I think having the right legal framework helps a lot to get a good bicycle culture.
Here in Belgium, when a car hits a bicyclist, the car driver's insurance will always pay for bodily damage of the bicyclist, even if the bicyclist is at fault.
Most streets where I live (in the center of Antwerp) are one-way for cars, but two-way for bicycles. And cars are limited to 30 km/h.
My wife goes to work on her bicycle and gets paid for it (per km) by her employer, enough to buy a new bike every year.
At busy crossings with stop lights, bicycles get a designated space in front of the cars. That way when the light turns green the bicyclists can get going first, safely turn etc.
I just saw 2 policemen on bicycles pass in front of my window...
Measures like these help make bicycling something accepted by society, not something only crazy lycra-clad hipsters do.
Do cyclists in Netherlands skip traffic lights and act like they have a chip on their shoulder?
Well American ones do.
If cyclists are going to share the road, they would see fit have their bicycles registered, pay yearly fees and purchase insurance - both for themselves and the ones they cause harm to [1] - just like motorists do.
Anything else is just favoritism. Won't stand in a court of law, here.
The next time a cyclist injures someone - fatally or not - I can see the auto lobby getting behind efforts to requiring cyclists treated as motorists. I will gladly chip in for that.
I'm loath to get into this discussion, but i'm actually very much in the Dutch camp on this one. Here in France cars and bicycles are considered 'equals' as far as road rules go, and it's a nightmare. 1000kg of death metal (no reference to the band) versus about 15kg and an exposed human are no match. I've learned to cycle really defensively here, since motorists just don't treat you with the proper respect. Mind, by 'proper respect' i don't mean that cyclists should be treated like holy cows, but simply that people should all be conscious of the hierarchy of vulnerability. If a cyclist crashes into a pedestrian (even if the pedestrian did stray into the bicycle path) i find it reasonable that the cyclist, being the heavier faster object, should pay more attention. Likewise for the car. It's a disgrace that cyclists end up having to pay for car repairs when in many cases there would've been no accident if the car had been driving respectfully [0] — even if the infrastructure (that is, in France a "bicycle path" is simply an already narrow 50km/h car lane with a bicycle icon painted on post facto) doesn't encourage it.
0. This happened to me. It taught me to drive extremely defensively. You will not believe the number of times i have had (for example) a green traffic light, and have had to stop for oncoming traffic turning left in front of me. I have right of way, but 1000kg of steel trumps right of way Every Time. If i sound a little ranty, it's because i'm rather bitter about the state of affairs here.
The solution to this is fixing local legislation. As a car driver your risk is asymmetric: you will have a few scratches/dents on your car and the other side ends up in hospital (or worse). So, it's important to bias traffic rules to protecting more vulnerable participants like cyclists or pedestrians.
Here are some examples of things that work in various countries:
The Netherlands fixed this ages ago. You hit a cyclist with a car, it's your fault regardless of the circumstances for the insurers. The net result is a country where drivers are very mindful of cyclists and check their right side mirrors before turning right and their left side mirror before 'dooring' a passing cyclist. Failing to do that is expensive and there are so many cyclists that it is in any case a good idea. Besides, nobody wants it on their conscience to have people hospitalized because of inattention, sloppiness, or incompetence.
France at some point introduced a simple traffic rule that states that when over taking cyclists you need to give them a lot of space. So, now you see cars slowing down and overtaking cyclists properly on two lane country roads: i.e. waiting for the left lane to clear and then using that and giving the cyclist at least a meter or so of clearance. It's kind of funny to see that in action but it works. Failing to do that has hefty fines associated with it if you get caught. So drivers actually do this. France has a lot of cyclists on country roads training and getting taken over by cars doing 90 km/hour is not risk free unless they keep their distance. So, a completely sane rule. Any accidents tend to be very nasty. And again, nobody wants that on their conscience anyway.
London introduced fees for entering the downtown area. Unless you have to be there, you'll want to avoid that because it's expensive. It also has cameras all over the place so if you mess up, it will be on camera. That was mainly done for pollution and security reasons but it also made it a safer place to bike around.
Most people in the Netherlands and in France have themselves been on a bicycle within car traffic, I feel that's more likely the reason why they are careful when they overtake a bicycle, rather than the fines.
As a cyclist both for sport and commuting, I have to say shared paths with pedestrians are often more dangerous than riding on roads with moderate traffic. Pedestrians are usually completely unaware of their surroundings and just suddenly walk left/right without looking. And an accident with a pedestrian, while typically not as serious as an accident with a car still can result in serious injuries.
The countries that got cycling infrastructure right are the Dutch and Danish. Also Germany and Sweden are improving a lot with their infrastructure.
However, we also need to change attitudes and enforcement of rules toward cyclists. The problem is that often police and judges also only drive cars and walk, which leads to cases where cyclists are hit hard for infarctions, but drivers or pedestrians get a slap on the wrist even if their actions result in serious injury.
