Re: 鈥淭wo wheels should be treated like four,鈥� column, Feb. 1.
Unfortunately, Steve Wallace continues his rants against cyclists and pedestrians despite the elephant in the room. ICBC statistics clearly show that motor-vehicle crashes have been on the rise over the past few years, despite falling average daily traffic volumes in core municipalities.
The reason is obvious: Too many people think the laws against distracted driving do not apply to them.
It is the vulnerable road users whom Wallace has chosen to criticize who bear the brunt of the devastation caused by distracted driving.
A Vancouver study notes that drivers were at fault in 93 per cent of motor-vehicle incidents involving cyclists. A similar study showed that although pedestrians are involved in only one per cent of motor-vehicle incidents, pedestrians account for nearly half of road fatalities. Just last week, a woman was killed in Gordon Head in a crosswalk.
The benefits of active transportation are well known, and we must do all we can to break down the obstacles that are keeping people from choosing walking and cycling. Some of those barriers are physical, such as poor infrastructure, while others are based on how we treat vulnerable road users, including victim-blaming about clothing and shaming an entire class of road users because of the poor behaviour of a small minority.
I hope Wallace, as a leading driving instructor, focuses on educating readers about how to keep vulnerable cyclists and pedestrians safe while driving, and advocating for safer active-transportation infrastructure that benefits all of us.
Alex Nagelbach
Saanich
