Letter to road riders (from Matt Berry)

A letter from Matt Berry - that all roadies should read and pass along to fellow roadies;



Hi Andrew, Matt Berry here, as you know we operate the school and transit buses in the area. Today we had radio calls from two of our school bus operators that are travelling out to Naramata from Pen Hi at approximately 3:40-3:50pm. They said that this is the 2nd Thursday afternoon in a row where there has been a large group of cyclists that are heading out to Naramata (actually 2 separate groups of around 20 plus cyclists) that are riding.

The drivers are saying that in several cases they are riding 3 abreast in some cases even on corners and not moving over for vehicles. Twice today we had groups of cyclists riding through the flashing red lights of the bus that were dispensing children. One of these times, kids were about to unload and a bunch went through on the right hand side of the bus, which is extremely dangerous.

The other group kids were already crossing and they weaved their way through the kids. We did end up contacting the RCMP and they came out but I believe this group was gone, some of them went to the Red Rooster winery and I’m not sure where they went from here.

I am not trying to get anyone in trouble, but if there is a way to track down who this group is and then we can try and get the message out to them to about safe riding practices, hopefully this will prevent an accident in the future.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you may be able to provide. If you have any questions please give me a call.

Matt Berry

President
Berry and Smith Trucking Ltd
Ph: 250 492 4042

There's an education problem in this country. Do they do cycling education at Schools?