Dear Editor:
Re: Aug. 21 article about the recent cyclist fatality in West Vancouver
After a tragic event, a solution to reduce the potential for more fatalities is required, of course. Vehicles and cyclists share the road. So yes, drivers must accommodate cyclists. And cyclists must accommodate drivers, or obey the rules of the road, at least.
Yet rarely do I see articles about cyclists’ road behaviour, about as rarely as I’ve seen cyclists stop at a stop sign or ride in single file as required by law. We’ve all had experience with packs of weekend cyclists riding two or three abreast at high speeds — no articles decrying this boorish behaviour, and even more rarely, do cycling associations acknowledge the legitimate concern created by the road behaviour of cyclists.
Here is a case in point.
“You need to relax.” This advice was given to me for free by a cyclist a couple of weeks ago, about noon on a Friday on Bellevue Avenue in West Vancouver. Just minutes before, while driving east on Argyle Avenue between 25th and 24th Streets, where the street is one-way going east, I managed to negotiate the narrow road made more cramped with angle parked cars and a line of cyclists riding west, directly towards me.
Onto Bellevue Avenue, still heading east, I see three cyclists, a man and two women, ahead on the long block from 23rd Street. Weaving in and out at a meandering pace, at times three abreast, sometimes two, never in single file as required by law, they run the four-way stop at 22nd and Bellevue and continue on.
The traffic hazard and potential for danger increases as I draw closer, and traffic passes us going west. I take my chance to pass these cyclists and their random patterns of travel on the straight stretch towards 21st Street, deking into the westbound lane to pass and tooting my horn in warning. At the four-way stop on 21st, the male cyclist pulls up beside me. He’s now facing east in the west bound lane.
Having already shouted, incorrectly due to the accumulation of vehicles at the intersection, that there was no traffic, he delivers his message, “You need to relax.” My response: “You need to obey the law,” garnered a thumbs up from the driver to my left.
Laura Anderson
West Vancouver
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