ACCOZZAGLIA

When @snosk proposed the button idea which became RIDE OCCUPY SURVIVE, it was about 24 hours after Jenna Morrison’s death. We had just learnt her name hours before. Many of us as bicyclists weren’t really sure how to work forward from this. It was still too soon.

I had thrown together the “You own your space” defensive bicycling essay as a reflexive response — as a lifetime cyclist, a former bicycle courier, a woman, and someone who was so close in age to Jenna that we could have high-fived one another in the hospital nursery as one of us came into the world while the other was going home for the first time. This really hit close to home.

Just after the first reports leaked to local news and onto Twitter, people text messaged me asking whether I was OK. I was perplexed until they explained how a woman roughly my age, and on my end of town, had just been killed. My reaction was probably a lot like everyone else in the cycling community (and our allies): a sick stomach, a sense of dread, a worry that it was someone close to us, and then a feeling of anger in how unnecessary, how avoidable this death had been — and not because of anything she could have done improperly. By all accounts, she maintained her place on the road legally, per the provincial Highway Traffic Act, and she wore protective headgear. This wasn’t enough.

We soon learnt that her name was Jenna, that she was a yoga instructor, that she was a mother of one with another on the way, and that she was en route to picking up her kid from school.

I could not relate with her on much of these particular life experiences, but I could relate as someone who uses a harmless, multi-modal means of getting around the city (and yes, cycling adversaries, let’s face together what you will not alone: cycling is extraordinarily harmless relative to all other forms of wheeled transportation; it is innocuous as moving about as a pedestrian on a sidewalk). I could relate as someone who was almost killed due to driver error and poor transportation planning. I could relate as an continuing advocate for human safety — that while not every injury is avoidable, many — like this — are.

The rationale for not retrofitting industrial trucks due to “cost” and lack of evidence in their purported efficacy is much the same rationale handed to people in our past who were mangled or killed by industrial machinery in the workplace; why we cover the street holes with iron grates instead of shrugging when people fell in; why we now have seat belts; and why we no longer sell lawn darts (or, as we knew them, Jarts). If in doubt, head down to 200 Front Street West to the sitting park just west of the building, grab some street meat, and browse the names and fates of people who died due to injuries related to poor safety.

But this grievance is an aside — a residual critique of what we learnt after Jenna’s sudden passing. We are soberly aware that stepping forward with initiative on industrial truck side skirts is not a concern of our current federal government. We are aware that driver testing is minimal in this province — that mandatory testing and regular skills testing seldom, if ever occurs after the moment a license is initially issued. We are also aware of the municipal level recalcitrance against holistic, multi-modal transportation planning is at an apex and will be for the next few years.

For the moment, advancing safety forward for a nominal assurance — a preventive fee — is unlikely.

Proactivity

So what could we do of our own volition?

I wrote the defensive cycling essay, “You own your space“, sharing those tips which have kept me safe and intact when I was a bicycle messenger and what keeps me safe and intact now. It amounted to being seen and being heard, even if it comes at a minor inconvenience to a person behind the wheel of a vehicle. The essay seemed to touched a nerve of consensus in a lot of cyclists.

So a Twitter contact by the handle of @snosk asked me whether there would be some kind of campaign — the kind which might involve posters, stickers, or maybe buttons. I hadn’t planned for any kind of campaign, but if one could work, I’d want it to raise money for the family, for a charity of the family’s choosing, or for improving bicycling safety in some useful way. I set out to make a simple, visible button.

The next day, the family announced a trust fund for Jenna’s surviving child — a fund to help remediate a forever-disrupted future. This was enough motivation for me to move the campaign forward as a button. And that’s what ultimately happened.

After one month of distributing the buttons — at bike shops, the memorial ride for Jenna, and November’s Critical Mass ride — I can share with you the following:

1. Of the 1,000 RIDE OCCUPY SURVIVE orange buttons produced in memory of Jenna, roughly 300 are still available.
2. In exactly four weeks, we have raised $674.08. This was deposited last night at TD Canada Trust into the family’s trust fund. Donations came in from as far away as the west coast. Many people have donated without even keeping a button. Donations have even included a one-yuan coin, a one-shekel coin, a Bahamian quarter, a TTC token, and three American single bills.
3. So long as there are buttons to give out, donations will continue towards the family’s trust fund. I’ll collect and report these additional donations monthly until we exhaust this supply of buttons.
4. On demand, the RIDE OCCUPY SURVIVE posters, seen at locations where buttons have been available, can be produced with donations to be added to the button pool. Get in touch with me on making that happen.
5. With support from MPs Olivia Chow and Peggy Nash, petitions have been prepared asking Ottawa to require side skirts on industrial trucks throughout Canada.

Buttons will continue to be available at the following locations:

• Urbane Cyclist
• Sweet Pete’s (both locations)
• Dave, Fix My Bike
• the Bikechain
• Bike Sauce
• Broadway Cycle

If you wish to start carrying the buttons for donations, please let me know.

To our cycling community and our cycling allies, seeing this come together and work out made me a bit weepy last night as the deposit was made. You guys are truly amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you.