This thread is unbelievable. I hardly know where to start.
Why do so many bicycle riders, where there is a dedicated bicycle path off the road (Canberra has an excellent network of bike paths) choose to ride on the road?
Because it's faster and much safer!!!! Try getting out of your rolling cage and make hundreds of transitions from the bike path to cross roads all the time and find out how great bike paths are. Unless there are no intersections to cross (eg alongside a river or railway line / freeway), the road is always safer - just roll with the traffic.
This is why it is illegal in WA to ride on the footpath - it's the main source of accidents both in crossing roads and in bikes vs pedestrians.
If bike riders obeyed the law to the same extent as drivers then registration wouldn't even be on the table. But we've all seen bicycle riders completely ignoring traffic lights and riding lanes, often to their own peril, and quite frequently. It seems to be a matter of gospel that traffic lights only apply to cars for many bike riders (this may be a minority of riders, but it is a large and visible minority).
A minority of pedestrians, drivers and cyclists all disobey the law and make life dangerous for everyone. I don't see people demanding the registration of pedestrians - where does it end?
How do you feel that cyclists benefit from personal insurance that negligent motorists pay, yet injury victims of cyclists have to resort to a long drawn out personal lawsuits to get compensation, assuming there is anything to get out of the cyclist in the first place - unlike with insurance.
Injury victims of other pedestrians are in the same boat. Same as skateboarders, roller skaters, unicyclists, scooter riders, people carrying timber down the road, etc etc. Personally I prefer less regulation and insurances in our daily life, not more.
A person can ride a bicycle on a road without knowing anything of the road rules. Perhaps there should be some regard to learning of some basic road rules and road safety before allowing any young person to be riding on, or even crossing, a road. A simple licencing system perhaps.
Yes I was a really reckless eight year old when I rode my bike to school. All kids should clearly be locked up in Range Rovers and surrounded by airbags so they don't engage in this sort of utterly irresponsible behaviour. Yes, that's the society we should all aspire to!
Riding your bike down the road on the way to school with the wind in your hair? Perish the thought!
I struggle to believe we have come to this. Bikes and cars and pedestrians have coexisted peacefully for over a century. Yet the nanny state just wants to mess it all up?
I mainly want a number plate to be displayed on the bike so you have some means of recourse if they do something wrong. And of course it would allow them to be fined by the police if they do something wrong.
Yes, pedestrians should wear those as well! I see far more pedestrians running the red man than cyclists running red lights with the same consequence so they should clearly be the first priority! WTF?
As for pedestrians, I don't regularly get cut-off by them, see them run red lights when it's clearly very dangerous for either them or a vehicle coming towards them, but I see all this happen with cyclists everyday.
You must live in a parallel dimension if you don't see jaywalking pedestrians crossing on the red man / away from the lights all the time...
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Increased regulation and enforcement has made for safer roads.
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But while there are still people being killed on bicycles, I don't see that there is anything wrong with educating younger cyclists.
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Registration goes towards creating accountability- anonimity lessens that accountability.
Education is fine - that is what schools are for. They do teach some basic road skills at primary level BTW, just in case the kids want to risk life and limb going for a ride on their bike.
As for registration, that argument applies to pedestrians and everyone else. Which doesn't make it automatically a good thing - just like the jury is still out on helmet laws, which collapsed the popularity of cycling when brought in and no doubt contributed to our current obesity epidemic. But don't worry - we're all so much fatter and safer now in our steel cages and air conditioning surrounded by air bags and that's the main thing right! Can't let the kiddies exert themselves too much - that could be dangerous!
By all means road rules should be enforced against all road users - pedestrians, cyclists and drivers but the police don't need identification plates to do that - they just need to be out on the street doing their job. I would happily support a greater presence of traffic police out there - I don't see much of them these days. Just cameras instead... which is not good enough.
But you're right - there are still too many cyclists dying on our roads. But did you notice they're not car drivers getting killed by cyclists or pedestrians? No - they're cyclists that are getting killed - usually by drivers. Drivers are the ones in charge of and protected by two tonnes of lethal metal travelling at huge speeds. Cyclists are completely vulnerable to any car - the idea there could be some risk to drivers from cyclists is completely ludicrous compared to the reverse level of risk, which is thousands of times greater.
Of course there can and should always be better enforcement but cyclists need to be protected from drivers. As a consequence, I would support laws that automatically placed fault on the driver as a key measure to reduce the bicycle toll, such as already exists in other countries that have reduced bicycle deaths. Cyclists already have their lives to lose out there any second moving among the cars and trucks - they don't need any more to lose. Drivers on the other hand need as much reminding as possible of the lethal nature of the vehicles they control. We are all people after all which means a good proportion of us will get distracted / make a mistake / be stupid - it's just that some of us are thousands of times more vulnerable on the road to those behaviours than others. It's the drivers who need a good reason to slow down, pay attention and give enough space to the cyclists.
As for a 1m rule, I haven't heard of such an unenforceable / irrelevant law before.
