It's Always The Cars Fault - Say The Anti Car People
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.96872
Summary
A 12 year old boy was hit by a car and seriously injured in a pedestrian collision in Calgary, Alberta on Dec. 30th, 2019. An article in the Calgary Sun by Ricky Leong tries to blame the driver for the accident, but the writer gets it absolutely wrong.
Transcript
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Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. It is Thursday, January the 2nd, 7.22 a.m.
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Yes, later than usual. I still have my big blue mug of coffee. Brand new mug.
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Nice and warm in there. I was up early this morning, but it was kind of in a quandary about
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what to talk about today. There are some things going on, of course. Terrorist attacks in the
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United States. Do I want to continue to speculate about a Canadian politics? Until somebody does
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something, there's not a lot to talk about on that front. So today I want to talk about
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personal responsibility and a story that has been in the back of my mind since I saw a video
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back in the spring of 2024. I'm going to show you that video in just a moment and I'm going to
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show you the take of somebody that gets it absolutely wrong. Now I am a cyclist. I am not
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a crazy cyclist who thinks we need road or bike paths on all the roads. I'm not anti-car, but
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there's a lot of anti-car bias in our society these days. And the reason I'm bringing this
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up today is because of a story that ran in the Calgary Sun written by Ricky Leong. Now
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Ricky is a good writer, but I don't think Ricky is a good journalist because I don't think
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Ricky is inquisitive enough. I don't think Ricky tries to see both sides of a story. Ricky
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always leans one way in his articles. Always. And he generally leans to the left. And in this
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situation, this story leans towards anti-cars. Now here is the headline from the story December
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30th. Pedestrian crash shows need to alter approach and attitude on road safety. Now what
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is this story about? Well, it's a sad story. A young kid, 12 years old, gets hit by a car
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and has life-altering injuries. This happened in Southwest Calgary. Now the article, which I'll
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put in the description, does not go into great detail about what actually happened. But the
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article does tend to put the blame on drivers. Not just the driver of the car that hit this
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12 year old, but bad drivers. It's always the fault of the driver. It's always the fault
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of the car. It's an anti-car attitude. We have a very anti-car attitude here in Calgary.
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A lot of politicians don't like cars. They want more people riding bikes. And it's minus 16 today.
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And for people who won't ride their bikes to work when it's 20 Celsius outside, they're
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certainly not going to do it when it's minus 16. Here is a paragraph from the story. Of
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course, the onus should be on drivers to operate their vehicles properly. But municipalities
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also need to build infrastructure that doesn't amplify the danger when drivers do make some
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kind of major error that could lead to a collision. So what's wrong with this paragraph? Should
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the onus be on drivers to operate their vehicles properly? Yes. But should not the onus be
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on a person who may be walking on the street and crossing streets as well? Well, of course
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they should. And do drivers make major errors? Yes, they do. But what about people who are
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walking and pedestrians? Do they not make major errors as well? I want to bring you back a
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couple of years. I was working in a newsroom here in Calgary, and the city was discussing
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whether they should drop the speed limit down to 40 kilometers an hour in residential areas
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because of continuous, they wanted to bring down the number of accidents and pedestrian
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injuries due to vehicles on the road. Now, I'm a journalist, I've been doing, I did it for
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35 years, and I never took sides even though I was conservative. I was always fair and balanced
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if I can use that. Because the only way to maintain your credibility is if you do that
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and you're a journalist. So I had young people who didn't think that way asking my thoughts
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on dropping the speed limit to 40 kilometers an hour. And I said, well, has anybody asked
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any of the councillors who are concerned about pedestrians being hit by cars? And those same
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councillors who want the speed limit down to 40 because of that issue, has anybody asked
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any of the councillors or anybody that works for the city that deals with traffic in Calgary,
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has anybody asked them, why are more people and pedestrians being hit by cars? Why is that
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happening? Did nobody ask that question? And I said, what would be the cause of more
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pedestrians being hit by cars? Because if more pedestrians are being hit by cars, and I said
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this to them, one of two things is happening. Either cars are jumping curbs and hitting pedestrians
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on the sidewalk, or pedestrians are walking in front of cars. What could possibly be happening
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or what has changed in our society that has more people walking into traffic? And they
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said, I don't know. I said, cell phones? How many of you have been walking around or driving
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around and you see people walk in front of traffic? I see it all the time. They're looking at their
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phones. I call them phone zombies. And they walk right out in front of traffic. Because here
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in Alberta, for some stupid reason, the onus is on the car to stop for pedestrians. Pedestrians
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don't have to wait for traffic to clear before they cross the street, which I think is the wrong
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way of doing it. Look both ways before you cross the street. It's personal responsibility. But the
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article that Ricky wrote does not put any responsibility on pedestrians. Because if more
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pedestrians are being hit by cars, I'm assuming more pedestrians are walking in front of cars.
