[r0m4n0]

I think insurance and licensing is about the risks and the government stepping in to make things more safe for society. Bikes just don’t carry very much risk to others. Of course, it’s possible a bike can crash into a pedestrian and critically injure, kill etc or cause some property damage buts just rare and going to cause minimal damage. When was the last time you heard a bike causing $1000s in property damage? I have literally never seen it happen and I’m pretty active in the biking community. When you drive around a multi ton piece of steel with the capability to kill scores within seconds, millions of dollars in property damage to others etc, there needs to be some rules. Honestly I think it’s too easy in the US to get a drivers license and the new e-bike laws are overkill. Yes cyclists break traffic laws, but the implications are minor to others (they are mostly risking their own lives). If you feel like it’s unfair, you can always ride a bike!

[_feus]

A cyclist can easily cause 1000s in damage by causing an accident with a vehicle, or simply by hitting a pedestrian. Mending a scratch is expensive even for cheap cars. An ER visit, even for a simple fall, can result in a hefty bill.

Since cyclist don't carry liability insurance, they likely have to be personally sued in court for damages, with all associated costs to both parties.

Are you claiming this is a fair responsibilities and risk distribution? How is it appropriate to "risk your own life" by breaking traffic laws on a public road?

[r0m4n0]

I kinda agree with what you are saying on damage. It just doesn’t happen so it’s not really a problem anyone cares about. Cyclists don’t regularly cause $10000s in damage. If they hurt themselves, you use your own health insurance. On the other hand, my friend who was mowed down on his bike sharing the road was killed when someone had the sun in their eyes. That woman’s insurance had to pay hundreds of thousands in medical bills and damages. The same with my great aunt, killed in front of her house by a car. The same for my best friend who was killed in elementary school crossing a road. I think that’s 100x more common than the other way around.

Traffic laws are in place to ensure each other’s safety and also reasonably get folks places. Cars are an extreme risk to peds and cyclists, not the other way around so yes, they have more rules and must follow them more strictly. My 3 year old toddler on her trike doesn’t need a license to ride down our neighborhood street because she isn’t risking anyone’s life but her own.

[_feus]

Thank you for engaging in an argument rather than just feeling attacked.

Cycling accidents definitely happen, and they’ve become a lucrative industry. Just look up "bicycle injury attorney" and you will see tons of ads claiming that they "have recovered over 50 million for bicycle injury clients". The market here speaks for itself. Of course, a reasonable person doesn’t set out expecting to mow down a cyclist, but accidents happen despite the traffic laws designed to ensure everyone’s safety, and, to follow your example, a 3 y/o toddler doesn’t need a license to ride her trike down the street, but there’s nothing in the law, aside from common sense, stopping the child from continuing down the street and joining a major highway. At least "a multi-ton piece of steel" is visible and moves at the speed of traffic.

What I don't understand, why is it accepted, that both pedestrians and motorists should "watch out for cyclists", yet there is absolutely no campaigns for cyclists to watch out for cars and pedestrians and to follow the law. The easiest solution, imho, is to make the requirements equal for all - if someone wants to use a public road, they should be licensed and insured.

[rpearl]

Okay, I searched. Nearly all of these attorneys are for when you have been injured, on a bike, by a car.

Because that's what happens a lot. Cars are deadly.

[_feus]

Why do cyclists need an injury attorney when motorists have insurance? Why are there so many attorneys offering this service? High demand? Is it because personal injury law is a well paying grift? Would any of these attorneys represent a driver if it was a cyclist fault? Much harder to collect from a private person than from insurance.

[r0m4n0]

You either discovered a massive unreported cause of harm to our society or you are fitting a narrative you have in your mind.

