Toronto artist creates Loser Lane an unwinnable video game to protest bike lane removal

How long can you survive cycling through Toronto’s busy streets with no bike lanes? Artist Marie LeBlanc Flanagan has created a quirky, arcade-style game that challenges players to find out.

The game, called Loser Lane, is simple but tough. Impossibly tough, actually. And that’s the whole idea. All you need to do is press left or right to dodge traffic as your cyclist avatar speeds through Toronto. But there’s a catch: cars, open car doors, and streetcar tracks are out to get you. And you cannot win.

LeBlanc Flanagan, an avid cyclist, was inspired by frustration after Premier Doug Ford announced plans to remove some bike lanes in Toronto.

“A decade ago, I started calling the space between parked and moving cars in Toronto the ‘Loser Lane.’ It’s a dangerous game—dodging doors, weaving between traffic, and avoiding pedestrians while navigating streetcar tracks,” she says. “When I read the news about the removal of the bike lanes in Toronto, I felt afraid. I felt afraid for my loved ones who are going to get hit, inevitably, if the bike lanes that protect them are taken away. Then I read that the government added an amendment preventing cyclists from suing if they get injured or die because of the removed bike lanes. They know what they are doing.”

The game isn’t easy — players typically get hit and “die” within seconds. When they do, the words “Thanks Doug” flash on the screen.

“It’s meant to be tough,” said LeBlanc Flanagan. “There’s no way to win. Something’s always gonna get you, just like in real life.”

The longest anyone’s survived? About 90 seconds, she said.

“I made this game to evoke a specific feeling: the terrifying reality of biking without a bike lane,” she explains. “What I like about games is that they can share a very specific feeling, or idea, or experience. Any art medium can do that, but with games you bring the game to life by playing it, so you really get ‘inside’ the thing itself.”

A screenshot of Loser Lane video game

LeBlanc Flanagan is a game designer known for creating experimental games that explore the connections—and disconnections—between people.

Biking has been a part of her life since childhood. As a young girl, she says she rode in a milk crate on her dad’s bike, with leg holes cut out to fit her in. As she grew older, she got her own bike, decorated with beads in the spokes. For her, cycling is more than just a mode of transportation; it’s something she still loves, often using errands as an excuse to get out and ride.

“I’ll ride as long as my body allows me,” she says. “It feels truly magical to glide through air. I’m infinitely grateful to my parents for teaching me to ride a bike, and teaching me to love to ride.”

LeBlanc Flanagan’s first experience biking in a big city was in Toronto in the ’90s, when her cousin invited her on what she thought was a simple ride—only to discover it was Critical Mass, and they rode through a mall. Over the years, she’s biked in cities like Edmonton, New York, San Francisco, and Berlin, experiencing everything from close calls with distracted drivers to the constant dangers of road rage and “getting doored.”

Like a lot of artists, she says she turns bad feelings into art, which is what she did with Loser Lane.

“I want people to know what it feels like to be in the loser lane, to wait for the inevitability of an accident,” she says. “Of course, the game can’t show what it actually feels like, to flinch at every opening door a decade after being doored. I don’t think anyone would play it if it did.”

Since releasing the game, LeBlanc Flanaga says she has heard a lot of horror stories from cyclists.

My hope is that people will talk to each other, and will fight back together. Together, people can fight for the things that matter to them and together people can win.

As in the game, LeBlanc Flanagan’s own experience biking in Toronto hasn’t been easy either. Just recently, she says, she was physically assaulted by an angry driver in Montreal, who, in the heat of a road rage argument about the “1-metre of space” law, mistakenly thought she was married to another cyclist. In retaliation, the driver shoved her off her bike into moving traffic as she tried to get away.

“The irony isn’t lost on me,” she says. “It was a street without bike lanes.”