Torontonians are usually willing to extend great courtesies when it comes to sharing food, culture, customs and neighbourhoods. Our one big exception is the road.

Bear in mind, this is coming from someone nearly clipped by a speedy car on the way back to the office last week, someone who suffered road rash, and a little road rage, as the car drove away without stopping.

“This is how the carless are treated,” I thought from a mud puddle on Portland Ave. The speed, space and carelessness that resulted in my embrace of concrete seemed a culmination of things wrong with the system.

To be a commuter in Toronto is to face down the worst of our collective transportation woes. The road you travel is the pact you make every day to live here.

But the major difference between our modes of transport is that, unfortunately, cars contribute to most of the serious injury and killing; cyclists and pedestrians pay for negligent traffic and urban planning with flesh and lives.

As Toronto is attempting to position itself as a progressive, global city, in part by encouraging people to leave their automobiles at home, the fact remains: it’s wild out here.

Earlier this month, a particularly alarming spate of accidents among cars, pedestrians and cyclists highlighted this point. There were 18 reported collisions and one death in less than 24 hours.

Afterwards, Mayor John Tory also called our 10-year record high in traffic deaths “profoundly unacceptable.” It’s been reported elsewhere that commuting cyclists and pedestrians in Toronto are twice as likely as Montrealers and three times more likely than Vancouverites to be hit by a vehicle.

Last year, 348 people were killed or seriously injured on our roads; 43 of them were pedestrians or cyclists.

The total 2016 death-and-injury count wasn’t available from police on Friday, but as of July 14, one cyclist and 23 pedestrians have died, and 879 pedestrian collisions have been reported.

(Note: Police will only designate as a “collision” an incident involving a vehicle, since the Ontario Ministry of Transportation changed the definition in June 2013.)

Plenty of other studies also show us how and why cars kill.

But I’m not a hater. The day before the accident, I drove a nondescript grey 2011 Ford Fusion 201 km down the 401, 427, 407, 404 and Gardiner Expressway to various GTA places on assignment; most of the route was new to me.

Witness to what we build, how we move, and why we all hate driving here, I finally could relate to something fundamental about this city. Breaking out by car felt like renewing a pact with urbanization. Mobility is the greatest urban issue of our time.

My usual commute involves 16 km of biking, five days a week.

For the past 15 months, I have had the fortune of living and working along what you could consider the Gardiner Expressway of bike infrastructure: the Waterfront and Martin Goodman Trails.

This path connects cars, the TTC, cyclists, pedestrians, boating enthusiasts and an airport in close proximity. It is an interesting study of scale, design and pace. I also think it’s especially curious how the micro-aggressions on the bike trail mimic those found on major motorist thoroughfares.

Speeding, road hogs, anyone with earphones, meandering leisure-users, distracted persons, those who don’t look both ways, signal or use lights, virtual-reality enthusiasts, swarms of participants in a group ... the inconsiderations in our shared spaces are plentiful no matter how you roll. They manifest in all of us.

The truth is, rampant bad behaviour exists on all sides of this debate.

There must be a better way to move. As a Star colleague recently wrote, cities that aggressively embrace (not kill) cyclists by implementing smart, road-sharing design make all road users safer.

Can Toronto do it?

For all our sakes, I hope so, because we can’t legislate common sense. But we need an attitudinal change first. The road-king mentality must concede.

As we troubleshoot our way through collective transit considerations over the next months and decades, my only humble suggestion is to cultivate more courtesy in individual practice, and hope it will encourage a similar response in kind.

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And if you happen to send someone into a puddle, stop and ask if they’re all right. Another motorist did; so did a cyclist and a passerby.

Getting back on my bike, I felt lucky to live here.

Toronto’s a great city. There are lots of things to appreciate about it — especially each other — so let’s not let road rage get the better of us.