Montreal City Weblog

Kate 21:27 on 2024-10-18 Permalink Reply  

• Tim S. 22:48 on 2024-10-18 Permalink

  Not directly related, but about 4:30 this afternoon I witnessed a pickup truck driving dangerously along the de Maisonneuve bike path and through Westmount Park – dangerous, as in parents shouting at their kids to run to get out of the way. Scanning the various news sites to see if anything came of it, but so far nothing – which goes to show how much crazy stuff can happen and never get known outside the people who were there.

• carswell 09:33 on 2024-10-19 Permalink

  Today’s Guardian has a story about a cyclist killed by an SUV in Paris. The SUV had been driving in the bike lane and ran over the cyclist’s foot. The cyclist banged on the hood to get the driver to move off his foot then approached the SUV to express his displeasure, prompting the driver to deliberately run him down. The driver has been charged with murder.

  Some left-wing politicians are now calling for SUVs to be banned in the city, a brilliant idea but one that will never be implemented or even suggested here because whichever party did it would be voted out of office by the many, many SUV owners and others who value cars more than the safety of others or the environment.

• Ian 10:44 on 2024-10-19 Permalink

  Carswell, you do realize a Ram is a pickup truck, right?

• Kate 11:12 on 2024-10-19 Permalink

  Ian, no need to be snide.

• Orr 18:37 on 2024-10-19 Permalink

  The correct term for today’s oversized pickup truck is bro-dozer.

• Ian 13:07 on 2024-10-20 Permalink

  Most that I see have F plates so are being used by contractors. The others I presume are mostly from off-island. It’s hard to imagine any practical use for them as a regular family vehicle in town. I can’t imagine even trying to use a regular parking garage spot let alone trying to parallel park in one.

  But yes, let’s just generically make totally relevant and absolutely not-snide statements like “SUV owners and many, many others who value cars more than the safety of others and the environment”. That will definitely jumpstart the conversation about addressing the issue of oversize pickup trucks in town presenting an inherent hazard.

• Kate 14:43 on 2024-10-20 Permalink

  A lot of people are happy to drive around in vehicles far higher and larger than they need, even if it means they’re more hazardous to everyone else on the road, or crossing it. Pickups and SUVs have all been getting larger over the last few years, too. So carswell’s contribution was relevant, Ian.

• DeWolf 18:36 on 2024-10-20 Permalink

  In 2018 or 2019, I distinctly remember thinking about how Montreal didn’t have many pickup trucks compared to other cities in North America, and how nearly all of them had F plates indicating they were commercial vehicles. But something has changed since the pandemic and I now see way more vanity trucks: spotless new F-150s and Rams with regular licence plates.

  There are two sides to this issue. One is that car companies make far more money from SUVs and pickup trucks than regular vehicles, and they’re doing their best to push people towards them, which means that anyone looking to buy a car is pressured into buying something larger than they might need. But consumers have also allowed themselves to be hoodwinked into thinking that bigger = better, and that buying a bloated SUV is somehow safer and more practical than an old-fashioned car even though it has less cargo capacity than a sedan or station wagon and doesn’t even handle as well on the road.

  All types of cars are bad for society and the environment, and so we should be taking a harm reduction approach, but instead the opposite is happening. In terms of negative externalities, cars are worse now than they were 20 or 30 years ago, even if their tailpipe emissions are better than in the past.

  We need a clear-eyed and coherent approach to transportation that acknowledges that cars have their place in the world but need to be restricted. To make that work, we need to provide abundant alternatives to driving personal vehicles. Even a right-wing business guy like Pierre Fitzgibbon understands this, based on his comments about Quebec needing to drastically reduce its number of private vehicles. But sadly we’re going in the wrong direction, to a place where everything related to transportation is mired in the muck of culture war instead of rational policy.