wow another thread about how ignorant Cmassers are...theyre so proud of their actions that they dont care about how it messes with other peoples lives...they want to share the road meanwhile theyre hogging it up...they want respect by disrespecting others...lol hey wouldnt it fun to see a bunch of pedestrians walk onto the road blocking cmassers during every redlight because you know...its our road too? No objective...no reason...just because its our right to...

Do you live in a small town? This crap happens all the time in a big city like Toronto. The jaywalking bylaw is never enforced, pedestrians do as they feel any of the time - and they expect right of way when doing it. You want to hear about sharing a road? How about someone who is so thoughtful that they couldn't spare 2 seconds in opening their door (this assumes that they even looked first, which is LAW), and instead catapulted an innocent man into traffic, killing him.

Riding on the highway wasn't smart, but to get on your high horse about "sharing the road" and "disrespecting others" - I've not been disrespected and my life disregarded more than when I've been on my bike.

Eff that in the A, buddy. Seriously.

That's a ridiculous argument. Parks are public spaces built with tax dollars, does that mean people should be allowed to just drive their cars right onto the grass and park wherever they want? In exchange for living in a civilized society, we agree to live by certain rules, and if one of the rules says "no bikes on freeways", then that's the rule. If you don't like it, then work with your political representatives to get the rules changed.

And can we please stop excusing this stupid act by continually repeating how slowly cars move on the Gardiner during rush hour? This CM ride didn't happen in rush hour, it happened at 7:30 on a Friday evening. I live right next to the Gardiner and drive on it very frequently, usually sometime after 7:00. By then, traffic is flowing quite freely through the downtown area, at speeds at or above 100 kph. Sometimes it's still slow at that time past Spadina, but the cyclists got on at Jarvis, where it's almost always at full speed by that time of the evening.

er...i live in nyc...dont tell me what happens in a big city...
Yea! the person saw the biker coming so he swung open the door...thats exactly what happened...thats what they do they wait...wait....wait......open! yes! another bike dead! yay!....or you mean they normally go....look a biker...eh **** him...open...dead...pfft he wont be missed...

look if youve got disrespected by someone confront that person like a man. If you got punched in the face go and deal with that person who punched you...you do not go around punching the rest of the world for something that they didnt do....do you know why? because thats what cowards do...

I'm pretty sure he was saying they didn't look, and therein lies the problem.

God bless bike lanes located entirely in the door zone...

**** you and your fat hatred. I'm fat and I ride my bike everywhere. Why do some bike people always pick on fatties?
Critical Mass (in Toronto, at least) rides are slow, boring traffic jams with too much bell-ringing, and that annoying guy who just can't leave his trumpet at home. It's way more fun to go riding with a small pack of friends.

ok...so youre gonna be jackasses at cmasses to make people more aware that there are cyclist on the road? um i think you can accomplish that without being jackasses...

The two are unrelated. To me, anyway. Damned if I know why they did it. For fun?

sorry...i thought you were using that as an excuse for cmass...

No, just clarifying his point. All is well.

America needs an international bicycle highway system. Not only would it draw in cyclists it would increase cycle commuters by a significant margin. There are plenty of places where a 10-15 mile commute would be a feasible option for hundres if not thousands of Americans daily if the shoulders were safer.

Taking the lane is one thing, but being dangerous is another. I could ride into the next town that is about 20 miles from here the only problem is there is no safe corridor for a cyclist to pass even though it is legal.

Sorry that I picked on fat people who eat and talk on cellphones while they drive. I didn't mean you. LOL

Sounds like a suburban area or small town? Cycling in the burbs scares the hell out of me. I feel safer in the city core since people at least know what a cyclist is, or in the country, where there's plenty of room for everybody.

Occasionally when I'm visiting my dad in the burbs he'll end up driving us all somewhere. Occasionally we meet a cyclist on the road. Every single time he gets his panties in a wad about it and passes them with as little room as possible _ON PURPOSE_. Every time I remind him that he could have seriously injured or killed that cyclist, and that next time I could very well be the cyclist he hurts.

And this is my father. The suburbs scare the hell out of me.

I actually don't justify it at all - I ride bikes too. I don't want hit by a car anytime soon.

Can you people truly not understand why people have a problem with some of the extreme Critical Mass activities? it is counterintuitive to the overall goal.

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?

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).

All I can say is that while it sounds like Toronto-area cyclists may have a legitimate gripe with the city and some of it's urban transportation, I wonder if any of them belong to a non-radical cycling-advocacy organization. What I mean by that is, for example, down here in Washington DC, where we have the highly-effective Washington Area Bicycling Association. WABA is not cool, hip, and trendy like CM'ers. Rather, instead of protests, they commit thier time to considerate riding and working with the city in a professional, rational, and mature manner to ensure safe and accessible cycling.

Well there's the Toronto Cyclists Union for starters...

Pot=Kettle

check the pictures of that toronto CM, families, working class, ruling class, students, professionals, a diverse spread. Not a lot of cool trendy.

Now here's Eric of WABA


Fixed gear, no brakes, riding one handed with large signboard......cool, trendy, butterface and willing to ride the roads with a serious handicap to braking. At least he's probably smart enough to go slow.

Also look at the pics and show us the fast moving traffic on the gardiner during the CM. Show us how in gridlock anyone is delayed 15 minutes in an illegitimate fashion. Those PEOPLE on the bikes got on the Gardiner, got off the Gardiner at the same rate as anyone else on the Gardiner. Slowly.

If an ambulance on the Gardiner isn't responding to an accident on the Gardiner the crew would probably be reprimanded for trying to reach an accident scene using the Gardiner.

now please shove your "THINK OF THE CHILDREN! WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN" arguments back up where they came from

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).

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.

okay, i'll think of the children.

automobiles are the number one cause of death in north america for people under the age of 18. the fact is simple and unavoidable: cars kill children. if we are really concerned about the safety of our future generations we should be putting our efforts into getting cars off the streets.

Yes. We also ought to focus on making licenses tougher to get and harder to keep. Often times bad drivers are only given a slap on the wrist for traffic violations. People need to understand that they are driving a machine that could easily kill a lot of people.

But then they wouldn't buy as many of them...

sounds like we're building a plan here!

Dey tuk ur curs!