I am not a movie reviewer (I think Machete might be the best movie I saw in 2010, but I was real tired at the time), but here goes.

The movie was, much like its subject, interesting as much for its flaws as its message.

The film combined footage from Suzuki’s “Legacy Lecture” tour stop in Vancouver with biographical vignettes, which blended archival photos and film with footage of Suzuki visiting those places most important in his 75-year life.

And it is interesting to see the things that influenced his development into the Icon we all recognize. He begins with the bombing of Pearl Harbour when he was 5, which he describes as the pivotal moment in his life, as it set the course of his 1942 internment, his 1946 relocation across the Rockies, and his growing up as an outsider in a small Ontario town, and the complex relationship with his home that he in part inherited from his father. He discusses his introduction to research science, benefiting from the “Sputnik Moment” recently referenced in Obama’s State of the Union address (and hilariously bungled in Sarah Palin’s rebuttal), and he eventual disillusionment with research while immersed in the counter-culture of late 1960 Vancouver. We see his introduction to broadcasting, and his discovery of the huge range his voice could have, and how he leveraged this into activism, most notably in the preservation of pristine watersheds in the Haida Gwaii.

It is an interesting journey, and he has had a remarkable life. But there is no attempt here to sugar coat his history, or his person. His dedication to research and inability to give his wife and children the attention they needed cost him a marriage. The film also didn’t shy away from showing the now silly-looking pot-philosophy trip he was groovin’ in the 60s. To a scientist, his arguments around the responsibility of research scientists in a world where all science shares ideas and one could not control how one’s research is used are intellectually weak. It also seems to be an argument that belies his current ideas about how we need, as a species, to learn. But few of us would like to be judged by the ideas we formulated in our 20s while under the influence of premium Mexican sensimilla.

Which brings me to one of the problems I have always had with Suzuki as a spokesperson for science. He too often gets his science mixed up with his spirituality. He does this here again with his blending of the real science of the Big Bang (which he irritatingly calls an “explosion”, when it is nothing of the sort) and the formation of matter with “love” as an attractive force on par with gravity. Philosophers can use science, and scientists can have philosophies, but muddying them up like that in the guise of science education does a disservice to both, and unfairly lumps too much pseudo-science in with true insight.

The same complaints cannot be used when he talks about sustainability, though. His message is not in the least bit muddied there. We are using resources faster then they can be replaced, and we are the last generation that will (for example) have a Bluefin Tuna Auction. Humans do not exist outside of, or apart from, the environment, we are immersed in it so intimately that the exhaust from our cars goes into our lungs and mixes with our cells. We become the exhaust from our cars, the neurotoxins in our pesticides, the plastic in our seas.

The filmmakers made some interesting choices. They didn’t interview anyone about Suzuki, other than Suzuki (with the sole exception of a 10-second sound bite from his current wife). Some of the people around him are completely absent, including his “best friend” (who is briefly mentioned but not seen), or his political allies and detractors. This sometimes gives it the vibe of a vanity project, and does little to dispel the common idea that Suzuki suffers from in inflated self-image, They also insisted on using a strange fast-zoom-in technique, presumably to create emphasis that may have been lacking from Suzuki’s relatively unexpressive visage during an important part of a discussion, or maybe it was to try to make him look like Batman. Regardless, it was distracting at first, irritating the 20th time.

Overall, the movie was effective. Suzuki is an interesting character, whose flaws as a person or as a scientist do not take away from the essential truth of his message: the planet has limited carrying capacity, and the way we measure value in our economy is not the way we measure value in our lives. It is this disconnect on the definition of “value” that is resulting in the destruction of the very biosphere that sustains us.

This article pisses me off, as someone who cummutes regularly, by bike, to Richmond.

First, it has the regurgitated-press-release style of lazy journalism, but I can let that pass. It is the overall message that is sent that causes me tremors. That message, on the front page, is that cycling in Richmond is unsafe, and that it is the cyclists fault.

Let’s start off with the Stats:

“Between 2005 and 2009, there were 291 crashes involving cyclists in Richmond…including two fatalities.”

So a hair under 300 cyclist-related crashes in 5 years reported to ICBC. We can presume that if ICBC was involved, there were not people falling off bikes or hitting trees, these were impacts between bicycles and automobiles. But where is the context? Is 300 bad?

According to ICBC stats, there are, on average, 900 auto accidents per year in Richmond, resulting in an average of 10 deaths, which extrapolates to 4500 accidents and 50 deaths over 5 years.

“Mode share” for cycling in Richmond is around 3%.. That means for every 100 trips taken, about four were by bicycle. The mode share for cars was about 65% (with the rest being walking and transit), so to compare apples with apples, we need to lose the 32% others and say 3 in 68 trips (4.4%) were by bike, and 65 in 68 (95.5%) were by car. Then we can do the same with the accident statistics, and see how much more dangerous cycling is that driving:

                  As mode share      Accidents        Deaths
Drivers          95.6%                      94%             96%
Cyclists           4.4%                      6%                4%

Considering that drivers are surrounded by 3000lbs of steel and plastic, with seatbelts and airbags, and cyclists usually wear some combination of lycra and styrofoam, I think the numbers don’t really make cyclists a public health hazard.

