Advocacy & Safety - Pedal Power. CBC documentary

CBC's(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) the Doc Zone Investigates conflict between bikes and cars. Why can't the drivers of cars and bikes get along, as they do in the crowded cities of Europe? 45mins long.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/Doc_Zone/ID=1275907713


Enjoy

Sounds interesting, unfortunately CBC does not support Linux or non-proprietary video stream software.

Sounds interesting, unfortunately CBC does not support Linux or non-proprietary video stream software.

Ha ha. Glad I'm not the only one. This is one of the few sites I've had a problem with using Firefox-3.5 or Chromium.

CBC needs to pull their thumb out and start adhering to open standards. Not very impressive from a tax-subsidized "crown corporation". But hey ... maybe Google will open up the vp8 codec (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/google-free-on2-vp8-for-youtube) and everything will be perfect for HTML5 video within a few months.

Many of the Doc Zone doc's are up on CBC's youtube channel, unfortunately not this one.

Wow, I've tried with both Firefox and IE 8 and I made sure the flash player was installed and still no go.

Has anyone gotten this to work?

Not working on firefox mac (10.4) here. Doesn't seem to work on safari mac either.

Has anyone gotten this to work?

NADA

Will try from work later.

that link worked for me

I saw this a couple of times earlier and wasn't too impressed.

I think it leaned a little too heavy on the fear angle. For instance, they used the stat that said, for every mile traveled, cycling is 12 times more deadly than driving in a car. The problem with that is that bicycles cover less ground than cars do. Give me exposure per hour as a comparison. It's not nearly as frightening.

It addressed the theft problem too. It probably would have been better had they said locking up a bike poorly, using a crappy lock, in a zone known for bike theft isn't too bright. They also didn't say less than 1% of bikes owned are stolen.

I also think it played up the conflict angle too much and didn't show how things aren't as bad as they seem (most cyclists get along fine with motorists) and could be better if it showed how all road users can be better off by simple respect and co-operation.

Then again, playing up danger and conflict is the way to get attention. It's not like the CBC are trying to improve things, they're just trying to get ratings.

I suspect the reason many of us can't see is that we live south of the border. Damn those Canadians for not giving us stuff that we haven't paid for!

Bwah ha ha! It worked for me, too! Must be a Canadian secret.

Themes included bike theft, the door prize, not enough of those wonderfully safe physically segregated bike lanes (ironically, they show someone in a segregated lane nearly get right hooked by a truck, but don't even seem to have noticed what they just showed), the Netherlands are nice, commuter race in NYC, Velib bikes in Paris, Bixis in Monteal. A 'consultant' got to have his say about how unfair it is that 'bikes' don't have any responsibilities, they're so unpredictable, and he'd feel really bad if he killed someone while driving around, and that since the bike lanes went in, it takes him 6 minutes longer to get to work, pollution, congestion, and critical mass rides (who all looked like a bunch of kooks, it that typical?). Bless them, they didn't mention helmets once (pro or con)... maybe too controversial?

It was okay... nothing that's exactly going to inspire anyone to get out of the car, though, I think.

I thought it was crappy. Made biking look bad.

I noticed they seemed to be pushing the Bike lane agenda as well. Not that I'm against bike lanes and such facilitles, but they went to deep into "Driving in traffic is scary and dangerous, No cyclist In his/her right mind would want to do it" territory. Seriously, where was the counterpoint to that wussy little girl who was complaining about how loud and scary trucks are?

I'm kind of against bike lanes... the good ones are usually pointless (because they're on roads that were already plenty wide), and the bad ones, of which there are far too many, are just plain dangerous, especially for the novice cyclists they are meant to attract (who might not know about the door-zone, for example). I'd probably change my tune if a real investment was made in adequate bike lanes, but for me, they just seem like a 'feel good' project to let a city claim they have X miles of bike lane, when all they've really done is outline the gutters.

Worked for me on IE7. Generally pretty good,but it went on too much about the beauty of segrgated bike lanes, without going into the problems at intersections.

The doc worked for me on my mac safari no problems. Its an alright doc but I think there could have been more to it they focused lots of time on bike theft and very little on bike safety. Still a good watch.