A funny thing happened to me on my way to the store a couple of weeks ago. As I came to a halt at the intersection of Breamar and Skyline (a three-way stop), I came to a full stop and looked to the left before proceeding to make a left onto Skyline.
Why did I do this instead of the usual Squamish slow’n go? I can only attribute it to the fact that I am an octogenarian and the ways of the aged are strange indeed.
In this case, it was fortunate that I did stop. Approaching from my left at literally breakneck speed were two young men on bicycles. Without slowing their pedaling one iota, they raced through the stop sign and continued down the hill.
This is probably not an unusual sight in this bike-crazy community, but it did occur to me that if I had assumed they were going to stop and had proceeded to make my turn, I would have ended up scraping two idiot bikers off the side of my car.
Apart from this being bad for the two young men and a traumatic experience for me, it would no doubt have given rise to further repercussions as it became another chapter in the long-running “geezer-wars.” There is a very good possibility that, had the accident occurred, it would have been held up as yet another shining example of why the elderly should not be allowed to drive. Another attempt to use “ageism” as a means to get the bad drivers from our roads.
In this day and age when they tell me they have computers that can sort the fly specks out of pepper, surely there is a way of flagging the bad drivers without resorting to age, gender, religion, lifestyle or sexual preference.
To the two men who almost got killed: Take care before you break your mothers’ hearts.
Ray Miles
Squamish
