General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

[ADRM]

Yes... That's the exact message in R v. Beatty. To quote the case:



Or to put it simply, civil law analyzes the effect of someone's actions while penal law analyzes the intent of someone's actions. Penal law can't be used to punish someone for the effect of their actions without considering the intent.

No, I comprehend the decision and think it's utterly reprehensible baloney. It normalizes dangerous behaviour that routinely results in the death of another human being in the worst way.

 

[amnesiajune]

No, I comprehend the decision and think it's utterly reprehensible baloney.

Then become one of the nine top legal authorities in the country and you'll have a chance to change it.

It normalizes dangerous behaviour that routinely results in the death of another human being in the worst way.

I'll say this again - "results" are dealt with by the civil law system, not the penal law system. Getting a small fine in the penal law system doesn't preclude someone from getting sued in the civil law system.

 

[ADRM]

Then become one of the nine top legal authorities in the country and you'll have a chance to change it.



I'll say this again - "results" are dealt with by the civil law system, not the penal law system. Getting a small fine in the penal law system doesn't preclude someone from getting sued in the civil law system.

And what of the legions of people who either can't afford or don't want or don't know how to navigate the civil law system? Screw them?

You're interested in a strict interpretation of how things are; I'm interested in making our place a better place, and I refuse to be a good soldier.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

That argument comes from a fundamental lack of understanding of how our justice system works. Read the Supreme Court's decisions in R v. Creighton and R v. Beatty. What they essentially say is that there's a much higher bar for engaging the penal law system: penal law requires acting maliciously with clear intent, not just being responsible for some damages. That case you're citing is one where it would be more appropriate to engage the civil law system. The woman can be sued for wrongful death and the family of the victim would be able to get fair compensation.

Clearly, my lack of understanding is that it is working so well.

And what of the legions of people who either can't afford or don't want or don't know how to navigate the civil law system? Screw them?

Indeed - this put the onus on the victim to pursue damages, not as a societal goal of deterrence against "inattentiveness" while driving - a vehicle that everyone, especially drivers, knows has the potential to kill. Higher the stakes, greater the responsibilities. If someone doesn't want to take that up, don't drive. And let me quote the case of Elizabeth Taylor:

After finding Taylor guilty of careless driving under the provincial Highway Traffic Act, Justice of the Peace Lynette Stethem imposed a $1,000 fine, six months probation, a total driving ban for one month and five months where she can drive only for work and emergencies and, one day per week, necessities such as groceries.

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_h...died-too-pedestrians-husband-tells-court.html

Because even a significant driving ban of more than half a year is considered too "criminal" under our system. Even when the issue is someone getting killed in the first place. I am sure that's a classic example of proportionality.

AoD

 

[ShonTron]

Proposals for a vulnerable road users law don't even call for harsh sentencing: instead they focus on requiring the motorist to appear in court for when they're responsible for a major injury or death of a cyclist or pedestrian, especially to hear victim impact statements, and for community restitution. It's ridiculous that a driver can be convicted for serious HTA charges without even showing up to court.

 

[WislaHD]

As always, I find this discussion as besides the point, since we can reduce the number of accidents and road deaths greatly just by adopting better road design and allocating road space to all road users.

Hell, we can design streets in such a way where cyclists and automobiles don't even interact. We just don't.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

As always, I find this discussion as besides the point, since we can reduce the number of accidents and road deaths greatly just by adopting better road design and allocating road space to all road users.

Hell, we can design streets in such a way where cyclists and automobiles don't even interact. We just don't.

And we don't design better streets because? Deference to whose priorities? I mean, if we want to go the Swedish route - they chose to prioritize safety over all else, including speed. The power dynamic does not favour that here in Toronto and guess who suffered?

AoD

 

[Admiral Beez]

Hell, we can design streets in such a way where cyclists and automobiles don't even interact. We just don't.

And, that is our only realistic hope, total separation of cyclists and cars, and cyclists from pedestrians.

We separate cars from trains, with notable exceptions...

And cars from planes, again with notable exceptions (and even these are controlled crossings).

And yet we somehow think that not separating cars from cyclists, beyond some paint and the occasional bollard would work fine. It's doesn't as we see...

So, make Richmond St. entirely cyclist and pedestrian, while Adelaide is one-way in and out, depending on time of day.

This is one thing we can adopt from the Scandinavians...

 

[WislaHD]

That airplane runway example is hectic @Admiral Beez ! Where is that?

I have a fantasy idea to convert the Richmond Hill GO route into a cycling superhighway in the scenario that the DRL expands to RH (thus rendering RH-GO redundant).

I wonder where else in the city can we put a cycling superhighway.

 

[Admiral Beez]

That airplane runway example is hectic @Admiral Beez ! Where is that?

Gibraltar, UK.

It's the trains in the middle of the street that amaze me. Notice the non-helmeted cyclist at 1:50 who doesn't rage against having to share the roadspace with a train. Now, why would he be less patient with an auto driver?

