John Bolton - It's Always The Cars Fault - Say The Anti Car People

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. It is Thursday, January the 2nd, 7.22 a.m.

00:00:05.820 Yes, later than usual. I still have my big blue mug of coffee. Brand new mug.

00:00:10.120 Nice and warm in there. I was up early this morning, but it was kind of in a quandary about

00:00:14.580 what to talk about today. There are some things going on, of course. Terrorist attacks in the

00:00:18.680 United States. Do I want to continue to speculate about a Canadian politics? Until somebody does

00:00:23.800 something, there's not a lot to talk about on that front. So today I want to talk about

00:00:28.780 personal responsibility and a story that has been in the back of my mind since I saw a video

00:00:35.120 back in the spring of 2024. I'm going to show you that video in just a moment and I'm going to

00:00:40.560 show you the take of somebody that gets it absolutely wrong. Now I am a cyclist. I am not

00:00:47.640 a crazy cyclist who thinks we need road or bike paths on all the roads. I'm not anti-car, but

00:00:54.000 there's a lot of anti-car bias in our society these days. And the reason I'm bringing this

00:00:58.820 up today is because of a story that ran in the Calgary Sun written by Ricky Leong. Now

00:01:04.280 Ricky is a good writer, but I don't think Ricky is a good journalist because I don't think

00:01:09.160 Ricky is inquisitive enough. I don't think Ricky tries to see both sides of a story. Ricky

00:01:14.260 always leans one way in his articles. Always. And he generally leans to the left. And in this

00:01:20.820 situation, this story leans towards anti-cars. Now here is the headline from the story December

00:01:27.620 30th. Pedestrian crash shows need to alter approach and attitude on road safety. Now what

00:01:33.900 is this story about? Well, it's a sad story. A young kid, 12 years old, gets hit by a car

00:01:40.020 and has life-altering injuries. This happened in Southwest Calgary. Now the article, which I'll

00:01:45.640 put in the description, does not go into great detail about what actually happened. But the

00:01:50.560 article does tend to put the blame on drivers. Not just the driver of the car that hit this

00:01:56.080 12 year old, but bad drivers. It's always the fault of the driver. It's always the fault

00:02:01.720 of the car. It's an anti-car attitude. We have a very anti-car attitude here in Calgary.

00:02:07.760 A lot of politicians don't like cars. They want more people riding bikes. And it's minus 16 today.

00:02:13.500 And for people who won't ride their bikes to work when it's 20 Celsius outside, they're

00:02:18.100 certainly not going to do it when it's minus 16. Here is a paragraph from the story. Of

00:02:21.840 course, the onus should be on drivers to operate their vehicles properly. But municipalities

00:02:26.800 also need to build infrastructure that doesn't amplify the danger when drivers do make some

00:02:31.060 kind of major error that could lead to a collision. So what's wrong with this paragraph? Should

00:02:36.720 the onus be on drivers to operate their vehicles properly? Yes. But should not the onus be

00:02:43.420 on a person who may be walking on the street and crossing streets as well? Well, of course

00:02:47.960 they should. And do drivers make major errors? Yes, they do. But what about people who are

00:02:54.640 walking and pedestrians? Do they not make major errors as well? I want to bring you back a

00:03:00.480 couple of years. I was working in a newsroom here in Calgary, and the city was discussing

00:03:04.760 whether they should drop the speed limit down to 40 kilometers an hour in residential areas

00:03:10.460 because of continuous, they wanted to bring down the number of accidents and pedestrian

00:03:15.000 injuries due to vehicles on the road. Now, I'm a journalist, I've been doing, I did it for

00:03:19.660 35 years, and I never took sides even though I was conservative. I was always fair and balanced

00:03:26.500 if I can use that. Because the only way to maintain your credibility is if you do that

00:03:31.280 and you're a journalist. So I had young people who didn't think that way asking my thoughts

00:03:37.460 on dropping the speed limit to 40 kilometers an hour. And I said, well, has anybody asked

00:03:42.060 any of the councillors who are concerned about pedestrians being hit by cars? And those same

00:03:46.300 councillors who want the speed limit down to 40 because of that issue, has anybody asked

00:03:51.300 any of the councillors or anybody that works for the city that deals with traffic in Calgary,

00:03:56.000 has anybody asked them, why are more people and pedestrians being hit by cars? Why is that

00:04:02.400 happening? Did nobody ask that question? And I said, what would be the cause of more

00:04:08.560 pedestrians being hit by cars? Because if more pedestrians are being hit by cars, and I said

00:04:15.320 this to them, one of two things is happening. Either cars are jumping curbs and hitting pedestrians

00:04:20.440 on the sidewalk, or pedestrians are walking in front of cars. What could possibly be happening

00:04:26.260 or what has changed in our society that has more people walking into traffic? And they

