The Toronto incident is quite tragic and upsetting, for both parties. I commute to work on a bike and I also own a car. I would be even more reluctant to bicycle after drinking than when driving. I consider myself a very laid-back, tolerant car driver-I do not act out, cuss out other drivers, or engage in road rage when driving. But I find that my temper is much shorter when on a bike. I find myself consciously working to control my temper when drivers or pedestrians act clueless or hostile toward me when I'm on a bike. (Especially when I consciously follow road rules and try to be considerate. For all the good it does!!) Luckily I am not a man (sorry, men, I know I'm generalizing), so I do not enjoy one-upping or getting into a "pissing contest." Still, it is very upsetting when a motorist flips you the bird or yells something insulting when you are doing your best to stay alive on the road. I don't think drinking and bicycling is a good idea. And short of finding someone with a tandem bike, having a "designated cycler" is not an option.

Way to blame the victim!! By chance, are any car (related) companies in the list of major advertisers?

If you've ever driven a car and had to parallel park, you may have on one occasion "parked by braille," that is accidentally bumped one of the cars ahead or behind you while performing this manoeuvre. Cars have bumpers because contact between cars is fairly common, especially while performing this manoeuvre. So much so, that "parking by briaille" is a term used to specifically describe this benign encounter.

But because of the mass difference with cars and with bicycles, when a car "bumps" a bike, to the rider it feels an awful lot like being rammed. In fact it it is an extremely hostile and violent act to perform upon a person on a bike.

It was Bryant's "bumping" of Sheppard that was the started started the chain reaction. And if you should ever do it to me on the street then I'll be freaking real bad on your hood, too.

What is offensive in this case is not that the cyclist freaked, but that murder charges were not laid against Bryant. Now he's going to try to claim "self defense" even though Bryant was the one to "throw the first punch."

But then in the past five years of watching Canadian crashes and collisions, murder charges have only even been laid against a driver who killed another _once_, and only because there was clear video/audio evidence that the driver acted with more WAAAY more than negligence; in the video the intent was quite clear. Our laws, and our entire legal system, refuses to see car and truck as weapons, and yet they are used against people that way on a daily basis. When caught, mere provincial driving offences (like Ontario Highway Traffic Act or provincial equivalents) are all that the driver ever faces. For killing a person with ones car, often the worst that one would face is two years of house arrest, and for a first offence a mere year is still quite common.

The lives of my loved ones are worth much more than a year or two of house arrest of the killer.

And if the victim is not in a car, the life seems to worth less. Killing a person with your car door in Ontario is only $110. That's also the same fine for not having a bell on your bike. There's no justice or fairness to these laws, or the way that they are applied.

Our laws, and the way that we apply them are flawed, and pedestrians and cyclists get the short end of the stick in the law.

Walking and cycling are good for our streets, good for our cities, good for our public spaces, good for the enviroment, good for our health. But cars sem to have more that the weight of themselves behind them, they also have the weight of the law, the law makers, and enforcement behind them. This is something well documented in "Murder Most Foul" by J.S. Dean (get a copy at http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/wiki/Murder_Most_Foul ) where he identifies systemic victim blaming in crashes and collisions. And Don't use that awful word "accident."

There's an excellent volunteer run archive of Canadian Crashes and collision, where you can often follow cases to sentencing. It's a sad place to visit, becaue the victims and their families rarely see any justice. http://www.educationforthedrivingmasses.com/

I noticed that you have gleaned some but not all of the facts in this story. I felt the need to comment here because it seems that Toronto's mainstream press has their head in the political sand when reporting this incident.

The actual security cam footage before it was redacted by Bryant's spin team is available here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEseWDK87RI.

In it you can clearly see Bryant's car ramming Sheppard, causing the cyclist to land on the hood of the car. Bryant then turns the corner while Sheppard is still on the hood.

Sheppard falls off the car and tries to confront Bryant. Then he grabs the driver's side of the fleeing car. The footage is poor quality making it hard to discern what exactly Sheppard is hanging onto. Could be the steering wheel. It would explain a lot.

Bryant's passenger, his wife, left the scene immediately after they pulled into a hotel parking lot thus preventing her from being interviewed at the scene.

Sheppard could have taken the license plate number and reported it instead of confronting the hit and run driver, the minimum of which Bryant is guilty.

I am not sure that Sheppard's judgment and actions would have been different had he not been drinking. Look at the initial moments of the footage. How would you have reacted??

