UPDATED May 16, 2018

BY Henry Gold

IN Company, Staff Picks

24 comments

UPDATED May 16, 2018

BY Henry Gold

IN Company, Staff Picks

24 comments

I Have More Fear Cycling In Toronto Than Anywhere Else In The World

I tell them that the most dangerous thing in my life is commuting by bike in Toronto. This is not a flippant answer. It is the honest truth.

It has been a tragic 24 hours for the Toronto cycling community. Yesterday a cyclist was seriously injured and today another rider was killed by a truck. TDA Global Cycling Founder Henry Gold reflects on the situation.

I have cycled on all the continents that are cycle-able, all six of them. I have biked Africa from north to south and have spent four months cycling from Istanbul to Beijing. In fact, I have cycled in over 80 countries and covered a big chunk of the world on my bicycle.

I run a company that supports hundreds of cyclists each year, taking them on some pretty incredible cycling rides. So one could say that when people ask me is it safe to cycle in such and such a country or place, they probably figure that I may just have some idea what I am talking about.

I have learned that when people ask me about safety, they really do not ask in an objective way. They are subconsciously asking about the things that they are afraid of, be it wild animals in Africa, getting sick in India, being robbed at gunpoint in South America or kidnapped by terrorists in Central Asia.

All of those things can happen to any cyclists or travellers anywhere in the world but when I answer that question of safety, I do not talk about any of those things as these possibilities are infinitesimally small. I tell them that the most dangerous thing in my life is commuting by bike in Toronto. This is not a flippant answer. It is the honest truth. I feel more threatened every time I have to cycle any of the main roads in the city of Toronto than cycling anywhere else in the world.

If the person asking the question is a cyclist they will quickly understand my answer. However if they are not, they look at me with disbelief. How can that be? In their mind they dismiss my answer as hyperbole. We Canadians have an image of ourselves as being benign, friendly people who would never do harm to anyone, at least not willingly. Except try cycling on Dufferin, Finch or any other busy street. Every few seconds a driver passes you, one that may believe that if a cyclist is hurt, it is, as our former Mayor Rob Ford said, “their own fault”.

After all, in the driver’s opinion, roads were created for cars and not for anyone else. This behaviour is not singular to Toronto. It also apply to countries such as the USA and others where car culture many years ago successfully appropriated the roads from children, the elderly, pedestrians and, yes, cyclists. Ironically, it was cyclists who, over a century ago, lobbied governments to build roads, well before there were any cars.

I do not live in those places. I live here in Toronto and have to face the streets here day after day. The tragedy is that it does not have to be this way. In most developing countries, as much as the drivers would love to own the roads, unfortunately for them, there are motorcycles, scooters, cyclists, pushcarts and even animals on the roads. This forces drivers to operate at speeds well below the ones I experience when I am forced to cycle on Bathurst, Sheppard or Bayview. Even the legal speed limits here in Toronto are such that if a pedestrian or a cyclist is hit, their chances of survival are close to zero.

Years ago Toronto’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David McKeown, suggested that a 30km/h limit apply in the city. For that suggestion, he was just about run out of town by then Mayor Rob Ford and the car loving public. In the meantime, the toll of death and injuries of vulnerable road users continue to climb and I can honestly keep telling anyone who asks me, it is much, much safer to cycle in India, Sudan or Iran than it is for me to bike to my office in Toronto.

24 Comments for "I Have More Fear Cycling In Toronto Than Anywhere Else In The World"

Henry, I have been making the same comment to people for many years. It appears that the fear of unknown lands is far greater than the supposed safety of one’s own backyard.

I might also add that the road conditions in Toronto are atrocious: full of potholes and debris, which is another hazard. This winter my wife and I cycled, fully loaded, about 5000 kms from Singapore to Bangkok, and between us we had one flat tire,
as the roads are in excellent condition. Last year the first time I went out on my heavy duty city bike, I got a puncture..

andrew

    Sad but all true.

      henry, youre sad but false

    as a longtime resident and cyclist in toronto you people are all over exagerrating and are just weak….grow a pair…we dont own the road, and quite frankly we should just be cycling anywhere theres space and not in formal lines—part of biking in the city is the adventure and having the common sense awareness and quick manouveres and adapatations to urban jungle—-its not an “urban spa”…this is like a off road biker whining theres too many trees, hills, rocks, and that its kinda dangerous…duuuhhh

      also, i see sooooo many bad cyclists tthat have no business being on the road, and i know for a fact that many of the accidents with cars are actually the fault of bad cycling….a report of the 120 or so cycling deaths in 2017 found that only 33% were related to car accidents and of that percentage 70% were found both at fault while the remainder was 50/50 split of cars actually breaking laws and being at fault…so out of 120 deaths only 40 were car related–30 of these were shared fault, 5 were car fault and 5 were cyclist fault….the outrage is really tribal and inaccurate, and cyclists need to start being more honest about the amount of bad cycling out there and the amount of other cycling deaths overwhelmingly not related to cars….

