Originally Posted by
jpearl
Out of curiosity, were any of those people delayed for 15 minutes rushing to a hospital for an emergency, or perhaps trying to get to a daycare to pick up a child on time, or maybe even on thier way to a very important job interview or other serious appointment?
If there was anyone on the highway in an emergency, then there was no emergency vehicle, nor would it have made sense to travel on a highway that's WELL known to be traffic jammed and WELL out of the way of any of the major ER-equipped hospitals in town. However, to quell this particular issue, we were riding mass last month down Avenue Road in town, there was an SUV in which the driver noted his wife (passenger) was having some sort of medical emergency - don't doubt for 2 seconds that we got the hell out of the way for this person - in fact, because of the mass, he had a clear road to go down rather than the 7pm heavy traffic in that area (near Bloor/the ROM). It's happened before on Jarvis when we had an ambulance come by, don't doubt for one second the entire 500+ cyclists got the hell out of the way in QUICK fashion creating an empty street where there would've otherwise been a lot of congested traffic (there was a lot of construction at Jarvis/Dundas at the time).
From what I've read up to now (and I haven't read everything, nor am I from Toronto), I still felt I needed to stop and respond to this thread. What really irked me was that children were put at risk (I'm a parent, and children and highways never mix safely when cars are involved).
If children and cars on the highway don't mix, why are there kids being ferried around in SUVs that their parents are driving with one hand on the wheel, one hand on their coffee while trying to answer a cellphone call? On regular city streets, I've been behind more than one vehicle with young children in where the driver was reading a notepad on their steering wheel, or at least one hand was on a phone/drink container or some other ridiculous complacency toward traffic and road safety. In the rare times I'm in a car (as a passenger) I notice all kinds of seriously dangerous driving/actions (let's let the family dog run around inside the car, it's OK!) that should just never happen. It's too bad people are willing to risk their own, their loved ones and strangers lives just to save what literally is no more than a couple of minutes (if that, it's usually a matter of seconds).
Kids were not in any danger in this event, no cars got near them and the lane-takes were done very safely and courteously. I'm not defending the highway ride as a good plan, but it wasn't dangerous for anyone including the children.