Originally Posted by Zeuser
I'm heading down the MUP and I see the Asian woman driving a beige Corolla coming up to the stop line from the left. She's driving down the road I'm about to cross. The light is green for me along burnhamthorpe, a 6 lane major artery. She's on a small two lane road and she has a red light. It's a good thing the "Asian woman in a Corolla" alarm went off inside my head ...
MUPs with intersections like that are generally dangerous. This was in Mississauga, right? I've been biking a bit through Mississauga this summer and noticing a bunch of them (Burnhamthorpe, Rathburn, Britannia...). In Toronto we don't have as many (basically just Eglinton and small sections of Martin Goodman) and at least they're doing something to highlight presence of cyclists at intersections (bicycle lights, separate bicycle crosswalk - or should I say crossride?, some attempts to improve sightlines). Mississauga isn't even doing that. They've slapped a bunch of paths parallel to sidewalks on various streets and put a mini-stopsign at just about every intersection that tell cyclists to STOP and dismount before crossing the street. Plus many of those paths cross driveways in addition to streets. They are basically no better than sidewalks, just as dangerous. And this has nothing to do with Asians driving Toyotas. Of course what that woman did was dumb as all get-out if she was actually proceeding straight, but just about any right-turning driver would most likely have overlooked you and blocked the crosswalk for you anyway.