jambot wrote:Slartibartfast wrote:jambot wrote:Slartibartfast wrote:More legal protection is a must. About 100 cyclists die on the road each year thanks to poor driving from vehicles... If you choose to drive a ton of steel around badly and kill someone, you shouldn't just be ticked off and banned from driving.
There's already legal protection - drivers have been jailed for killing cyclists when show to be negligent.
What there most certainly needs to be is some sense of responsibility and actual legal obligations amongst cyclists - they are currently the only road users who have passed no test of competency, have no licence, no vehicle testing, taxing or identification, and no insurance.
Charged with dangerous driving most of the time, which is a joke.
Licence : proves nothing, every car driver has one and they still drive shockingly bad
Vehicle testing : it's a bike, there's not much to test. There's a legal requirement for lights at night and I urge the police to do something about those who don't
Taxing : don't be an idiot, roads are paid for from council tax and vehicle excise duty is based on carbon emissions, under which cyclists would pay nought
Identification : yeah... For all those times cyclists run from the police at 100mph and set off speed cameras :-\
Insurance : why should they? Car drivers only have it due to statutory requirements, not out of the goodness of their hearts. There's a duty of care placed on all road users but not all have to insure as well. Pedestrians, for example, don't have insurance either.
Ultimately, cars are the far more dangerous machine which is why they have higher expectations placed upon them. Cyclists physically can't cause a fraction of the damage a car driver could to others' life or limb.
Licence: Taking a test proves that you are capable - it establishes a minimum level of competence. Cyclists face no such hurdle. Any banana split with feet can clamber on to a Boris bike and wobble into the road in front of an HGV vehicle, endangering themselves and everyone near them. Subsequent lack of enforcement, although clearly a problem, is unrelated to the licence
Vehicle testing: everything on the road should be roadworthy. Arguing to the contrary is moronic.
Taxing: based on carbon emissions is fatuous; road tax should be used to provide service and maintenance - which as a cyclist of many years I can say with some authority makes more difference to me as a cyclist than as a driver; I can see no possible logical objection to cyclists paying something, even if only notional - ou use a service, you should contribute to its upkeep
Identification: for all those times cyclists jump red lights (where there are cameras) or ride on the pavement or ride recklessly
Insurance: "Car drivers only have it due to statutory requirements"
I'm not suggesting cyclists do it "out of the goodness of their hearts" either. I'm suggesting that as road users they can both cause accidents and be liable for damage. The reason for statutory road insurance is so that we reduce the situations in which the victims are left out of pocket because a road user is unable to meet the liability they incur. The reality is that if a cyclist causes an accident, they can be sued for personal damages now. That that doesn't happen often is partly to do with how inconvenient it is to do that (compared to exchanging insurance details) and partly to do with the different standard applied to establishing liability for personal damages. It doesn't change the reality that cyclists can have liability. Pedestrians aren't road users. Although if I cripple you as a pedestrian-on-pedestrian, I could still be sued for damages.
Your argument is classic partisanship. Poor driving is punishable under the law currently. I agree that it is inadequately policed, but this doesn't mean more legislation. Conversely, cyclists need to recognise that just because they are vulnerable doesn't mean they are without blame - and here I think more legislation would be appropriate.
I appreciate I'm bumping this so I apologise to those who are tired of it (I am too, don't worry).
The license and identification ideas have been highlighted numerous times as something that would destroy the participation of young people in cycling and would stop a very large number of adults taking part. It is a ploy used by car drivers whining 'we have to so why don't they' to force cyclists off the road. Justifying it by other means is tiresome, just say you don't want cyclists on the road.
Cyclists shouldn't jump red lights, and when they do they take their own life into their hands - I would never do it - but when they do do it, I'm not sure they actually cause any inconvenience to other road users (unless a driver splatters them because they weren't using their 'licensed' training of looking at a green light). Again, doesn't make it right to jump red lights, but I suspect those who do it wouldn't participate in a licencing or identification scheme until it was forcibly enacted, when they'd just stop cycling.
I'm no lawyer so the whole 'causing an accident' thing is a bit beyond me. I thought insurance was for damage caused - since presumably all road users have a part to play in preventing accidents. I don't know, PM me the difference as I don't see it. If, for example, a car swerves into the road causing another car to crash into a shop, which insurance company pays out? I still would have thought the actual crashing car would despite it not being directly their 'fault' (although of course they could have driven slower, pay more attention etc.) Anyway, like I say I'm not 100% on how the law works in this respect - if it's how I suspect they bikes rarely cause damage to anything other than themselves and attributing blame sounds like a marvellous method of money for lawyers. (There was an interesting one I read about recently when a car driver opened his door without looking and splattered a cyclist - he tried to sue the cyclist for damage to his car but as opening a car door in the way of another road user is a MUST NOT - ie. illegal - in the highway code he essentially admitted guilt and got charged for that instead.)
Errr, where are we. Ah yeah taxing. I pay council tax, I therefore pay as much to the road upkeep as you do since it is the council that pays for all - ALL - none trunk roads. VED goes into the general pot of all taxation from which the Highway Agency funding comes from - but cyclists don;t use Highway Agency roads as they are the motorways and large trunk A roads. Also from the time I did as a traffic engineer, cyclists cause nil damage to roads, car do most due to volume and lorries the most individually.
Bleh, righty oh. I do agree there's a considerable amount of poor cycling around, but car drivers as the more dangerous contraption shouldn't feel victimised by having the greater onus placed on them - they are the ones who kill people in accidents so it's only logical. But he ideas you put forward would cause a collapse in cycling numbers meaning more fatter people and more pollution and more congestion, which we don't want. The answer as someone else has already said is more education and we certainly need better road design so we can co-exist more serenely .