Every weekday morning, I hop on the bus and ride up Fort Street. (Well, I don鈥檛 so much hop as crawl blearily, but you know what I mean.)
My ride isn鈥檛 long 鈥� nine or 10 minutes at the most 鈥� but it鈥檚 an unusual week when I don鈥檛 see some instance of aggressive driving during my morning commute. With its short lanes, cramped intersections and high volume of traffic, Fort Street is full of people who cut each other off in last-minute lane changes, or who tailgate, stop only reluctantly for pedestrians or who are just generally impatient on their way to work.
It鈥檚 harrowing to watch the cyclists leave their lane to turn left. They swerve into vehicle traffic with an aggressive desperation, determined to make their turn before they鈥檙e cut off or clipped by a driver who refuses to understand that bikes are permitted (indeed, sometimes forced) to take up an entire lane.
Even though Victoria has excellent bike lanes and generally positive attitudes toward cycling, sometimes it seems as though drivers and cyclists treat each other like natural enemies. They are defensive of their respective territories and quick to snarl over the inconveniences of sharing the road.
But it isn鈥檛 like that everywhere. I鈥檝e recently returned from a trip to Japan, and while I was there, the friend I was visiting took me to Shibuya Crossing.
If you鈥檝e ever seen a film set in Tokyo, you鈥檝e probably seen Shibuya Crossing. It鈥檚 an enormous junction, walled in by giant TV screens blaring candy-coloured ads, which are all but drowned out by the pop music that screams from the advertising vans that career through the narrow streets. (Almost all streets in Japan, even in state-of-the-art Tokyo, are surprisingly narrow and claustrophobic.) Shibuya is the trendiest district in Tokyo and the shoppers are packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalks.
The Crossing is so busy that pedestrians and cars can鈥檛 share it 鈥� pedestrians flood across it all at once. Next, it鈥檚 the cars鈥� turn, and they surge through the intersection.
While we were watching this mesmerizing madness, a young woman 鈥� armed with nothing more than a blas茅 sort of confidence 鈥� pedalled her bike into the unlined centre of the intersection, her child snug in its back seat. She wore no helmet (they aren鈥檛 a thing in Japan). Nobody honked at her to hurry up, or to get out of their way (honking isn鈥檛 really a thing in Japan, either). Cautious but calm, she sat in the middle of the maelstrom, waiting for a safe place to turn and trusting that she would find one. It was fantastic.
We observed a similar phenomenon in Kyoto, where cyclists and pedestrians shared the sidewalk in close proximity with no clear rules. There were bike lanes, but nobody bothered about them. I found it stressful at first, but nobody ran us off the path. Nobody got hurt. The cyclists were attentive and the pedestrians were conscientious, and there were no accidents.
It seemed that there was simply a much higher tolerance for the cross-pollination of traffic streams in urban Japan. As an outsider, it seemed that the prevailing attitude was one of mutual respect. Everybody acknowledged that everyone else had the right to be on the road (or sidewalk), and even without carving out a space for bike lanes, everyone seemed safe.
The numbers seem to bear this out. As of 2009, Japan was reporting 3.85 road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year, while sa国际传媒 was reporting 9.2; the U.S. was reporting 12.3. Of course these numbers include rural data as well as urban, and Japan鈥檚 reliance on its astoundingly excellent train transportation systems keeps its traffic deaths down, but still.
I鈥檓 not saying that we should abolish lines on our roads and go in for a free-for all, nor that Japanese traffic is chaos 鈥� on the contrary, it鈥檚 very orderly. But this seems to be the case at least partly because, even in spaces where there are no rules, drivers and cyclists nevertheless remember that everyone has a right to the road, and willingly share it.
Japan is a country famed for its politeness, so perhaps it鈥檚 not surprising that this consideration extends to its traffic. But Canadians are famed for our politeness, too. Maybe we should try to remember that in traffic.
