Every horrific death of a cyclist leads to rounds of recriminations and a brief "coming together" of the cyclist community to draw attention to how, in the battle between car and bike, bike (and biker) always loses. In Toronto this summer, a prominent politician (former Attorny General of Ontario, Michael Bryant) engaged in an altercation with a cyclist--the end resulting being the cyclist clinging to his car and eventually being dragged under the rear wheels and killed. The cyclist, a 33-year old father of 3, was a bike courier.

The Toronto Cyclists Union, after some initial reaction and anger and protest, is adopting a very different and positive campaign to attempt to get drivers to notice and respect cyclists--described in the YouTube video below:

The Cyclists Paving the Way campaign aims to "flip" the negativity and emphasize positive driver behavior by encouraging bike riders to hand out little "Thank You" cards to drivers who do "small" actions that acknowledge and respect cyclists...little things like looking before opening a car door or clearly checking for a cyclist when turning.

I like the idea and although I'm not sure about the logistics of handing out cards in busy traffic, I know that I've observed--even in Boston--some standout behavior from people driving cars that should have been thanked. I was shocked one day, at the Mass. Ave and Columbus Ave intersection, to observe a driver asking a guy on a bike about whether or not he (the driver) was OK to be using a lane with a bike drawn on it for his right turn. (Yes, the bike lanes convert to "sharrows" at major intersections.) I've also noted a number of times when I could feel cars patiently waiting for me to "clear" an intersection as they approached from behind to make a right turn...and many times when cars at 4-way stops waved me through as I slowed to pause...

We tend to remember the negative 10 times more than the positive, it seems. The story of the person in a car who buzzed me or yelled at me for no reason--that sticks in my mind for weeks or months, but really, most of the time, most people in cars are actually trying to co-exist. When I have crashed a few times over the years, I've had people jump out of their cars and offer to drive me somewhere--I was embarassed, actually--it was no big deal--but we tend to forget or cynically refuse to believe that actually, most people out there are kind and considerate. If they were not--you wouldn't be able to get a mile down the road without being killed as the opportunities for mayhem are so great...and, as I said in the beginning, in a conflict between car and bike, the car always wins.

I hope the Toronto experiment works. It's not always going to be practical and presumably a cyclist motivated to be this kind of "goodwill ambassador" will be safety-conscious enough to give out these little cards without creating a distraction. But it would be great to see those kind of interactions happening--with less emphasis on the demands for enforcement, penalty and road justice that color most discussions of how bikes and cars get along.