffic only by the canvas of their chariot and a line of paint.
I very much want my children to live in a city where everybody can cycle safely, but if the infrastructure doesn’t improve, I won’t be willing to take the risks.
This isn’t an eons-old battle over ancestral lands it’s a tussle over tar. There will be more lives lost while Toronto’s council insults its citizens by refusing to accept the natural evolution of a modern and viable city. This isn’t a war that needs mediation it’s a city that needs separated bike lanes. If we can just make that happen soon, everybody wins.
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