I think part of the problem in the USA and Canada is that our road laws are exceedingly motorist-centric. Things that don’t seem to make sense, like drivers getting a slap on the wrist for killing cyclists, do make sense if you consider that the laws don’t expressly promote and prioritize the safety of cyclist on all road ways.
This is victim blaming. Plenty of cyclists follow the rules and then get slammed by cars.
The last year before I moved to Germany, I got hit by cars twice, and neither time was I at fault. Once I got t-boned by someone who didn't look before turning, the other time someone suddenly went across the bike lane to pull into a parking lot. Neither crash was serious, but the first rattled me quite a bit -- my son was on my bike with me and got a scratch (and the bike rear wheel was totaled).
For that first crash, the more serious one, a cop showed up and wrote a report, but didn't even give the guy a ticket. In the US, driving a car makes you the privileged class, and you can get away with a lot.
As a cyclist, I constantly break the law, and I’m aware that I do so.
The thing is, most traffic laws are designed to keep drivers safe. They’re also designed for cars. Bicycles aren’t cars, and car drivers tend to be impatient and don’t pay attention, so we have to adjust—-which sometimes means, for example, running the red light a couple of seconds before it turns green. Or turning left on a red light, since I’m not crossing any lanes. Or treating a stop sign as a “slow” sign.
(This is a left-side driving country.)
All of that is necessary to keep my life expectancy up. As for the pedestrians, well, unlike a car I’m perfectly capable of spotting their existence. Nor is a slow-moving bike particularly dangerous.
Here in Belgium, when a car hits a bicyclist, the car driver's insurance will always pay for bodily damage of the bicyclist, even if the bicyclist is at fault.
Sorry, but doesn't anyone have an issue with this? Why is there an expectation that cyclists cannot possibly be held responsible for their actions?
By this logic, if my mini hits a bus, I shouldn't be responsible, even if I ran a red light.
I tend to agree with most of the other points, but this one is ridiculous.
Yeah. In Europe, cars treat bikes like vehicles, and bikes treat cars like vehicles.
In America, bikers simply do not follow the laws they are supposed to - and neither do cars. It's not really a "bike is victim" paradigm - it's more like nobody pays any attention to the god damn laws, at all. Because the fucking cops don't enforce the rules!
They give tickets to speeders and red light runners but NOT - NEVER, in fact, to people who don't signal when turning or changing lanes, people who drive too slowly in the fast lane, people who pass on the right, people who stop in the middle of the street to wait for a parking spot, people who do not use turn lanes appropriately, people who stop at yellow lights, people who drive too slowly, people who do not yield to pedestrians, people who block driveways, people who turn left or U-turn illegally, people who ... the list goes on for miles.
Bicycle riders make all these same mistakes as well.
Japan solved the problem of sharing crowded streets by putting liability on the vehicle every time.
If you are riding a bicycle on the footpath and hit a pedestrian, it is your fault and you are going to be on the hook for a large amount of money. It's the same if cars hit a cyclist or pedestrian.
It's arbitrary but it also makes it safe to cycle because cars are vigilant to not hit pedestrians (contrast with western countries, my experience is in NZ where car drivers bully cyclists)
I've been driving for 23 years in about as many countries with not a single traffic accident (though I'll admit to a couple speeding tickets). I've driven in weather, climates and conditions as varied as polar winter conditions to mountains and desert.
I have something over a million road miles under my belt which puts me at near 20,000 hours of on the road driving experience in mixes of cities to extreme rural environments. I feel comfortable saying I'm a driving expert and that I'm a very safe driver.
I've never felt safe sharing pavement with a cyclist. Ever. Not for my own personal safety, or because of some dubious legal requirement, but for the safety of the cyclist. If you think that makes me sound like some kind of wild west psychopathic car driver hellbent on a Death Race high score spree I suggest you rethink that.
The law also puts requirements on bike riders when using public roads. It's not an unburdened responsibility. However, bicyclists would like to make it a responsibility of car drivers only (as the comments in this thread pretty clearly indicate), and have an unlimited right to use infrastructure that wasn't designed or built with them in mind. However, enforcement of those laws on bicyclists is virtually nonexistent.
The reason I feel unsafe around cyclists is that not only am I operating a complex, multi-thousand pound machine that can take me to triple digit speeds in under a minute, but because cyclists don't seem to be aware that I'm doing involved in that operation. They'll routinely swerve out into traffic, cut across busy intersections and otherwise behave like all the world revolves around them.
Not all cyclists are like this. But I'm hard pressed to find many that observe even some fraction of the laws they're supposed to follow.
