AuDN4T

I’ve reflected on how much my parents influenced my driving with theirs and how they speak behind the wheel. My dad would drive impaired when he’d have a couple of beers. I’ve noticed it while on the highway the car would swerve a certain way. Got kind of uncomfortable. He would also have a drinking space in Etobicoke where his friends used to have a business and I’d sometimes cycle on a bike nearby. He was the primary driver until he went down to Florida for work. That’s when my mom ended up being the driver.

My mom drove primarily on roads – highways scared the crap out of her. She only started driving on highways when she had to pick me up from camp in London. Her driving wasn’t terrible. It did feel a bit jerky and maybe more jerky over the years. She did get frustrated with drivers on the road and make comments – like how is this person driving, or why aren’t they using their blinkers or how an older couple would go for a drive down Bloor Street West on a date and drove super slow. She really didn’t get into at faults accidents – they were mostly someone hitting her. I think she only recently got more spatially impacted in very narrow areas.

Reason I bring up my parents – I think there’s some psychology around how you also internalize comments they make. Like – oh this driver is trying to “show you” …that you’re a female and that’s why they’re being an asshole on the road towards you. I think some of these comments do stick around sometimes.

As Pedestrians

I don’t think I thought too much about drivers as a kid. Though, I’ve apparently made comments about drivers in Olsztyn, Poland almost driving us off the crosswalk… but I was 6. Barely remember this. I think I became more rigid as a pedestrian when I was a pedestrian in university and walking from Union Station to RyeHigh. Downtown motorists nearly running you over as you walk through an intersection and you scold them with a death stare LOL. Or when they’re turning right and cut you off as a pedestrian. Kind of annoying. You learn to adjust your crossing through crosswalk when the countdown is at 6… or 10, depending on how big the intersection is. If it’s less than 6 or 10 seconds… the risk of crossing and making it across in a timely manner is reduced. Looking at some of the crosswalks – they all have varying timers on them. They’re not consistent in the city. (RANDOM THOUGHT – I remember waking up in the middle of the night in my High Park apartment with those big ass floor to ceiling windows and seeing a crosswalk in the distance… always counted how long that light was green for LOL… am I autistic or what?).

Ukraine was a terrifying place to walk as a pedestrian. I’ve joked with my friend that you need confidence to cross as a pedestrian otherwise drivers won’t let you cross. I’ve had some BMW driver in Kyiv not let me cross (despite having a crosswalk light; I can’t remember the exact intersection now). Lviv – also not comfortable but the streets are a bit more narrower. Feels like you’ve got different variables between the two cities. Ukraine also has a high pedestrian fatality – like it’s HUGE. Remember seeing a stat sometime around 2014-2015. I’d have to dig a little more on the stats and how they’ve changed over the last 10 years. I can attest to the driving. Having a Lviv “Uber” trying to get us to the airport and driving 100km/h in a 50km/h, passing through a zebra crossing was terrifying. Cramming 7 people into a car with 5 seats was not the brightest idea. You can see the aggressive driving in other parts like the Carpathians where people think they can speed through not realizing the pot holes will ruin their car.

Walking in Ireland – I felt pretty safe as a pedestrian. I don’t think there was anything outstanding in comparison to Toronto, Vancouver or Calgary.

Portugal was a bit terrifying with the narrow roads and tiled roads/sidewalks – those got slick when it rained – I think it depended where. The older parts of the city were scary and you could see that pedestrians were surprised that I gave them the right of way to cross. It’s very car first.

New York felt like Toronto. Pedestrians would cross at red lights if no vehicles were present. Nothing too outstanding in my opinion. It was very walkable. You could take the subway anywhere and walk. Using Google Maps was so easy to navigate through the city to the point where I was giving other tourists directions.

Plano – the odd set up of sidewalks made this awkward to cross. Some sidewalks just ended. I didn’t have the chance to walk too much in Plano but the small area I did, it didn’t quite make sense to me. The heat made it harder to walk around and you ended up sweating buckets LOL.

Tulsa – It’s walkable but you don’t see people walking. If you need to get to far distances, you need a car. Getting from the hotel to the office, needed a car. Walking there made no sense; it would’ve taken 30-45mins to get there. There wouldn’t have been much to see in the area.