1) It took that story to get you to think about this? Really?

2) The story here is way more about the confrontation than the accident that incited it. We don't know much about what happened, but it's safe to assume that no one was hurt and damage was minimal--the kind of thing that happens every day in mixed traffic. This could just as easily been between a pedestrian and a driver or two pedestrians or a pedestrian and a cyclist or a horse rider and a clown on stilts.

3) "Is there a difference in your mind between operating a bike and a car?" This is a real question? Like, for adults?

My bike and I weigh together about 200 pounds, most of that being malleable flesh. And that 200 pounds isn't going much faster than 15 mph in the city.

The average car, empty, weighs about 3000 pounds, all hard surfaces and traveling much faster than a bike, usually.

So, what do you think, sir?

This is a question that I think more people in Indiana need to be thinking about. (I single out Indiana because I live here.) We have no good source of public transportation: no subway, no monorail, and the bus system offers few routes, most of them at long intervals. If you want to drink in public you either walk to and from your bar, drive it, or bike it. Taxis are expensive here--and unlike some place like NYC you do not have the luxury of just flagging one down. You have to call for it and then wait for it.

I think everyone would be better off thinking twice about being in public when drunk. Driving, biking or walking all contain risks to the intoxicated. However as one descends from motorist to cyclist to pedestrian you become more and more the sole potential victim of the danger you risk. As a drunk motorist you can kill yourself and others. As a drunk cyclist you can get killed far more easily than you can kill. Ditto for walking, the main difference between cycling and walking in this regard is that as a cyclist you're far more likely to be in the road or crossing intersections without paying good enough attention.

And each of these contains the threat of citation. As a cyclist or pedestrian you are subject to public intox restrictions. As a motorist you have the added DUI restriction.

The simple answer to your question is that, yes, there is a difference between biking and driving and that difference is the crucial one of being responsible for harm to others, which is a far greater threat driving than cycling.

The more nuanced answer takes into account a few things. 1) That you can't run over or be run over if you don't drive. You can't harm or be harmed by cars (generally) if you don't leave the house. That intoxication makes for poorer decision making. But all these things are on a spectrum and we have to, as a society, make the decision on where exactly we decide to compromise our desire for liberty of action and security.

The even more nuanced response would be to recommend substantial innovation in how we consider street use. If there was less single-use zoning and if roads were narrower with more bike paths, both drivers and cyclists would be safer. Mix-used zoning would mean less "bar zones" and more corner pubs (within walking distance). Narrower roads with more mixed use (people crossing irregularly and bike paths) would mean drivers would habituate to slower (i.e. "less fatal) speeds.

Neither of these recommendations would have solved the road rage incident described in the post, but it would prevent the more usual kind of motorist/cyclist accident.

What's interesting here is that most people have taken their information from print sources and news reports but have ignored the security camera footage that recorded the incident from multiple angles.

While Sheppard would still be alive if Police had detained him earlier that night, Bryant clearly started the altercation by yelling at a cyclist who acted within the law, and took the right-of-way at a stoplight. He then replied in a manner that incited Bryant to ram him with his SAAB convertible and then try to flee the scene. When Bryant attempted to escape, Sheppard tried to keep him at the scene by jumping on the windshield. Then, instead of braking, Bryant accelerated. At this point, I don't know how Sheppard could have let go of the car without falling under the wheels. Bryant then crossed into the oncoming lane of traffic, to the curb, mounted it, and proceeded to crush Sheppard against several poles, a fire hydrant, and then a mailbox, wherein he fell off and and under the rear wheels of Bryant's vehicle.

This altercation started out as commonplace, and was escalated to aggravated assault by Bryant.

See for yourself in the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufM7zvX3-tM

Regards, and thank you for taking interest in a subject that needs as many eyes on it as possible to keep justice on the right side of the law.

As someone that commented earlier about not having all the facts, I must correct my earlier post. I stated that Bryant had turned the corner with Sheppard on his hood and that is not what happened.

I had seen the initial CTV news that was broadcast while Bryant was still in the police car and before the police interviewed witnesses and drew that conclusion.

BTW I live in downtown Toronto and I am neither a driver nor a cyclist by choice. But I do drink beer.

It seems that your choice of this particular extremely controversial incident may derail your original intention to ignite thought and discussion about drinking and cycling vs. driving.

But then again I have discovered your beer blog because of it. Cheers.