IGOTOPINIONS

May 15, 2012

ryannorth:
“ Before bed last night I checked the news and read “Skateboarder killed in downtown collision involving cab” with the chilling photo you see above. The collision was at King and Jarvis, which is not far at all from where my longboarding...

Before bed last night I checked the news and read “Skateboarder killed in downtown collision involving cab” with the chilling photo you see above. The collision was at King and Jarvis, which is not far at all from where my longboarding brother lives, and he has a deck just like that one in the photo.
I called him and he answered on the third ring and was fine.
We got lucky this time, but oh gosh how I wish the motorists in general and cabs in particular in Toronto would chill the fuck out. The whole political rhetoric around bike lanes and “the war on cars” in Toronto seems to have caused this siege mentality in some motorists, where it’s “us versus them”, cars against the world. There’s a culture of entitlement in many Toronto motorists, the central idea being “I am entitled to going where I want to go, and everyone else is trying to stop me from doing that”.
The man who was killed when a car drove into him looked a lot like my brother, because Victor’s already been stopped by acquaintances this morning (the delivery guy in his apartment building) who saw the scene of the accident, the man and the board, and were convinced it was him who had been hit. And it could’ve easily been him. I’m so sorry for the man who was killed in this collision, and his family. This is an entirely senseless death.
Be careful out there. And when you’re driving, please please remember that you’re now wrapped in tons of steel explicitly designed to keep you alive even when colliding with a similarly hulking vehicle, and the rest of us are just on feet, on bikes, or on wooden planks with wheels.

11:05am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZePqhxLXAhTP

(Notes: 76)