Jenna Morrison was killed in Toronto on Nov. 7. Dave Thomas / Toronto Sun
NDP MP Olivia Chow is tabling a private member’s bill calling for mandatory side guards on all trucks.
The bill comes in the wake of the death last week of Jenna Morrison in Toronto. The pregnant mom was crushed under the wheels of a truck as it turned at an intersection.
You can read about Chow’s bill here.
Similar side guards have been mandatory in Europe since 1989.
Chow has tabled similar bills twice over the years, but they were never passed over fears of the cost to Canadian trucking firms. Side guards cost a couple thousand bucks to install — a relatively small cost compared to the total cost of the truck and trailer — but Transport Canada and the trucking industry say there’s little evidence they’re effective.
Sooner or later someone up there in the mighty state apparatus will clue in that cyclists must acquire on-road, in-traffic cycling skills before they venture out into urban traffic. From all the reports, the Toronto cyclist made a fatal error in judgement by riding up the right side of a truck stopped at a Stop sign. Just like the Ottawa cyclist on Queens Street who committed a fatal error in judgement by riding in the door zone.
I’m being too optimistic; someone probably won’t. There’s nobody there that with the credentials to even identify the problem. The closest we ever got to getting any sense from Toronto was in the 1998 coroner’s report that essentially found lack of skills the principal reason for most cyclist problems. It counted for nothing though, the Province along with Ottawa and other municipalities will keep on blaming trucks, road design, motorists, and the mixing of bicycles with other vehicles, and thus will continue to propose ineffective solutions.
To find a solution it is necessary to understand the problem. Meanwhile inexperienced and untrained cyclists will be offered up as sacrificial lambs all in the impossible cause of getting drivers out of their cars.
In most death’s of cyclist there is a driver error. Us drivers all have a license which gives us permission to drive something that is 2000 pounds at high speeds. It requires only a minimum of skill level to obtain this license. It’s really up to to the driver whether he/she acquires good defensive habits to skillfully avoid car crashes. Cyclist won’t kill drivers, drivers will kill cyclist.
I also cycle well over 7000km a year and most driver are good but on trait so many have is this.. Once they pass a cyclist they seem to totally forget about me. It’s most likely what happen to that cyclist who got run over by that truck. Yes one of my skills as a cyclist is know that that car who passed me 4 seconds ago dosen’t realize I’m still there coming up at 20 km an hour. I watch his head, front tires and signals to detremine if I have to quickly brake. It happens all the time and i believe it seldom is on purpose. It just a bad comon driver skill. They day dream.
I would venture a guess that your comment regarding most deaths in car/bicycle accidents being the car driver’s fault as false. I see too many bicycle riders in urban areas disregarding traffic laws more than obeying them, putting them in danger of an accident with vehicles. If more bicycle riders would adhere to traffic laws, I’m sure their would be less accidents involving riders with cars.
Ted,
Once a driver passes you, it is your responsiblilty to not tailgate and adjust your speed. It just like a car passing a car. The one behind ensures that they adjust their speed to slow down.
I agree that cars create more damage to bikes, but I must say I see far more bicycle violations than vehicle ones. Always see bikes running red lights, failing to signal, cutting accross lanes. We share the road, and we all have to follow the rules. But when I see bikes driving on the right side of me coming up to intersections and failing to yeild to turning traffic, I always think, that this is where someone is going to get hurt.
Eric & Tom – There are several reports floating around, most put the responsibility primarily on on the car. http://www.rightofway.org/research/cyclists.pdf States “Driver misconduct was thus the principal cause in 57% (30 out of 53) of the cases and a contributory factor in 78% (30 plus 11, or 41, out of 53)”.
http://azbikelaw.org/blog/manner-and-fault-in-bicyclist-traffic-fatalities-arizona-2009/
Finds: “14 of 25 (56%) were the fault of a motor vehicle driver. The most common manner of collision is when a driver strikes a cyclist from behind.”
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/drivers-at-fault-in-majority-of-cycling-accidents-28489/
Reports: “In 88.9% of cases, the cyclist had been travelling in a safe/legal manner prior to the collision/near miss”. This is a different type of study analyzing helmet cam video…
http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article/592674–cyclists-at-fault-in-majority-of-bike-vehicle-collisions
The Record reports a very different finding in analyzing 200 collisions in Waterloo region. Of course in the one fatality the cyclist was not at fault. The evidence, it seems, backs up Ted. “In most death’s of cyclist there is a driver error”.
Educated cyclists are not infallible cyclists. They will still make mistakes, they will roll through stop signs, filter through traffic and run red-lights, just like car drivers.