I'm a driver. In the past, I've been a cyclist. At other times, a pedestrian. I mean to say, I'm not saying this from the perspective of a guy who drives and has never cycled and can't empathize with people who live a different way. If my current living situation allowed me to resume cycling, I'd be happy to! But-
As a driver, in NYC, bikes on the roads are incredibly dangerous to everyone involved (though, admittedly, mostly the bikers). You can't drive in the city for a day without seeing bikers regularly violating the rules of the road: wrong ways up one-way streets, jumping onto sidewalks, etc. Generally, just acting like cars when they want to, like bikes when they want to, like pedestrians when they want to.
That's not why I'm against sharing the road with them! That's why I'm in favor of heavily enforcing existing laws on bike usage, with a merciless iron fist until people who ride bikes act like they understand that they're meatbags riding around in a pinball machine of 1-ton iron rockets.
I'm not even against sharing a road with them because enough of them exemplify the above that all of them, as a result, are unpredictable, and unpredictability is the most dangerous thing on the road. I kind of imagine the enforcing, iron fist, etc. will take care of that eventually, too, if we actually do it.
I'm against it because they're vulnerable little meatbags. A slight hiccough on the road between two iron rockets means someone's paying out an insurance premium and getting some fender repairs. The same accident with a bicyclist ends in a trip to the hospital, if not a funeral home. One person's dead, and the other is carrying the moral (and possibly legal) weight of a murder, because someone thought it was a good idea to play tag in a busy factory. My opinion may not hold across all locales: certainly I've been in cities that had far less busy roads, with far fewer and smaller cars (Europe), where this same statement does not ring true. But in NY it does!
I'm sorry. If the cost of removing that ridiculous situation of danger is a short-term lack of bicycle commuting while we build responsible infrastructure, I'm OK with that. But for what it's worth, I'm also OK with kicking in my tax dollars to build that infrastructure.
I'm not anti-bike, just anti-this ridiculously unsafe road interaction.
I too, as a regular cyclist, would like to see more cyclists fined when they run red lights, cycle on footpaths, cycle in the wrong direction etc., but enforcement is also lacking for motorists who run red lights, speed, or drive while on the phone. A critical difference is that motorists ignoring traffic law put others at risk, whereas cyclists usually only endanger themselves, if at all.
I don't see how licensing, registering, mandatory insurance etc. will change anything, but make cycling less popular.
Per my understanding, road infrastructure is typically paid from general taxes (obviously depending on country). As cyclists require less road space, cause less road wear and have practically no environmental burden compared to motorists it's probably the case that we pay a disproportionately high percentage of infrastcuture costs.
I'm pleased you live in a country that is safe for cyclists with respectful drivers. I don't feel it is that way in the UK ;) - most people aren't terrible, but most don't consider cyclists to have the same rights to the road
Interesting, I didn't know that. What's the legal status of a cyclist on the road then? Are they normal participants in traffic?
I generally find the tone of the discussion about cyclists here surprising. I'm from Germany, and while there is animosity between cyclists and car drivers, both are equally accepted on all roads (except the autobahn, of course). There's a movement in big cities towards more and more specific lanes for cyclists. I don't own a bicycle myself, but with regards to a car's emissions and the omnipresent wasteful parking slots, I'm all for strengthening the status of cyclists on roads.
The reason why I am opposed to such laws, as a cyclist, is the intent is to harass cyclists. My area has a law that forbids vehicles from passing within one meter of cyclists. The police won't do anything if a motorist actually strikes a cyclist unless there is injury. Yet motorists want the same standard actually applied to cyclist. Notice the asymmetry?
(Incidentally, I do ensure there is clearance when I pass and I avoid passing on the right. But that has more to do with being predictable and valuing my life than the law.)
In my experience, most people don't have a great understanding of what keeps cyclists safe in mixed traffic (i.e. not within a protected lane), and how opposed those things often are to the law. As a former professional urban cyclist, I constantly broke the law to keep myself safe, while keeping my first priority never to endanger pedestrians or other cyclists. A kind of Three Laws where the unarmored travelers come first, then myself, then the folks in big steel boxes.
Cyclists need a different set of laws on the road for everyone's benefit. But people have become so inured to the constant threat and frequent (and often fatal) harm of motor vehicles, that they fixate on and exaggerate the threat of cyclists, and illogically insist that they need to follow the same rules of the road as cars.
Cyclists should follow rules of the road -- special rules created for a special vehicle.
Here in Belgium, when a car hits a bicyclist, the car driver's insurance will always pay for bodily damage of the bicyclist, even if the bicyclist is at fault.
Most streets where I live (in the center of Antwerp) are one-way for cars, but two-way for bicycles. And cars are limited to 30 km/h.
My wife goes to work on her bicycle and gets paid for it (per km) by her employer, enough to buy a new bike every year.
At busy crossings with stop lights, bicycles get a designated space in front of the cars. That way when the light turns green the bicyclists can get going first, safely turn etc.
I just saw 2 policemen on bicycles pass in front of my window...
Measures like these help make bicycling something accepted by society, not something only crazy lycra-clad hipsters do.
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