Car: 1, Cyclist + Bike: 0

Yesterday morning on the way to an appointment a car surged out of an alley without fully checking for traffic (said car almost hit another car coming east along the same road I was headed west on) ... and plowed right into me.

Down goes bike, and rider. Rider has various cuts and bruises, a sore back, and road rash; sadly my mountain bike has a severely bent front wheel at the very least and possibly more damage. The bill is going to the driver or to his insurer.

Beyond having my morning interrupted with my bike on top of me and a car on top of my bike, a number of things disturb me about this incident:

• The driver insisted that he was blinded by sunlight, despite the fact that, at 9:15 am on October 5th, the sun was high in the sky, and the space I was cycling through was in full shade; the driver would not take me up on my challenge to climb back in his car and tell me honestly that he couldn’t see me 3 meters away;
• The driver was far more interested in escaping responsibility than ensuring that he didn’t hurt me, and more importantly, admitting his error, which is of course the first step in avoiding another;
• The driver seemed completely unaware of traffic around him – I witnessed him almost hit the eastbound car, pause momentarily, and then surge forward to follow the car he’d almost hit… only to slam right into me.

I’d seen the car almost hit the eastbound vehicle, right in front of me, and was myself attempting to get clear, but the driver in apparently blind zeal to get going just gunned his car after the eastbound car cleared his bumper, and ran right into me… not even stopping until my yelling finally woke him up.

The man claims to have 55 years of accident free driving. This may be so, but on Thursday I certainly did not witness an alert driver, and I will be reporting this fellow to police as a possible unsafe driver. Like it or not, there is a point in life after which our reflexes and driving abilities deteriorate. I’m not convinced this man gets it.

I was hit on a major east-west city bike route, one travelled by hundreds of cyclists every day – 37th avenue – and this driver lives three doors away.

Over the years I have learned that cycling in the city requires “aggressive defensive” tactics, and being vocal is one of the tools of the trade. I’ve no problem at all shouting ”HEY WATCH OUT” at the top of my voice, long before a problem asserts itself painfully. Sometimes drivers take this the wrong way and give me the finger or some banal and generally very rude commentary. I don’t care, as I figure even the rudest of drivers doesn’t actually want to hit a cyclist, no matter how much they may say to the contrary.

Sometimes I get in a little hot water for being so aggressive, but that’s the price of safety. Yesterday I can’t figure out if I was in too good a mood to don my loud warning demeanor, or if I just didn’t have enough time. Watching the driver almost hit the eastbound car definitely distracted me too – between attempting to dive my bike out of the way and taking in what was happening, it seemed like I didn’t get my warning out fast enough. Perhaps there just wasn’t time, a sobering thought even for this experienced cyclist.

Still, I’ll keep on yelling for safety. Countless times this has prevented serious mishap. If you hear a cyclist yelling a warning at your car-wrapped carcass, don’t get mad – smile and thank your lucky stars that the rider, and the bike, aren’t under your front tires.

Undermining Canadian ideals bit by bit

2006–10-06 (Michael Byers, The Tyee) Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada:

It’s even possible that Canada’s involvement in the counter-insurgency mission is contributing to a decline in this country’s commitment to strong rules of international humanitarian law.

In 2002, Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were ordered by their American commander to lay anti-personnel landmines around their camp. When the Canadians refused—citing our obligations under the 1997 Ottawa Landmines Convention—American soldiers, who are not subject to the same restrictions, laid the mines for them. More recently, Canadian forces in Kabul and Kandahar have benefited from the protection provided by anti-personnel landmines laid by Soviet forces during the 1980s. The Canadian government argues that the Landmines Convention has not been violated, since the prohibition on the “use” of anti-personnel mines does not extend to reliance on mines laid by others. This is a strained interpretation, and one that hardly reinforces our claim to be the leading proponent of the total elimination of these devices.

Also in 2002, Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan captured detainees and transferred them to U.S. custody. The transfers took place despite the fact that U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had publicly refused to convene the “status determination tribunals” required by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, to investigate whether individuals captured on the battlefield are prisoners of war. Canada, by choosing to hand the detainees over in these circumstances, also violated the Third Geneva Convention.

…

We’ve also been taking chances with the 1984 Torture Convention. Article 3 of this treaty decrees that “no state party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Given what we now know about practices at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the possibility that our detainees will be tortured in U.S. custody is real—as real, perhaps, as if we sent them to Syria.

What’s more, the UN Committee on Torture has stated that the term “another state” in Article 3 of the Torture Convention encompasses any additional country to which a prisoner might subsequently be transferred. For this reason, transferring detainees to Afghan custody instead of U.S. custody cannot relieve Canada of responsibility, since Kabul may be expected to comply with a U.S. request for a further, onward transfer. Yet that’s precisely what Canada has been doing since December 2005, when Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier signed a detainee-transfer agreement with the defence minister of Afghanistan.

Under the agreement, Afghanistan committed to the humane treatment of any individuals received, and to allow representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit them. At the same time, the agreement explicitly envisages that some detainees will be transferred onwards to the custody of a third country, and does nothing to guard against that country being one in which detainees are at risk of being tortured or otherwise abused. Professor Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa has accurately described the document as a “detainee laundering agreement,” for it enables Canada to move its detainees indirectly into U.S. custody without the scrutiny and approbation that might attach to direct transfers.