[beobab]

I think a requirement of a year's worth of cycling on the road before you can have a driver's license would increase cycling awareness significantly.

Nothing raises your appreciation of the difficulties faced by a group more than belonging to that group in a real and physical manner on a daily basis.

Not that I think it would be implementable: Humans are remarkably good at rejecting constraints.

[ygra]

Interestingly I've become a much better cyclist after obtaining my driver's license. It made me very aware of the fact that you can't see anything from cars (compared to the elevated and pillar-free view from a bike) so you have to be aware of that fact as a cyclist and react accordingly. Some things cyclists do without thinking much are stupidly dangerous and I think this often is the result of cyclists and drivers being two different sets of people.

Also I got to know the rules of the road much better than before and could adjust by behaviour to follow the law. I didn't go over red lights before, but there are a bunch of other things where cyclists don't tend to follow the rules of the road and IMHO it creates a much less stressful environment for everyone if they just did so.

[bertil]

> you can't see anything from cars

This is a very important difference and that’s the main reason I yearn for self-driving cars. Current vehicles are horrible to see where you are driving and drivers are in denial about it. At least, when you have engineers trying to represent a scene, they gut reaction is “No way I am dealing with such a slim view, I”m putting the camera where it can see what’s happening.”

[ygra]

That was basically one of my first reactions in my first hour of driving. »I can't possibly make a turn here. I don't see where I'm going.« That feeling fades over time and one (at least I still do with just a bit over two years of driving) adapts by going slower, looking more carefully, and especially looking for potential dangers before it's too late. Often (not always, as the article details) it's possibly to see ahead of time what can become problematic, e.g. overtaking a cyclist that you might have to yield to 100 meters later when making a turn. But it takes practice and I'm sure different driving instructors and different drivers place varying amounts of emphasis on such things.

[beobab]

The amount of times whilst pulling out of my driveway that I've thought "I wish I had a cameras pointing left and right from about where my indicators are" is quite large.

It's always worse when large vans are parked up and down the road so visibility is obscured.