When I saw the news in late June that a person walking had been put in a coma after a person on a bike ran into him on the sidewalk, I immediately regretted how far back this could push the safer streets advocacy work being done in Campbell River.
I want to start by saying that I am not defending anyone in this situation. It is a tragedy for everyone involved, and one that stems from a flawed system that puts everyone at risk. A person should be able to walk onto the sidewalk without fear of injury. That is unequivocal.
I watched a video online describing the situation. In the video, the witness shows how the person hit by the bike had stepped out from around a concrete retaining wall and a tall bush onto the sidewalk, where his car had been parked. The road, Alder Street, is shown to have a steep decline, and is busy with cars driving in both directions. According to ICBC, there have been 28 crashes within two blocks of the incident between 2020 and 2024.
Alder Street technically has a speed limit of 50 km/h, but as Alistair Taylor wrote in the Mirror in 2019, "I think the residents did a pretty good job a few years ago of raising awareness that the limit on that street is 50 km/h but very few people, at that time anyway, actually followed that speed limit."
I would not be comfortable riding my bike down Alder Street, and I am quite a seasoned cyclist. I can't see how a 17-year-old would feel safe doing so either.
This incident shows exactly why more (not less) safer streets infrastructure is needed. The lack of that infrastructure meant that Alder Street must not have felt safe to ride on for this young person, who chose to travel that day using a valid option for transportation. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that means a man is now in hospital in a coma. But what could have happened if there had been a different choice for the person on a bike?
What if there were a protected bike lane, or even a painted bike lane, along Alder Street? Or what if there was a cycling corridor running parallel with no people in cars around? That person on a bike would have most likely chosen to ride there, and we wouldn't be talking about this.
This also shows that bike knowledge and training need to be more prevalent. Likely, this person did not even know that what he was doing was dangerous. I have personally witnessed many adults riding on the sidewalk, or riding the wrong direction in bike lanes, all of which shows there is a lack of training about the rules of the road in our current system. We also need to invest more, not less, in safer streets because they are exactly that: safer. Almost 30 traffic incidents within two blocks over the past four years are not acceptable, especially when we know how to make things better.
I also wanted to note that the original story I read about this incident did not interrogate why this situation happened in the first place. Just because someone chooses to ride a bicycle instead of drive a car does not make them an enemy. This was a kid in a rush, and a man on an errand and the circumstances made that interaction a tragedy.
Roads need to be safer. That means people in cars need to be separated from people on bikes, who need to be separated from people walking. This incident is not anybody's fault, except the system we have in place. We need a safe place for everyone to go about their days, and we need to make sure everyone knows the rules. Otherwise, we are going to keep having these incidents.
Again, I am not taking anybody's side in this terrible situation. I can't imagine how the family of the person who was hit feels, and I can't imagine how the person on a bike feels. There is no part of this that is defensible, but we can look at how these people were put into this situation and try to fix it so next time, there's nothing to talk about.
