2010-08-14

Blogger Kills Cyclist

A blogger in Ottawa has just posted an opinion piece saying that the City of Ottawa's bike path detour (or maybe it is the NCC's) is bad and his is better. As an argument for his position, he mentions the tragic cyclist death that recently occurred.

However, according to investigators, the cyclist was not travelling on the detour, but speeding north on Boyce (and not obeying the stop sign). Now, obviously, the investigators could be wrong (the cyclist is dead and the driver obviously didn't see him). The cyclist could have been travelling West on Walter (no stop sign to obey) on the official detour and the inexperienced driver could have cut him off by turning right (north on to Boyce from Walter).
But if the investigators are correct, and the 53 year old cyclist was travelling north on Boyce, he was presumably trying to reach the unofficial pathway detour that runs parallel to the pathway under construction. The blogger mentioned that he shared ("several weeks ago") his unofficial detour with others. It is possible, although unlikely, that the cyclist saw the blogger's unofficial detour, and decided to use it (and not obey the stop sign on the way there). 

If the investigators were correct, and the cyclist was heading North, than this is what he was cycling towards: a playground



Agrandir le plan Notice how narrow the path is. That is the unofficial detour that the blogger was recommending. Sure, there are no SUVs on that path, but there might be children walking!

Please blog responsibly. You never know who could die if you aren't careful.

2 comments:

rww said...

Thank you for your comment on my blog post. I have edited the post accordingly after rereading the Ottawa Citizen article.

As to whether the cyclist was at fault, let's leave that for a full and proper investigation to determine.

rww said...

PS - while I did not measure it the actual parallel pathway is not noticeably narrower than the main pathway and there is less pedestrian traffic, including children, on it than there normally is on the main pathway (at least when I used it).

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