00:04:33.680 said, I don't know. I said, cell phones? How many of you have been walking around or driving

00:04:39.400 around and you see people walk in front of traffic? I see it all the time. They're looking at their

00:04:45.140 phones. I call them phone zombies. And they walk right out in front of traffic. Because here

00:04:50.140 in Alberta, for some stupid reason, the onus is on the car to stop for pedestrians. Pedestrians 1.00

00:04:55.580 don't have to wait for traffic to clear before they cross the street, which I think is the wrong

00:04:59.880 way of doing it. Look both ways before you cross the street. It's personal responsibility. But the

00:05:05.660 article that Ricky wrote does not put any responsibility on pedestrians. Because if more

00:05:13.100 pedestrians are being hit by cars, I'm assuming more pedestrians are walking in front of cars.

00:05:18.340 It could be the driver's fault. But it could be the pedestrian's fault as well. Which brings me to 0.76

00:05:26.980 the video that I saw last spring when I was working for a cycling organization. And here it is. It's the

00:05:32.340 RCMP in British Columbia put this video out. And the firestorm on social media was swift from the

00:05:41.340 anti-car people. So let's take a look at that video. And I'll give you my thoughts on what I saw.

00:05:46.780 And then I'll give you the thoughts of somebody who got it completely wrong that was interviewed for

00:05:51.580 a story out of CTV Vancouver.

00:06:03.020 So pedestrian safety,

00:06:33.000 is a two-way street. Well, it is, isn't it? It is. Now, if you focused on the person in the car,

00:06:42.320 the guy in the car was looking at his phone, and you shouldn't be doing that. We have distracted

00:06:46.960 driving laws here in Alberta. I tend to agree with them, but the person was distracted and

00:06:52.060 wasn't paying attention, driving a very heavy vehicle down a road, and if he had hit that girl,

00:06:58.000 he would have been charged and probably gone to jail for vehicular manslaughter, and it would

00:07:04.360 have been deserved. But did anybody scrutinize what the young girl did? Because I was in the cycling

00:07:10.540 program last year, had not seen that video, and the guy that presented this to a bunch of kids in

00:07:15.040 class said the girl did nothing wrong, and it infuriated me. And I didn't bring it up with

00:07:21.720 this company I was working for, but I would never, ever show that to kids and say that girl did 0.92

00:07:28.860 nothing wrong, because did you see anything she did wrong? You're damn right she did a lot wrong.

00:07:33.380 First off, the people who think she did nothing wrong don't believe you need to have any personal

00:07:38.340 responsibility, and I believe they're anti-car. If they only blamed the guy in the car,

00:07:44.120 then they're anti-car, and they're stupid people. First off, what'd she do? She puts earbuds in, 1.00

00:07:50.560 turns up her music loud, and pulls a hoodie over, and she has no peripheral vision. So she has no

00:07:55.600 self-awareness at all. Walks down the street, push the button for the crosswalk, and walks in front

00:08:02.940 of a car. What's the first rule you learned when you were a kid about crossing the street? Look both

00:08:09.080 ways. But people criticized the RCMP on this video, and said the girl did nothing wrong. Here's a woman

00:08:18.920 who worked for a traffic safety organization. Watch this. I was pretty appalled. Lucy Maloney,

00:08:26.060 a road safety advocate with Vision Zero Vancouver, thinks the video blames the pedestrian.

00:08:31.880 She's doing nothing illegal, whereas we can see that the driver is doing something illegal,

00:08:36.840 and very, very dangerous, which is looking at their phone. Do you see how she frames that? She

00:08:42.440 says, the girl is doing nothing illegal. No, she's not doing anything illegal. Walking down the street 0.97

00:08:48.140 is not illegal. Crossing the street is not illegal, but she did everything wrong. Everything. This woman 1.00

00:08:54.020 worked for a traffic safety organization. She could get somebody killed. You know, this is the kind of 0.97

00:09:01.940 stuff that drives me absolutely insane. Being a cyclist, I have to be aware of what I'm doing all

00:09:08.620 the time. If I don't, I'm going to get killed on the road, because I'm not going to win wearing my

00:09:15.740 cycling jersey and my cycling shorts on a 18-pound bicycle. I'm not going to win a battle against a car,

00:09:21.900 and neither are pedestrians. But this is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts, and this bias we've got

00:09:27.000 against people who drive cars. I drive a car. We need our cars. We live in a big country here in

00:09:32.560 Canada. We need to get our groceries, take our kids to school, do all sorts of different things,

00:09:37.580 and everybody needs to have some personal responsibility, but that's not what people

00:09:41.420 who were criticizing this video were about. It was all the car's fault. What do you think?

00:09:48.080 Let me know in the comments below. Love to hear your thoughts, and I'll see you in the next one.

John Bolton - January 02, 2025

It's Always The Cars Fault - Say The Anti Car People

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