I have a fantasy idea to convert the Richmond Hill GO route into a cycling superhighway in the scenario that the DRL expands to RH (thus rendering RH-GO redundant).I wonder where else in the city can we put a cycling superhighway.

Simply remove one direction of cars on Queen, King and other such routes. Streetcars would continue to go in both directions, but cars can only go one way, while the far opposite lane is exclusively for bikes.

 

[steveintoronto]

ADRM said: ↑
No, I comprehend the decision and think it's utterly reprehensible baloney.

Then become one of the nine top legal authorities in the country and you'll have a chance to change it.

I presume you're referring to the SCC?

You defeat your own point by trying to be too clever.

The SCC is one of the few courts in the western world that is able to determine *constitutional law* in the *absence of written law*! They don't write criminal or civil law as we know and practise it. The legislators do that..."lawmakers" as the Americans call them. The role of the jurists is to *interpret* written law and apply it.

amnesiajune said: ↑
That argument comes from a fundamental lack of understanding of how our justice system works. Read the Supreme Court's decisions in R v. Creighton and R v. Beatty. What they essentially say is that there's a much higher bar for engaging the penal law system: penal law requires acting maliciously with clear intent, not just being responsible for some damages. That case you're citing is one where it would be more appropriate to engage the civil law system. The woman can be sued for wrongful death and the family of the victim would be able to get fair compensation.

Your interpretation of that is simplistic to say the least.

From that supreme reference, Wikipedia: (Half sarcastic, the author of the following is obviously qualified)

[...]
Definitions
Intent is defined in Canadian law by the ruling in R v Mohan (1994) as "the decision to bring about a prohibited consequence."

A range of words represents shades of intent in criminal laws around the world. The mental element, or mens rea, of murder, for example, is traditionally expressed as malice aforethought, and the interpretations of malice, "maliciously" and "wilfully" vary between pure intent and recklessness or negligence,[citation needed] depending on the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed and the seriousness of the offence. The intent element of a crime, such as intent to kill, may exist without a malicious motive, or even with a benevolent motive, such as in the case of euthanasia.[1]

A person intends a consequence they foresee that it will happen if the given series of acts or omissions continue, and desires it to happen. The most serious level of culpability, justifying the most serious levels of punishment, is achieved when both these components are actually present in the accused's mind (a "subjective" test). A person who plans and executes a crime is considered, rightly or wrongly, a more serious danger to the public than one who acts spontaneously (perhaps because they are less likely to get caught), whether out of the sudden opportunity to steal, or out of anger to injure another. But intent can also come from the common law viewpoint as well.

The test of intent
The policy issue for those who administer the criminal justice system is that, when planning their actions, people may be aware of many probable and possible consequences. Obviously, all of these consequences could be prevented through the simple expedient either of ceasing the given activity or of taking action rather than refraining from action. So the decision to continue with the current plan means that all the foreseen consequences are to some extent intentional, i.e. within and not against the scope of each person's intent. But, is the test of culpability based on purely a subjective measure of what is in a person's mind, or does a court measure the degree of fault by using objective tools?

For example, suppose that A, a jealous wife, discovers that her husband is having a sexual affair with B. Wishing only to drive B away from the neighbourhood, she goes to B's house one night, pours petrol on and sets fire to the front door. B dies in the resulting fire. A is shocked and horrified. It did not occur to her that B might be physically in danger and there was no conscious plan in her mind to injure B when the fire began. But when A's behaviour is analysed, B's death must be intentional. If A had genuinely wished to avoid any possibility of injury to B, she would not have started the fire. Or, if verbally warning B to leave was not an option, she should have waited until B was seen to leave the house before starting the fire. As it was, she waited until night when it was more likely that B would be at home and there would be fewer people around to raise the alarm. Whereas intent would be less if A had set fire to the house during the day after ringing the doorbell to check no one was home and then immediately ringing the fire brigade to report the fire.

On a purely subjective basis, A intended to render B's house uninhabitable, so a reasonably substantial fire was required. The reasonable person would have foreseen a probability that people would be exposed to the risk of injury. Anyone in the house, neighbours, people passing by, and members of the fire service would all be in danger. The court therefore assesses the degree of probability that B or any other person might be in the house at that time of the night. The more certain the reasonable person would have been, the more justifiable it is to impute sufficient desire to convert what would otherwise only have been recklessness into intent to constitute the offence of murder. But if the degree of probability is lower, the court finds only recklessness proved. Some states once had a rule that a death that occurred during commission of a felony automatically imputed sufficient mens rea for murder. (See felony murder). This rule has been mostly abolished, and direct evidence of the required mental components is now required. Thus, the courts of most states use a hybrid test of intent, combining both subjective and objective elements, for each offence changed.

