The following post was originally sent to getDowntown as a comment about the Commuter Challenge. I asked if I could post it on our blog to see what others had to say. Please read on and provide your own comments in the comments section.
I’m writing because I think that marketing alternative modes of transportation to commuters is great, but I would love to see [getDowntown] focus more energy on driver education to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. This week – and the irony of it being the first week of the Commuter Challenge is not lost on me – two cyclists whom I know personally were hit by cars in Ann Arbor. They’re both okay, but one spent several hours in the emergency room, and both bikes were damaged. One driver didn’t even realize she’d hit a cyclist at first – it was a classic right hook accident – while the other appeared to strike the cyclist on purpose.
If we’re going to encourage more people to bike and walk in Ann Arbor we need to make this a safer place to do so. As it stands, the more pedestrians and cyclists we have on the streets, the more people we’re going to have being hit by cars. It’s terrible.
I understand that your job is to make it look like Ann Arbor is a wonderful place for alternative transportation so that more people will use alternative transportation, but we have a really long way to go, and unfortunately, the behavior we need to change is from the people who drive and will keep driving. We need a real share the road campaign, we need brief, pithy instructions for how to pass a cyclist safely, we need police who don’t assume when a cyclist gets hit by a car that it was the cyclist’s fault, we need to tell people to look before they open their car doors, we need big, constant reminders that bikes have a right to be in the road – even in the middle of the road – and while we’re at it, we need drivers to understand that if a pedestrian is in a mid-block crosswalk it’s the law to stop and let the pedestrian cross the street.
I’m sorry, this has become a bit of a rant. Between my two struck cyclists and spending 30 minutes in the rain this morning waiting for an extremely late bus, I’m feeling like a very challenged commuter today. Last year I didn’t participate in the Commuter Challenge because my commute is “alternative” 365 days a year so I thought it was silly to count it, and I also didn’t want to give fodder to the people who say Ann Arbor is a great place for non-car commuting because I don’t think it is. This year I am participating, because I care even more about advocacy for non-car commuting and I thought maybe I should work from within the establishment instead of just whining about it from the outside. So here I am. Sending you a long-winded message to say “Please do more about safety for pedestrians and cyclists. We need it badly.”