Thursday, September 24, 2009

Cyclist Education

As you probably know, I’m a pretty big fan of giving people transportation choices for our region. Last week, we had a very successful meeting on cycling in Langley. We have another meeting planned for Wednesday, October 28th at 7pm in the Douglas Recreation Centre.

Anyway, one of the issues that was brought up at the last meeting was the need for cyclist education. I couldn’t agree more. Just as there are bad drivers, transit users, and people in the world; there are bad cyclists. They ride on sidewalks (even when there is a complete bike lane), on the wrong side of the road, almost hit pedestrians on crosswalks, don’t wear helmets, and weave carelessly through traffic. I believe that the majority of cyclists are safe and courteous, but I think everyone needs a reminder now and then. I was in a training season about driver’s safety and heard an interesting stat. 10% of the population is always safe/careful, 80% needs to be reminded to be safe/careful, and 10% will always be reckless.

I only bring up the issue of cyclist education because I believe that in order to gain political support for improved cycling infrastructure in Langley, we have to prove (rightfully or wrongly) that the majority of us will use it responsibly.

2 comments:

Arnold Sikkema said...

Will this be the meeting to establish a Langley Chapter of the VACC?

Nathan Pachal said...

Yes it will be, if that is what the people want. We'll be working on getting VACC out to figure out what kind of paperwork and stuff we need to do....