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It could be the driver's fault. But it could be the pedestrian's fault as well. Which brings me to
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the video that I saw last spring when I was working for a cycling organization. And here it is. It's the
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RCMP in British Columbia put this video out. And the firestorm on social media was swift from the
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anti-car people. So let's take a look at that video. And I'll give you my thoughts on what I saw.
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And then I'll give you the thoughts of somebody who got it completely wrong that was interviewed for
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is a two-way street. Well, it is, isn't it? It is. Now, if you focused on the person in the car,
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the guy in the car was looking at his phone, and you shouldn't be doing that. We have distracted
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driving laws here in Alberta. I tend to agree with them, but the person was distracted and
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wasn't paying attention, driving a very heavy vehicle down a road, and if he had hit that girl,
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he would have been charged and probably gone to jail for vehicular manslaughter, and it would
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have been deserved. But did anybody scrutinize what the young girl did? Because I was in the cycling
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program last year, had not seen that video, and the guy that presented this to a bunch of kids in
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class said the girl did nothing wrong, and it infuriated me. And I didn't bring it up with
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this company I was working for, but I would never, ever show that to kids and say that girl did
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nothing wrong, because did you see anything she did wrong? You're damn right she did a lot wrong.
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First off, the people who think she did nothing wrong don't believe you need to have any personal
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responsibility, and I believe they're anti-car. If they only blamed the guy in the car,
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then they're anti-car, and they're stupid people. First off, what'd she do? She puts earbuds in,
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turns up her music loud, and pulls a hoodie over, and she has no peripheral vision. So she has no
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self-awareness at all. Walks down the street, push the button for the crosswalk, and walks in front
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of a car. What's the first rule you learned when you were a kid about crossing the street? Look both
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ways. But people criticized the RCMP on this video, and said the girl did nothing wrong. Here's a woman
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who worked for a traffic safety organization. Watch this. I was pretty appalled. Lucy Maloney,
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a road safety advocate with Vision Zero Vancouver, thinks the video blames the pedestrian.
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She's doing nothing illegal, whereas we can see that the driver is doing something illegal,
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and very, very dangerous, which is looking at their phone. Do you see how she frames that? She
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says, the girl is doing nothing illegal. No, she's not doing anything illegal. Walking down the street
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is not illegal. Crossing the street is not illegal, but she did everything wrong. Everything. This woman
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worked for a traffic safety organization. She could get somebody killed. You know, this is the kind of
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stuff that drives me absolutely insane. Being a cyclist, I have to be aware of what I'm doing all
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the time. If I don't, I'm going to get killed on the road, because I'm not going to win wearing my
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cycling jersey and my cycling shorts on a 18-pound bicycle. I'm not going to win a battle against a car,
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and neither are pedestrians. But this is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts, and this bias we've got
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against people who drive cars. I drive a car. We need our cars. We live in a big country here in
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Canada. We need to get our groceries, take our kids to school, do all sorts of different things,
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and everybody needs to have some personal responsibility, but that's not what people
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who were criticizing this video were about. It was all the car's fault. What do you think?
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Let me know in the comments below. Love to hear your thoughts, and I'll see you in the next one.