New West.net: Tension on the streets - Kyoto Ride Conflict Calls for New Transport

Last Friday, over 130 cyclists rode together through Missoula to support the Kyoto Protocol, to raise awareness of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to show that bicycle riding is part of the solution. The ride was organized by GlobalWarmingSolution.org and MIST.

During that ride, several cyclists were hit by a motorist suffering from road rage. From initial accounts, it seemed like a cyclist may have provoked the driver, who then bumped a cyclist. We now are learning that the driver could not wait for the group of cyclists (the cyclists filled both southbound lanes of Higgins just south of Broadway) and started driving right through the group, knocking an older man from his bike in the process.

The driver then crossed the double yellow lines to get around more bikes and hit a woman’s bicycle trailer. A group of cyclists caught the driver at the next red light where arguing then began. It looks as if the driver then purposely hit one or more bikers who were in front of her at the light.

The law says that a bike should “ride as far right as practicable.” The woman with the bike trailer, for instance, said that she could not bike in the right lane because she kept bumping into other bikers. So she moved into the left lane as did many cyclists.

This event illuminates the tension on the streets between bikes and cars. Two people died on Missoula’s streets the day before this bike ride—one cyclist at the Mullan and Reserve intersection and one car occupant at the Miller Creek Hwy 93 intersection.

A new transportation ethic is needed in order to keep these types of tragedies from happening.