Mississauga – it’s got sidewalks but is it a pleasant walk? Not overly. Depending on the neighbourhood. Did I walk to school? No. It was too suburbish and boring. You could have a stroll through Clarkson, Port Credit, Streetsville, but they’re kind of like BIAs like Bloor West Village or the Danforth where there are shops you can see. Mississauga’s Downtown isn’t really a downtown in a traditional sense. It’s a bunch of condos, city hall and a mall. Others would argue that’s not downtown but rather Applewood would be downtown. I don’t think so. I’d equate where city hall is present is where “downtown” is. It’s a very car centric city and with the new transit system being rolled out – it wouldn’t make it any more walkable like NYC.

Montreal felt like there were moments where it was faster to walk rather than take the subway. I’ve always tried to find a parking garage, hunker down there and walk to places. It didn’t feel unsafe as a pedestrian in Old Montreal, Little Burgundy, dt Montreal. Laval is not a walkable city – you need a car in this city. I didn’t take the subway much in these two cities since I primarily stayed in Old Montreal and the vicinity. Just took it once for the heck of it.

As a Cyclist

As a kid, I was a chill cyclist. Something switched when I was a teenager. I don’t know if it was trauma or what. Cycling was my outlet to get out this anger. I cycled in very industrial areas of Clarkson, pedalled super aggressively at times and got angry at truck drivers for cutting me off. I was lucky I had respectful drivers in Oakville respecting distance between them and I. I typically felt safe in Oakville on the road with exception to two situations where a Mercedes tried parallel parking into me in dt Oakville (front first) and teenagers yelling something at me while I cycled and nearly got me to crash from being startled. It was funny because I was cycling on this heavy mountain bike. So much energy output to get speed. I had made this goal of doing 20km – Oakville harbour and back in about an hour. Other times I’d push myself further – created these mini goals. Cycling to Port Credit was a shorter distance but also enjoyable. Had some instances where drivers here did not respect the distance between them and I and this resulted in conflict. Having the hills between these neighbourhoods was an interesting added factor where you gotta work harder. I did manage to cycle all the way to Cherry Beach and back… first time I didn’t plan well and was starving haha. So about 72km round trip. Did this a couple of times. It was a nice goal that I achieved. I ended up getting a road bike and kind of messed it off right off the batt when I installed the front wheel wrong (you can pop it off for storage). The wheel didn’t get on properly and resulted in it grinding against the carbon fibre… which made me a tad nervous about using in the future in case it failed. It’s a nice Felt lightweight bike. I did crash it cycling on the Martin Goodman Trail when I didn’t check my blindspots trying to get off the trail and crashed into another cyclist. Switching environments where I was a single cyclist in Oakville and not worrying about others passing you while listening to music to a multiuse trail and you need to look out for everyone around you, have your head on a swivel. In recent years, it has felt comfortable cycling in Toronto. I don’t think I felt like I was at risk of someone hitting me. I know my mom had two scenarios where someone turning right didn’t check their blindspot and she ended up on the car’s front hood. There are some blindspots in the bike lanes that are terrifying. I will say when I was dysregulated cycling through Queen Street West – I did not care about my safety at that moment and that was a different story; there were moments where I could have died. Using other recreational trails in Toronto are fun though I remember seeing an incident where cyclists collided and they needed to bring in an ambulance down to the Humber Trail…. that was a bit scary because you do have blindspots and if people do rip through there, the injuries can be serious. Relief from hot days and fuel is super critical, otherwise accidents can happen on bikes. Depending where you’re located you need to plan how to get back home if you can’t cycle back or to the nearest hospital. We ended up taking the GO Train and I did some cycling to get my car to pick up my partner from the train station. Had this happened on our way to Niagara, we would need to do some quick thinking on how to get help. Bike maintenance – this is something others also need to consider and what to do in the event of a flat tire.

As a Driver

My driving wasn’t always so pedantic and aggressive. I don’t know how it really started. I was chill at first. I’d let people do a lane change that took longer than usual. I’m not sure if it was because there were less drivers?

I went through driving school and had my uncle teach me how to parallel park. I had another separate driving lesson before my full drivers license because I delayed my graduated driver’s license.

Something clicked while waiting at lights at intersections. At some point I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the light to turn green and had to immediately go. I’m not sure why that was. If it was fear of someone honking at me?