Another way to look at the above numbers:
                                      total      cyclists were killed      people in cars were killed
Accidents with cyclists   6%                 0.6%                                    0*
Accidents w/o  cyclists  94%                0%                                     1.1%

So you are more likely to die if you are in a car crash, than if you are in a bicycle crash. If you are in a car, you have a miniscule chance of being hit by a bike relative to being hit by another car, and as far as I can read in the stats, not a single driver or passenger was killed in a collision with a cyclist (I cannot confirm this, hence the *). So if you are hit by anything in an accident, you are better off if you are hit by a bike than a car, and you are actually better off being on a bike when you are hit than being in car.

But the biggest stat here is that 6% of crashes involved bikes, but 100%, involve a car. I will come back to this.

First, let’s look at the “most dangerous intersections” outlined in the article: the Bike map for Richmond might be useful.

#1: No 2 Road and Westminster Highway (9 crashes).

Here is a location where a designated bike route along a major arterial (the No 2 Road Bridge and Russ Baker Way) abruptly comes to a stop at the crossing of two major arterial routes. Full 1.5m bike lanes evaporate into nothing except two 6-lane arterial roads with no shoulders that lead to residential areas. The southbound bike lane squeezes out into a right-turn only lane, with no shoulder to the right…not even a curb cut to give you the illegal but safer sidewalk bailout… I’m surprised there aren’t rotating knives.

#2: Gilbert and Granville (8 crashes).

Here we have Granville, which is a dedicated bike route with full bike lanes on both sides, crossing Gilbert, which to the north is a dedicated bike route in name only (it has kind of wide shoulders, but no pavement lines or markings), and no shoulders at all to the south. Of course, the “bike lanes” on Granville both become “right turn” lanes at the intersection, confusing both cyclists and drivers, and the shoulder on Gilbert is wide enough that it acts as a defacto right-turn lane, even though it is not marked as such. The fact the corner is on one of the City’s destination public facilities (Minoru complex houses playing fields, pools, arenas, libraries, etc.) and Granville is the major east-west bike routh through town, it is no surprise this disaster of an intersection is up in the stats.

#3 (tie): Blundell and Garden City Roads.

This surprises me a bit, only because it is one of the few I don’t frequent. Garden City is a dedicated bike lane in name only (slightly wider shoulders, no pavement markings) and Blundell is an east-west racetrack with no shoulders. Also, the corner visibility is a little sketchy due to retail signage, and there is a lot of relatively dense residential area around, but there is little here to make this intersection worse than 90% of the others in the City.

#3 (tie): Granville Avenue and Minoru Boulevard;

Take everything I said about Granville and Gilbert, adjust by the fact Minoru is not a dedicated bike route, and you have Granville and Minoru. Proximity to the Minoru complex brings the bikes along the main east-west bike route, the bike lanes become right-turn only lanes, Minoru is narrow with basically no shoulder. Bada-bing Ba da boom.

#3 (tie): Garden City Road and Westminster Highway.

Garden City north and south have great, well-marked bike routes (although they have been seemingly under constant construction for the last two years, making me wonder if the stats are biased by that), and represent the best north-south route through central Richmond (much better than the disaster that is No 3 Road). Of course, the nice southbound bike lane becomes a right-turn only lane, while the north-bound one sort of hops across the extended right-turn only lane, leaving the right-turning cyclist in a nasty spot with especially poor visibility around the Gas Station on the southeast corner. Westminster Highway also has excellent wide bike lanes to the east…but absolutely nothing the west. There isn’t even a shoulder wide enough to ride on safely for an experienced cyclist. Car speeds are high here (they seem to take “highway” as a suggested speed).

I humbly suggest there are many ways to alleviate the risk to cyclists here and city-wide. A few engineering improvements on these roads, better education of cyclists and drivers, perhaps signage improvements., but what does the article suggest after rhetorically asking “…what’s a cyclist to do to avoid being victimized?”

They advise that cyclist dress brightly so drivers can see them, look both ways before crossing streets, and wear helmets. Or to translate: if you girls don’t want to get harassed so much, maybe you shoudn’t wear them short skirts!

Every single one of these accidents involved a car. Every one of those cars had a driver. Yes, some proportion of the accidents was no doubt caused by a lack of cyclist caution, or even by cyclists violating the Motor Vehicle Code (which, I remind you, was written for motor vehicles, and does not reflect the reality of cyclists in our modern cities). However, some of the accidents were most assuredly caused by drivers not paying attention, or violating the motor vehicle code. If I want to wear camouflage on a bike, that is my right, and if a driver hits me while I am wearing that camouflage and within my rights on the road, the “I didn’t see him, he should wear something brighter” is not a freaking excuse. We don’t make you paint a car neon orange, do we?

The sad reality is that most cyclists do dress brightly, most do ride with caution and plan ahead, most do wear helmets, all because they are acutely aware that they can get hit by a car, and that would be a bad thing. This article does nothing to alert the majority of readers (who are drivers, not cyclists) that perhaps they should also exercise caution In their 3000lb vehicles so they don’t accidentally kill or injure a cyclist. Instead, it suggests bikes are dangerous (not true) and that all accidents involving bikes are caused by cyclists (not true).

That would involve thinking beyond the ICBC press release though.