On Tuesday, January 24, 2006, a driver stuck in traffic in the heart of Kensington Market tossed his half-eaten lunch—a Jamaican meat patty—out the window of his silver four-door sedan. Leah Hollinsworth, a 26-year-old bike courier and a nearby resident, was walking her bicycle along the sidewalk and saw him do it. She picked up the patty, opened his car door and threw the food back in. The driver, who was never identified, stepped out of his car and tossed two cups of hot Tim Hortons coffee at Hollinsworth, hitting her square in the back. The two tussled briefly and the motorist drove away but returned a few minutes later, attacking both her and her bike before bystanders finally separated them. The driver eventually left the scene for good, but the confrontation didn’t end there. Photographer Adam Krawesky captured the fight on camera and posted 15 snaps on citynoise.org under the heading “Motorist vs. Courier.” The images are still there, and to examine them is to experience the irresistible allure of stereotyping: she must be a vegetarian, a Green Party supporter, an activist; he surely sells stuff for a living, enjoys football and barbecues a lot. Word of Krawesky’s photographs spread rapidly, erupting in an on-line war in which cyclists and motorists circled the wagons, each threatening the other with vigilante retribution.

What happened that day had nothing to do with road rage. The dispute wasn’t traffic related at all; Hollinsworth and the driver hadn’t collided or cut each other off. And yet, they apparently held such seething contempt for each other that they broke one of the last remaining social taboos of our time: they threw food. How did it come to this, that these two groups so willingly and eagerly clash even when their vehicles don’t?

The source of the problem is neither the arrogance of drivers nor the militancy of cyclists, but the environment in which they interact. The urban grid, already congested with cars, is being flooded with cyclists—the number of Torontonians who commute to work by bike went up 25 per cent between 2001 and 2006, to more than 24,000—intensifying competition for road space. Impersonal and anonymous, utterly reliant upon signals and signage, the grid encourages us to see only vehicles and to disregard, disrespect and even dehumanize the people who steer them. The more time we spend on the grid, the more we nurse our grudges, turning city streets into a war zone of flipped birds, hurled epithets and flying patties.

The history of Toronto’s grid is one of ceaseless fussing and tinkering. Our street network dates back to the 1790s, long before the invention of the automobile, but it was nonetheless built for large, lumbering vehicles: horse-drawn carriages. Eventually curbs and sidewalks were added. Then came painted lines designating lanes, crossings and parking. Stop signs and electric traffic signals, both invented in the United States in the mid-1910s, spread like weeds. Traffic lights have since adapted to include flashing lights, advanced greens, delayed greens, turning arrows and lane prioritization, all synchronized across hundreds of city blocks. The signal system for pedestrians was introduced in the ’60s and has since undergone its own evolution, from walk–don’t walk to walking man–raised right hand, later adding the flashing hand and, most recently, the countdown—all the better to urge pedestri­ans to complete their crossing quickly, so that cars can regain exclusive access to the road for those precious three amber seconds.

Each change was made in the name of safety, and when everyone obeys the rules—observing traffic signals and staying within their painted lines—the system works remarkably well. We all reach our destination and no one gets hurt. But there is a great deal riding on our willingness and ability to pay attention to what’s happening around us. And the biggest test of our attentiveness these days is bicycles, the wrench in the traditional grid’s gears.

Bikes, which are slower than cars but much faster than pedestrians, are not easily shoehorned into the grid’s existing patterns. Drivers are not sufficiently alert to the presence and the quickness of cyclists, which is the main reason why the “door prize”—opening a door in the path of a moving bike—accounts for more than 10 per cent of all collisions. In 2006, a total of 1,087 cyclists were involved in collisions with motorists on Toronto streets, and 944 resulted in harm to cyclists. Most of the accidents occurred in strikingly similar circumstances: during summer daylight hours, in dry conditions, at intersections on arterial roads. Though the majority of injuries were minor, 49 caused major injuries and in three cases the cyclist was killed. In all but a few cases, the motorist was unhurt.