Thanks very much for this. I’ve been trying (with others) to make it waay better for cyclists here in ‘Caronto’, for I guess two decades, and a Huge problem is the domination of the core by the suburban politicians. So even where we have a subway line, a crowded one, and a 1992 study that says Bloor/Danforth is the most logical place for a bike lane, very very little gets done, and it’s ward-by-ward safety only.
I knew we were bad; having done a tiny bit of biking in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary – but I haven’t done enough of the biking beyond this place to know how bad it really is, including the ‘carrupt’ ‘carist’ justice system, which does tend to discount a person’s worth if they aren’t driving, so that’s the way to kill someone, right?
I’m not a fan of most of the politicians either; too bad we’ve sunk so low that the better ones also don’t have their sights too high. And it’s time to oust Mr. Tory soon; Ms. Climenhaga gets these biking issues as she’s bike-toured Europe with her family.

    Love “Caronto”, “‘carrupt’ ‘carist’” justice system. I will borrow it and use it in the future.

Here’s my letter today to the mayor. I’ve written him about this before, and nothing has changed, but I’ll keep sending these letters and maybe one day, something will.

To Mayor Tory and the City of Toronto:

I’m just reading in today’s paper about more tragic and unnecessary cyclist deaths. As a cyclist and pedestrian, I am aware daily of the deadly risks on Toronto streets. And to me, the other measures – the construction of bike lanes etc. – though important, are not as vital as one measure the city still has not taken: to substantially reduce speed limits and PROVIDE POLICE OVERVIEW.

Every day, as a walker and cyclist, I am nearly run down by speeders, zooming through yellow and even red lights, driving at incredible speeds to get past streetcars – and not just cars, but even more dangerously, trucks. I have never once seen any interference with blatant disregard for speeding laws – not a policeman, not radar, nothing. Drivers are careless because they have no reason not to be.

Except every so often, when one of them kills someone. They will continue to do so until they are forced to slow down, and the only way that will happen is by reduction of the speed limit and reinforcement of the laws. This will grow more acute a problem as construction is forcing delays on nearly every street in the city – and motorists are growing increasingly angry and impatient. More deaths to come, guaranteed.

Please let me know where I should address my concerns.
Yours,
Beth Kaplan

    Thanks for sharing this. It energizes me to write a letter of my own. I believe the more he hears about it, the more chances we have that something happens.

During my visit in may in Toronto I tried to bike, but only shortly, because it felt very dangerous. There is apparently so called speed spilling effect, where very high speed of cars is spilling over, not to other cars on other roads only, but also to bikers on bikelanes. Nowhere I have seen so fast speeding and aggressive bikers than in Toronto. You have very serious traffic safety problem in Toronto. You should force slower speed all over Gardiner, Lake Shore, etc., control much more *police and radar*, use roundabouts, stop hazardous left turns, add safety marginals to red lights, give people much more time to cross the streets etc.

    Yes I know the spilling phenomena and your suggestions are all important. Yesterday when I was interviewed by CBC I mentioned that reducing the speed limit is the one single most important act that will save countless of lives and improve quality of life in the city.

    By the way our Trans Europa trip this year begins in Helsinki on July 8th.

Thanks for writing this. Having lived in four Canadian cities and two in Asia-Pacific, I agree completely. Torontonians (and Canadians in general) don’t really seem to have a lot of foreign exposure, so in this matter it’s important to expose just how much Toronto is settling for not good enough.

People in this city routinely respond like I’m insane when I tell them I commute daily for 23km on these streets for 9-10 months of the year. I can’t blame them. It was my own dismay at what I found in Toronto after riding to work for five years in Tokyo that caused me to become active on some issue for the first time in my life. A link in my Councillor’s newsletter led me to Cycle Toronto, a non-profit with the mission to “advocate for a safe, healthy and vibrant cycling city for all”.

Last night, Cycle Toronto members gathered to mark their ten year anniversary. There were certainly some achievements to celebrate, but the dismal state of affairs in the city was hard to miss. The organization’s first executive director spoke on the exhausting nature of fighting the same fight for ten years with the same obstacles and similar outcomes. The current ED then also spoke on similar themes. The death this week in the Dundas cycle lane came up.

We’ve certainly got a long way to go. To me, it seems activism is the only response. Hopefully, we can make street safety an issue in this election, and then keep it on the agenda for the years to come.

Again, thanks for writing. TDA’s tours look like life-changing experiences.

    I agree activism is the way to go, the more the better. I also think it would be great if Toronto would have a sort of Five Borough type of a ride.
    And yes TDA rides have changed lives of many. Certainly changed my life.

