We ride the last Friday of every month all year round. Meet at confederation park (elgin and laurier) at 5:30, ride leaves at 6pm!

This is a team blog. To join the team (and get access to post and/or administer the site), email criticalmassottawa@gmail.com

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Critical Mass: Halloween Edition

Don't forget, this Friday is the annual Halloween Critical Mass, so wear a costume if you have one!

posted by John at 3:27 PM

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would just like to make a comment about your latest Critical Mass event held on the 26th of October.

I understand the need for such a demonstration, and being a former bicycle mechanic and being heavily involved in the bicycling community I fully support this type of action.

However I would also like to point out my unfortunate run in with your demonstration on Wellington and Bay Street. The critical mass group was proceeding its way down Wellington past Bay street when me and two friends were waiting at the cross walk for our walk light to safely cross the street. This is when the light turned RED for the critical mass demonstration group and yet the ENTIRE group decided that they would not obey the traffic light and proceed to break the law and go through the red light thus endangering myself and my two friends.

Again I understand the cause, but you must understand how hypocritical this would seem as you campaign against cars and all the dangers it brings to our streets, when your own demonstration shows the inability to even obey a basic traffic light.

I attempted to talk to anyone in the group about why they seemed to think it was alright for them to not obey traffic lights even though they are wishing to be seen as legitimate vehicles on their own, yet I could not seem to get a single response out of a single person in this mob group. Part of critical mass is to help change the sort of 'me to' mentality when it comes to having to use a car for transportation, yet I found that everyone in the critical mass group was unable or unwilling to even talk to me about this obvious contradiction in their supposed cause.

I am all for trying to change conventionalities HOWEVER I find it rather disconcerting when the people trying to change these idea's are JUST as susceptible to the same sort of 'group think' that caused the original problem in the first place. If you are unable to think critically about your own actions, perhaps you should not be the one to cast criticism upon others for theirs.

9:24 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was so sorry to read your comment, because I think it re-enforced my own disillusions with critical mass. I really love critical mass, but the anger and misunderstanding from onlookers is thoroughly disheartening.
I've thought about approaching intersections as a group - how do we avoid this situation? What happens if half the group is on one side of the light and the other half is waiting at the red? Does the front end keep moving and risk an angry driver getting stuck in the group? Does the front end stop and wait, thereby obstructing the flow of traffic? Does CM move in an arguably safer fashion and project a hypocritical, reckless cause, or strictly obey all traffic laws and increase the likelihood of someone being hurt?

12:56 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the safest way to do critical mass is to keep the group together.

i know who wrote the original comment, btw. they actually tried to walk through the middle of the mass, yelling "hey, it's a green light". yes, they had a green light, but generally you don't purposely drive into a bus when it's still half way through the road, even if you have a green.. and you don't charge into a group of 50 bikes when there's no safe way for them to stop for you.

just like you'd let a bus clear the intersection, you should have let the group get through the light safely, instead of endangering yourself and others

3:54 AM

 

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