Driving to Guelph and KW, it felt like I had kind of a freedom in a sense? I’m not sure why it was. Felt different. I’m not sure if I was less lax with my driving?

Getting my own car and driving at work. I can’t remember too much about how my driving changed around this time. I remember driving to Buffalo with family and my driving was pretty aggressive – my aunt was concerned about being too close to the car in front of me. I remember refusing to take 407 to avoid added costs on travel but eventually taking it because the 401 was so frustrating to take. The wild thing is that driving on the 407, you hit 120km/h and people are still going faster than 140km/h. (I was taught that if the speed is 100km/h, you don’t exceed 120km/h; if it’s less than 90km/h, you don’t go faster than 10km/h over… over the years that 120km/h has pushed towards 130km/h and 140km/h by others… I’ve tried not to exceed 120km/h).

I think there was also some influence from managers during drives with them making comments about other drivers.

I did learn that my car couldn’t handle snow whatsoever. It was light and all season tires did nothing. The Kia Soul needed winter tires no matter what. When it has winter tires… it does pretty well. When you have them on too long closer to May and the road does get warm, trying to brake with them is very hard. There was a moment on the 401 where cars came to a halt in the middle lane and I couldn’t make it in time with braking and had to change lanes to the left lane (luckily it was empty because it was closed off behind). Moral of the story – make sure you don’t keep your winter tires on longer than necessary – they won’t have the ability to stop in time.

There were moments on the 401 where if you kept moving (without the need to brake) you could get your fuel economy down to 6.5L/100km (which was impressive).

Driving on the 427 with the white concrete road in rainy conditions made it super hard to see the lanes. Luckily they have since changed this. Another issue that I wish they could correct is making sure that lanes are reflective. They’re very hard to see in the dark and rainy conditions.

There was an individual that started playing chicken with me on the road attempting to hit my vehicle – a white dodge minivan. Following this incident, I put up a dash cam.

I adjusted my driving since there was a moment where everything was tiring with the stop and go traffic. I kind of turned it into a game of try not to brake with the stop and go traffic. I had 8am projects downtown, so I’d maintain a distance from the car in front of me and gauge how much gas to add.

I think back to a time I drove back from Killarney with my best friend – we were tired and got to the outskirts of Barrie. Drivers would drive in the stop and go traffic and drive very close to the car in front of them. My tired brain couldn’t comprehend why and I remember commenting about this out loud and saying there’s no way I’m going to drive so close. But in that moment it felt like I had to mimic them or that it was the expected thing to do because everyone drove like this… but being that tired… made no sense because my reaction time was waaaaay off.

I remember there were moments where I’d get pissed off at drivers for driving stupidly – I had my uncle say to chill, there’s no point in getting pissed at others on the road.

I remember at one point I yelled at someone for not having their lights on in the dark. Like it was rigidity around that. How are people going to see you?

Driving in zombie mode and having that game of trying to not use my brakes was kind of what worked for me in that time.

When I switched cars to the Terrain – again not sure exactly what changed.

There were moments where I’d be rigid and compliant but when I see someone breaking the law or acting stupid, I’d get pissed off.

Seeing people speed on my street pissed me off a lot. Getting honked for braking because a child jumped onto the street was a massive piss off… how dare I brake for a child or go the speed limit of 30km/h. I should be speeding in a school neighbourhood. I drove through a street with a speed limit of 40km/h and a pedestrian proceeded to cross immediately. I barely was able to stop – I could have hit him. You have less reaction time the faster you go and the injury can be much more significant when going faster. The ironic thing is that I did drive faster on this street before I moved here, but this was when I was dysregulated.

Being in 2018 Alberta – I never felt so relaxed driving. I think it’s because everyone was so compliant with not speeding. It was the most relaxed driving I’ve ever had. I really enjoyed driving there. In recent years, it has felt a bit more aggressive unfortunately.

I get stupidly annoyed when people would use the right lane to pass on roads like Bloor Street when vehicles are not turning. They force themselves into your lane because of parked cars… and get mad at you for not allowing them to merge into you when really their lane is ending.

I’ll just end this here cause I can’t quite think further of how messed up driving has been for me. I’ll just end with – when things got shitty, I’d come home and say I’m done with driving today.