FOCUS ON ROAD SAFETY
Law meant to protect cyclists not enough: Lessard
With one cyclist dead and another critically injured in two collisions with trucks in less than a week, both Montreal’s mayor and the province’s transport minister said road safety must be improved.
“We can change the law, but after that, we have to make people aware and people have to change their habits,” said Laurent Lessard, the newly minted transport minister.
Lessard, the third transport minister in the Couillard government, was named to the job last weekend after his predecessor Jacques Daoust resigned amid controversy. Lessard was in Montreal Friday to meet with Mayor Denis Coderre, and they took reporters’ questions after their meeting.
Lessard pointed out that the province changed the law to increase fines for drivers who hit cyclists with their vehicle door, and to require drivers to give more room to cyclists when they pass them. Previously, the Highway Safety Code instructed drivers to give cyclists a “reasonable distance,” but now the code requires cars to keep a distance of at least 1.5 metres. Both measures were ones the city had asked the province to adopt.
However, while both Coderre and Lessard spoke about the importance of public education, neither could answer why there was no awareness campaign or enforcement blitz by police following the most recent changes in the law aimed at improving cyclist safety.
Lessard acknowledged the province could have done a better job at communicating the change in the law. He said there is a campaign in the works, and he will push for it to be put in place sooner.
“We will accelerate the process to make this known and inform people,” Lessard said. “We need people to give more respect to cyclists.”
Coderre said people also have to take responsibility to know the law, with or without a campaign.
“There is a principle that everyone is supposed to be aware of the law,” Coderre said. “It’s not like we didn’t talk about it (publicly), but it’s a matter of repeating it and changing the culture.”
Lessard said a more exhaustive review of the Highway Safety Code is still underway, a process that began more than two years ago. An advisory board led by cycling racer-turned businessman Louis Garneau was assembled to recommend changes to the code to improve safety for cyclists, but although the group already submitted its recommendations at the end of 2014, the only changes to the code were the ones implemented last spring. Lessard said it’s too soon for him to say when other changes will be put forward, since he just started on the job.