A sarcastic Facebook apology from the mayor of Coquitlam aimed at a distracted pedestrian he almost struck while riding his bicycle is making the rounds on social media.

“My deep apologies for almost striking a careless, preoccupied, selfish, rude jaywalker, potentially injuring or killing one or both of us,” Richard Stewart wrote in the post on Tuesday. “I realize the marked crosswalk was about 10 (metres) away, and therefore inconvenient for you as, judging by the briskness of your step, you were apparently in quite a hurry.”

The mayor said he was riding in the bike lane when a woman stepped out in front of him, swore and kept walking.

“I was thankful at that moment that I had managed to stop in time to not hit her, recognizing that she had done everything wrong,” he told CTVNews on Thursday.

Stewart said the snarky Facebook post was in fact intended to shed light on a serious issue.

“We want our streets to be safer, and yet, our behaviours as individuals quite often put ourselves and others at risk,” he said. “Sometimes you have to make the message a little bit hard.”

“The message is that we really want…all the users of the road to be fully aware of where they are and where everyone else is when they’re using the road.”

Hundreds of users commented and shared the post, most of them taking the mayor’s side. The post has also been shared more than 2,000 times.

Stewart also poked fun at the foul language the pedestrian allegedly hurled at him as he rode by.

“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 wrote.

Bylaws do give pedestrians the right of way over cyclists, but also require pedestrians to cross streets at marked crosswalks.

The fine for jaywalking is up to $109. The fine for distracted driving is currently $543, but there is no similar regulation for non-motorists.

While he doesn’t think a new bylaw would necessarily solve the problem of distracted road users, Stewart said the onus should be on everyone to keep roads safe.

“You should have some of the same duties and responsibilities as a motorist because you can accidents,” he said. “You can cause serious mishaps that can hurt other people.”

With files from CTV Vancouver’s David Molko