Whenever I have to drive downtown to pick up someone, I feel like Snake Plissken from that 80s dystopian movie, Escape from New York.
While Snake squeezed the trigger to rescue the president being held hostage in the city that had turned into a maximum-security prison, I just squeezed the steering wheel trying not to run anyone over on my way to pick up my elderly mother from the EX.
Bloor street is one of the worst. The lanes are so narrow that doors from parked cars flew open into my lane of traffic. Cyclists seem to come out of nowhere, and almost everyone seemed to jaywalk.
It rattled my nerves like nothing else. Not even going 110 km/hr on the highway gets me to squeeze my butt cheeks like Toronto, south of Bloor.
I’m not a cyclist hater either. I cycled almost all my youth in downtown Toronto. But when I was driving on King Street trying to get to the Dufferin Gate to pick up my family, I understood why there’s so much anger and a war between drivers and cyclists.
I was trying to turn right from King towards the Dufferin and some guy starts yelling, “Ehhhhhh! Argghhh!” Then the streetcar took over the corner for what felt like five minutes.
As I inched towards the corner, another guy walked in front my car to flag down the streetcar as if it were a taxi. “Open the doors!” I’m glad I was moving as slow as a slug or I would have hit him.
The next moment a cyclist crosses in front my car and parks himself square in front me, blocking me from turning right.
I could see white buds deep in his ears, so he wasn’t going to hear anything. I thought he’d move to the right side of the road.
Nope.
He blocked me until the light was green for him to go. And from his relaxed stance, he does this on a regular basis.
Before you judge me, know this. Last year I was nearly hit by a car while I was on my bike. On Oakwood.
And this brings me back to our own neighbourhood. Thankfully, we’re not downtown. We’re a lot more orderly. By a landslide. But there’s a lot of work to be done.
Let’s just do it right so we don’t end up in constant conflict like downtown Toronto. I don’t want to feel like the opening line of the movie’s trailer: “Once you go in, you don’t come out.”
