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Good things, bad things
Sep. 2nd, 2016 08:36 amMy good thing was being able to return $100 that someone had lost. My daughter and I were having lunch at a fast food restaurant on Wednesday when I spotted $20 bill on the floor. When I picked it up, I realized that it was actually a stack of five $20 bills. I left my name and number at the restaurant and got a call yesterday. My other good thing is details on the planned redesign of the busiest street on my way to work, to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians (lots of seniors live here, and there have been quite a few accidents). Which leads me to my bad thing...
My bad thing was the death of a cyclist yesterday on the segregated bike lane downtown that is supposed to be the safest bike route in the entire city. She was hit by a construction truck making a right turn across the bike lane. Bikes are supposed to have the right of way but the truck driver may not have seen her, or she may not have been paying attention to his turn. Regardless, it is a very bad street design (and one of many problems along this route, which is full of garage entrances and exits for commercial buildings and condos). It is one of six cycling accidents in the city and nearby in the last week. Two left cyclists with critical injuries, one was a hit-and-run that luckily didn't involve major injuries, another was only reported on the traffic news. Just out of town, a 13 year-old was killed. The bad thing isn't the deaths and injuries though (although they are all tragic), it's the victim-blaming I have seen. Instead, we should be focusing on the real issue, as one local city councillor said: we all make mistakes. We need to design our streets so that fewer of them are fatal.
My bad thing was the death of a cyclist yesterday on the segregated bike lane downtown that is supposed to be the safest bike route in the entire city. She was hit by a construction truck making a right turn across the bike lane. Bikes are supposed to have the right of way but the truck driver may not have seen her, or she may not have been paying attention to his turn. Regardless, it is a very bad street design (and one of many problems along this route, which is full of garage entrances and exits for commercial buildings and condos). It is one of six cycling accidents in the city and nearby in the last week. Two left cyclists with critical injuries, one was a hit-and-run that luckily didn't involve major injuries, another was only reported on the traffic news. Just out of town, a 13 year-old was killed. The bad thing isn't the deaths and injuries though (although they are all tragic), it's the victim-blaming I have seen. Instead, we should be focusing on the real issue, as one local city councillor said: we all make mistakes. We need to design our streets so that fewer of them are fatal.