In English law, s8 Criminal Justice Act 1967 provides a statutory framework within which mens rea is assessed. It states:

A court or jury, in determining whether a person has committed an offence,
(a) shall not be bound in law to infer that he intended or foresaw a result of his actions by reasons only of its being a natural and probable consequence of those actions; but
(b) shall decide whether he did intend or foresee that result by reference to all the evidence, drawing such inferences from the evidence as appear proper in the circumstances.
Under s8(b) therefore, the jury is allowed a wide latitude in applying a hybrid test to impute intent or foresight (for the purposes of recklessness) on the basis of all the evidence. See Intention in English law.
[...continues at length...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law)

Much of the above quoted would be arguable, but Amnesia has set themself up by stating: "That argument comes from a fundamental lack of understanding of how our justice system works.". Quite the contrary, and nothing illustrates the point better than gun control legislation. I'm not going to get into specifics, I don't need to, suffice to say you run around with a gun, and someone gets seriously hurt, almost inevitably, criminal action is examined.

But tying this back to the endless stream of Canadians getting whacked on roads and motorists not even having to appear in court, Canada, after the US, has the second highest incidence of gun accidents/crime in the developed world. But when it comes to culpability of road incidents, even the US is more pro-active than Canada.

So let me reduce the logic in there to something much simpler: Canada allows motorists through their actions to kill and maim pedestrians and cyclists with barely a consequence in many cases. Perhaps a fine. And some seem to find that acceptable.

At least get your legal claims correct...

 

[steveintoronto]

Tough sentence for driver causing the death of a cyclist...

As awful as this is, there's some solace to be had from the comments by the lead investigator in other media reports:

Det.-Const. Arthur Lane of Toronto police traffic services said outside court the Kang family remains "devastated" but he is satisfied with the jail term.

"In previous years we've had low sentences and so I'm glad to see that the sentences now are starting to move up in duration," Lane said. "Society's looking at these cases in a more serious light and that's going to be helpful.

"The public should know that this kind of activity is absolutely abhorrent ..."

http://www.thespec.com/news-story/7...unk-driving-before-crash-that-killed-cyclist/

Some of the charges were under the Criminal Code. Continuing in the line of discussion I made in an earlier post above, if this woman had been touting a gun, and did what she did after this incident, and had glorified her use of guns on her Facebook page, she'd be facing a lot more time than she is now.

This wasn't just an accident due to wanting infrastructure and weather, this had intent in terms of attitude precipitating an event. It's good to see a number of comments from police looking to prosecute these kinds of accidents against pedestrians and cyclists in a much more aggressive way. It's time for Queen's Park to make some driving offences stiffer, and to ask the Feds to do same with criminal offences affecting driving.

 

[W. K. Lis]

When they actually do a study on
Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business: A Study of Queen Street West in Toronto’s Parkdale Neighbourhood

From this link.

In the fall of 2015, a study modelled after TCAT’s “Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business” reports (2009, 2010) was developed and administered by volunteers of Cycle Toronto’s Ward 14 Advocacy Group. The study was conducted in Parkdale, a neighbourhood about two kilometres west of Toronto’s downtown. TCAT Director Nancy Smith Lea acted as an advisor on the report. As with TCAT’s previous reports, this study sought to understand the transportation and spending habits of visitors to the study area and to examine the potential impact on local business if there were an introduction of bike lanes and subsequent reduction of parking spaces.

The report was released in December 2016. The PDF is available for download (below).

A summary of the findings:

• 72% of the visitors to the Study Area usually arrive by active transportation (by bicycle or walking). Only 4% report that driving is their usual mode of transportation.
• Merchants overestimated the number of their customers who arrived by car. 42% of merchants estimated that more than 25% of their customers usually arrived by car.
• Visitors who reported using active transportation to visit the Study Area visited more often and spent more money per month than those who usually drove or relied on public transit.
• Visitors to the Study Area were much more likely to prefer a bike lane or widened sidewalks over no change, even if this resulted in the loss of on-street parking.
• Merchants prefer the current layout of Queen Street more than a configuration where on-street parking is reduced to accommodate expanded sidewalks or a bike lane.
• A majority of visitors (53%) and merchants (64%) stated that there was not enough bicycle parking within the Study Area.
• Merchants were more likely than visitors to perceive the amount of car parking as inadequate: 52% of merchants stated there was not enough car parking in comparison with 19% of visitors.

Download the report: Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business_ A Study of Queen Street West in Toronto’s Parkdale Neighbourhood

Download infographics: Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business: A Study of Queen Street West in Toronto's Parkdale Neighbourhood Infographics

 

[ADRM]

When they actually do a study on
Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business: A Study of Queen Street West in Toronto’s Parkdale Neighbourhood

From this link.

Download the report: Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business_ A Study of Queen Street West in Toronto’s Parkdale Neighbourhood

Download infographics: Bike Lanes, On-Street Parking and Business: A Study of Queen Street West in Toronto's Parkdale Neighbourhood Infographics

View attachment 95355

That's an awesome report that's also super frustrating given how awful the public realm is for active transportation users in the study area.

 

[steveintoronto]

This part really blew my inner tubes: (This is very concerning considering similar is happening on the Bloor St lanes as witnessed by the Korean Merchants claim that the lanes were hurting business. It's the merchants who hold the most sway on the outcome of the lanes remaining or not)