I know this is a debate, largely because there is little enforcement of peleton or side by side style riding. The HTA says riders must give way to faster traffic by pulling right, and may not ride side by side if impedes the normal flow of traffic.
I'm all for cyclists sharing the road, but like the rest of the road users they should have rules and those rules should be enforced.
A couple of other things that I'd change.
1) Remove the reverse onus law. Toronto based studies place equal blame on cyclists and drivers (33% cyclists, 33% motorist and 33% joint) yet motorists have the bigger burden when it comes to liability.
2) Where bicycle lanes have been afforded, cyclists should be limited to those lanes and prohibited from using the auto lanes for anything but turning or avoiding obstacles in bike lanes.
3) Make riders using the road produce drivers licenses if they have one to police officers to facilitate appropriate assignment of HTA offences.
4) Specifically outline rules regarding single file and peloton style group riding in the HTA.
1) i think what happens here is all about physics and statistics. In a car vs bicycle collision, the car always wins even if the cyclist is in the right. You won't have a car driver be killed or gravely injured do a cyclist error... and i'd be comfortable to make up the stat of 99% of the time. So the potential for damage the car carries will probably help to dictate that burden of liability.
2) totally agree, except there is barely any bike specific infrastructure in toronto (you might encounter more outside of the core), most of the main arteries are made up of multi-use lane that are not made to get quickly from point a to b and often times will be overcrowded and quite a lot less efficient (ie. waterfront trail in mississauga add at least 5km of multi use trail). Also infrastructure tends to be little bits and pieces at a time, so instead of having a straight line, you have to do all sorts of detours to get from one piece of bike infrastructure to the other. If proper infrastructure was built, that would be a non-issue in the first place. But proper bike infrastructure is perceived as "war on cars" and as we've seen with covid it's not the most efficient measures that get voted in but the ones the politicians want.
3) fine for that, know the rules of the road if youre gonna share the road. but that goes for drivers too..people tend to hmm... forget.
4) Definitely, and normally a good established group will know the rule and teach its members...so maybe something the OCA (Ontario Cycling Association) can work on with its clubs/teams that a registered under their banner
In the end, if the police enforces based on level of threat and number of users, the car will outweigh the bike by A LOT as cars are more dangerous and there are way more cagers on the road than there are cyclists. So by policing cars the police has more chances to save a life than by policing cyclists.
This isnt to say AT ALL that i support riding 2 abreast even if roads are narrow and there are cars in the area trying to pass. But when we look at it from a risk perspective dangerous cycling behavior is like hand-throwing a rock where as dangerous driving behavior is more like shooting from a cannon.
