> How does requiring a license for cyclists solve this problem?
Well, would you argue that requiring a license for motor vehicles is unnecessary? The benefits should be similar and identifiable.
23 karma · joined December 30, 2017
Well, would you argue that requiring a license for motor vehicles is unnecessary? The benefits should be similar and identifiable.
I've lived in the countryside for 14 years. I don't walk on the roads where I live. The roads are narrow and there is no place to walk as the side of the roads are raised embankments built from tree roots. Looks like this: http://c8.alamy.com/comp/C41G6T/country-lane-with-trees-form...
Without a valid driving license you will not be able to get insurance, unless you stole an insured vehicle from your parents or off the street.
Patrol cars in the UK and Europe have cameras that read number plates and check a database against all insured vehicles. If the car is not insured you will get pulled over, upon which you will be asked to present your driving license.
For example, how to navigate a busy multi-lane roundabout safely as a cyclist, such as Old Street roundabout in London, which looks like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Old_Stre..., or this roundabout in Bristol, UK: http://c8.alamy.com/comp/B2NMCH/aerial-view-looking-down-on-...
For as long as cyclists have to cycle on the roads as we know them a cyclist should be required to demonstrate that they understand the signs and rules of the road. That could be by presenting their official drivers license, or, should they not have one, be required to take a theory test. I think that would be a sensible first step.
You could then imagine a practical test for hazard perception, efficient use of gearing and safe filtering through queues of traffic.
Naturally, people don't walk on the road, and pavements don't have the same kind of mandatory control flow unless they intersect with the road, and most children are taught how to cross the road from a young age.
I could, as someone who doesn't have a driving license, or has never learned to drive, go out on the road with my bicycle and more or less ride whenever and wherever I like.
I don't know what any of the road signs mean and I have no experience or training in hazard perception and collision avoidance. The law doesn't require me to. If I tried to do the same thing in a car I'd be arrested.
1. Pedestrians move at much slower speeds than bicycles. If two pedestrians walk into each at 5mph the damage is much lower than if two cyclists collide at 30mph.
2. Since pedestrians move much slower than bicycles they can manoeuvre much faster. The stopping distance for a walking pedestrian is less than 1m, the stopping distance for a bycicle travelling at 30mph is much greater.
3. If two pedestrians walk into each other the chance of collateral damage is quite low. It's quite easy to walk around two people that just walked into each other.
If two cyclists collide, there is a good chance that cyclists on each side of them will get caught up in the collision, crash and injure themselves too. A good example of this are the crashes seen on Tour de France.
Of course, if people started running as a mode of transport it would become increasingly dangerous, and you'd have to start separating the walkers from the runners as the damage from a potential collision would be much greater.
Why can't we retrain both? Do we have to pick one or the other?
Of course! In a world where there were only cyclists there would still need to be a set of rules that all cyclists are required to follow. Those might include how to behave at intersections, how and when you should overtake other cyclists, and so on. To be allowed to cycle, each cyclist should have demonstrated that they understand and follow these rules by taking some kind of test.
> In a general case though, requiring cyclists to have a licence would reduce the number of cyclists, probably significantly. This would correspondingly increase the number of motorists.
I don't think so. I expect the government to continue to penalize use of motor vehicles in cities such as London. The bicycle will remain the cheaper mode of transport.
Rule 73 of the Highway Code:
> Pay particular attention to long vehicles which need a lot of room to manoeuvre at corners. Be aware that drivers may not see you. They may have to move over to the right before turning left. Wait until they have completed the manoeuvre because the rear wheels come very close to the kerb while turning. Do not be tempted to ride in the space between them and the kerb.
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It's a shame I'm getting downvoted, but the current state of affairs is that in cities like London bicycles, cars and trucks will be sharing the road for the near-mid future.
I'd rather not have trucks or cars in the city, and ideally cyclists would have their own road separate from cars and pedestrians, but I think that's a pipe dream.
Until then what else can do we? At least if we require tests for cyclists, like we do for cars, buses and trucks, it might help reduce the number of cyclists doing risky things that perhaps they aren't even aware of?
Sure there are still reckless drivers, but at least they have a license that can be revoked and points that can be fined. How do we ban reckless cyclists from the road?
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Beside that, I like to install packages from their canonical source. That could mean installing Go from golang.org to MariaDB from mariadb.org. It’s simple to compare sha256 checksums, which I suspect is also possible with Homebrew, I just don’t know how.