I ride the Adelaide and Richmond bike lanes every day, and every day I find cars, trucks and taxis stopped in the bike lane. Even worse are the TTC buses that swing in and out of the bike lane, making the commute much more dangerous. The only way to improve cycling safety in this city is to have truly separated bike lanes, PHYSICALLY SEPARATED like the brief stretches where there are flower pots, or the very short stretch of Wellesley where there is a concrete barrier. Painting them green is obviously not enough. I too have had numerous close calls from ridiculously aggressive cyclists, but a collision with one of them will not necessarily mean death.

Yes, what most drivers seems to love to ignore is that they are driving weapons that kill and use these weapons irresponsibly.

Four cyclists died in Toronto, in a city with the population of 2,731,571. You have a 0.00014% chance of dying as a cyclist in Toronto. The hyperbole in this post is insane.

    Unlike the ‘Vision Zero’ adopted by Toronto Mayor and City Council you seem to believe that a number of cyclists killed is acceptable for the city. But leaving that aside your statistics and particularly the way you calculate is not based on science and real life results. In reality the chances of getting killed in Toronto for a cyclist are multiple of your calculation.
    I suggest that you look at this blog “Your Risk of Immediate Death” https://tdaglobalcycling.com/2013/03/your-risk-of-immediate-death/

Holy crap, this is one of the largest cities in North America and it’s still one of the safest. There are also a few dozen cities in other parts of the world I could name off the top of my head that have far more cyclist deaths every year than Toronto.

Do you just expect cyclists to be immune to the things that come with living in a city of this size? Water is wet, the sun rises everyday, and some cyclists are going to get hit by cars in Toronto. Whining about any of these things won’t change them. It’s like you’re swimming with sharks and then bitching that one bit you.

    To answer your question I am arguing that life in a large city such as Toronto can improve not only for cyclists but for majority of the population, if certain steps are taken to control and limit the use of cars and the speed they travel within the city. There are no divine commandments that states that an individual drives alone in vehicle built for five or six people and a speed of 60km plus within 3 feet of a pedestrian or bicyclist and he/she gets a priority over anyone else on the street while a small distraction on any sort can maim or kill with limited in any penalty.

If you can ride your bike in Toronto on a daily basis then you can ride anywhere in the world. Queen Street trained my road awareness to the point that riding into Nairobi on a the narrow side of a twelve lane highway with buses blasting by at 140 kmph 5 feet off my shoulder seemed normal and comfortable. So long Toronto and thanks for the skills!

Hi Henry, my knee-jerk reaction to your headline was, “No way – I have been cycling in Toronto for over 30 years and it has never been safer.” But in reading the full article, I have to say I agree with you and me both. And that is the sad thing. We have more bike lanes than ever. I actually find drivers much better than they were 30 years ago. I have also discovered that I have adapted and am such a defensive cyclist, always looking, looking, looking, talking to drivers, yelling and screaming when they almost hit me, avoiding Dufferin, Bathurst, and Yonge like the plague. Keeping to Shaw and Adelaide and Richmond for much of my commute from St.Clair/Dufferin to York St is probably what is saving my life (knock on wood).

From the picture in the paper it appears that the cyclist who was killed was trying to pass the truck that was making a right hand turn on the right hand side. Also in the earlier picture it appears that there was a “bike” lane to the right of the traffic lane. I put the “bike” in quotes be cause it is stupid to have a through lane for one vehicle to the the right of a lane for another vehicle that can make a right hand turn.

The truck driver, and most other motorists who are in a lane from which they can make a right hand turn, are not expecting that there will be vehicle which can go straight on there right hand side. The same holds true for side of road tram tracks on roads like Cherry. The people who think either of these designs are good ideas without a set of separate signals has not observed how people behave when driving.

If you want to see this google tram car collisions on YouTube. Most of them occur when cars are allowed to make left turns at the same time trams go by in a right of way on the left hand side or can make a right hand turn while trams can go by on the right hand side. They believe, and I agree with them, that if you are allowed to make turn from that lane then there should not be another vehicle who is allowed to go by you on the side to which you are turning. Don’t blame the cyclist or the drivers for accidents that are the result of bad design.

If there is going to be safer cycling in Toronto then some streets are going to have to be reserved for bikes. God help the cyclists if Ford becomes premier.

Here in Florida it’s the worst place in the whole of USA for road rage against a biker. In America we are allowed to carry guns. I wear bike jerseys that say “armed cyclist ” with a big picture of a gun on it. All of a sudden people give me lots of room now when they pass me.

I totally agree with the author of this blog. I think this is mainly because the motorists are not educated to give the right to a pass to the cyclist or pedestrians and they are always in a rush.

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