Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart is calling out pedestrians who don’t pay attention to their surroundings after he experienced a close encounter on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Stewart took to Facebook to describe the encounter and offer up his thoughts on the incident.
“I want to apologize to the woman I almost hit with my bike yesterday morning; I lost some sleep last night over it,” he begins.
Stewart then writes that he was riding his bike when he narrowly avoided hitting a female pedestrian.
“I know I had the right-of-way, and I know you were texting while jaywalking, and I realize you obviously didn’t look up from your phone to check for oncoming vehicles before stepping out from where you were hidden between parked cars, right into traffic,” he wrote.
“I realize the marked crosswalk was about 10m away, and therefore inconvenient for you as, judging by the briskness of your step, you were apparently in quite a hurry.”
Stewart said he realizes the woman wouldn’t necessarily have heard him approach, “as bikes are typically as silent as, say, an electric car; thank goodness it was a bike, as a car would have killed you. ”
While the woman may not have heard him approach, Stewart said he heard her response.
“I clearly heard your angry retort to the effect that I should watch where I’m going. And I clearly heard the adjective starting with ‘F’ (I assume you meant it as an adjective, though it’s actually a verb), and the noun you employed to imply that my parents weren’t married,” he continues.
“My deep apologies for almost striking a careless, preoccupied, selfish, rude jaywalker, potentially injuring or killing one or both of us.”
He ends his post with a plea: “Please, if you are going to jaywalk into traffic, at least look up from your phone.”
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