The anger against cyclists is so weird to me. Like I can relate to seeing a cyclist taking up a whole lane on highway 1 somewhere they shouldn’t be riding and me thinking, this is ridiculous, they shouldn’t be risking their own life and slowing everyone down like this (and feeling some anger). But I have only encountered this a few times and even then, it’s just a minor inconvenience… Most cyclists ride relatively responsibly through city areas and are a net positive on the community, environment, parking, traffic, city budget, etc. Look at some data instead of coming up with some narrative in your head based upon some immediate emotion.

This negative sentiment towards cyclists is real, I see it on Facebook all the time and at first I thought it was a joke. Maybe they should add a few questions to the drivers test

[rpearl]

Insurance does whatever it can to avoid paying and having an attorney represent you is almost a matter of course.

But please continue theorizing that this zero effort google search you went in to knowing nothing about is instead evidence for a world in which there is a large market for attorneys forcing payment by cyclists causing significant damages.

Next, have your last word because this conversation appears completely disingenuous and I will not be continuing it.

[dahart]

> Why I don’t understand, why is it accepted, that both pedestrians and motorists should “watch out for cyclists”, yet there is absolutely no campaigns for cyclists to watch out for cars and pedestrians and to follow the law.

There are several reasons:

First, your assertion is simply not true. There are campaigns to educate cyclists, and markings for them to yield. I’ve seen them first-hand in multiple US cities.

Second, there are far far fewer cyclists than cars, therefore you need to expect there to be proportional spending. More education for drivers mirrors the (many) more drivers.

Third, cars are heavier and faster by a huge factor. Cars cause far more deaths in practice than bikes. There is a much much bigger problem with cars than there is with bikes. Over 40000 people die in the US in car crashes. As far as I can tell, fewer than 10 pedestrians die from being hit by a cyclist. The number of minor injuries of pedestrians caused by cyclists is dwarfed by the number of cyclists or pedestrians kills by cars.

https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-myth-of-th...

Cars require way more education because they’re way more dangerous. As a cyclist, if I hit a car, I die. If a car hits me, I die. It seems really weird that your arguments are ignoring basic facts of physics and ignoring the realities and statistics of accidents and fatality rates.

[Retric]

There’s also ~100x more miles driven than biked. Bikes riders do cause a significant number of major medical incidents per mile and even some fatalities, but it simply doesn’t get much attention.

[Panzer04]

And how many of these accidents are damage to others?

The vast majority of serious bike accidents would cause damage only to the rider, I would guess. It's just not worth regulating or mandating anything.

[Retric]

Actually both are a problem. We got reflectors + bike helmet laws, and little else.

At a minimum any vehicle going 15+ MPH should be making enough noise to get people’s attention.

Personally I’d like to see insurance and licensing requirements on any e-bike with more than 50w of assistance. Because constantly going moderately faster means dramatically more danger as KE = V^2. So going a little bit faster and slightly less in control can be a lot more dangerous to others.

[Panzer04]

Ultimately, anything is better than driving around in a 2T vehicle. Making it harder to ride bikes increases the barrier to entry and hence discourages their use - and the alternative all too often is a car.

Cars are so much more likely to kill people that I think you'd increase road casualties by making the alternatives harder to use. Yes, an ebike is faster, heavier and less safe than a conventional bike. No, an ebike is nowhere near as dangerous as a car, and in general I don't think they should be regulated. The current thresholds most places are setting (250W/25kph or thereabouts) are plenty conservative anyway.

Tangentially, this is why it's also good to give bikes their own space. They are not pedestrians, and they shouldn't be mixing with pedestrian traffic. That's why they're on the road. They act more like a car than a pedestrian.

[kevin_thibedeau]

I was hit by a driver while having the right of way on a bicycle. New York has mandatory personal injury protection of $50K. Because the insurance companies don't want to fulfill their mandated obligations, there was an attempt to secure my own car insurance as the primary coverage despite not being applicable under the law.

In the end I burned through the whole $50K in medical expenses without having to pay for for somebody else's screwup out of pocket. Despite being clearly at fault, the driver was not held accountable due to systemic bias against bicyclists even when we obey the law.