Sounds to me like you should be upset with vandals, not bicyclists. My car stereo was stolen by a kid who was on foot once. Should pedestrians have to wear licenses too?
I noticed this:
I have a car: I pay insurance, it has a license plate, I pay gas taxes. But I live in Alberta and I my vehicle is insured in Alberta. For the sake of argument, I’ll say I brought gas with me so I didn’t pay Ontario’s gas taxes. Do I have the right to drive my car on Toronto’s busy streets?
Yeah ,same like I would expect to be able to do likewise in Alberta , thats a no brainer. But unless you have some sort of magical gas tank , eventually your gonna pay for gas in Ont , just like I would in Alberta.
So , umm, whats your major complaint with tagging your bike ? Everything from Vespas to Semi’s are plated , what make a bike exempt from this ?
Declan
I scoot over the border into New York to buy gas, just to piss you off. I’ve paid no more to Ontario’s government than the cyclists you claim have no right to use the road. Why do I have the right where they do not? Should I have to produce proof I’ve bought gas in Ontario or have my car impounded?
I didn’t complain about tagging my bike. I said nothing about tagging my bike one way or the other. I asked if you think pedestrians should be tagged as well. Pedestrians commit vandalism too, after all.
If you don’t like my buying gas in New York, say I live in Ontario and own a car, thereby paying taxes and registration fees and whatnot. Does that give me the right to ride my bike on the roads I’ve helped pay for?
So we can assume that there is a certain percentage of bike riders that dual commute , guess in the winter your driving mostly , while in the warmer weather , your riding.
So you have paid into the system , and now your taking advantage of it , fine you have a point, now all I want from you , is that your bike to have a plate and VIN , plus an insurance policy.
I dont care if its a separate insurance policy , a rider on your existing auto policy , or a add on to your house insurance, but I want you identifiable and liable.
Nothing more than you demand for motorized vehicles on the road.
4 am , I am heading to bed , have a good day
Declan
No? I suggested that it would be considerate for a cyclist to make way for a queue of traffic behind him that was headed by an inconveniently large vehicle, and you go off on some absurd tangent about how (a) I was asking you to dismount every time a car came by and (b) this was the same as asking a car driver to stop, turn the engine off, get out, wait, get back in and restart the engine; both of which are patently tosh. Oh, and (c) you just couldn’t possibly because you’d be killed by idiot car drivers who don’t understand signals. (Arguably owing to a lack of exposure, I think. I saw an oncoming cyclist signal a right only this morning. Mark it on the calendar: 26th July 2005.) Oh, and (d) the cyclist shouldn’t be expected to waste his precious time and effort, whereas wasting quite a bit more of several other people’s time is fine.
Not “safety concerns”, just this specimen:
“Waah! Malacandra doesn’t care if I get killed! 
Poor me! I knew it all along!”… and you don’t think this is mockable? :dubious:
Serious cyclists, including those who cycle to and from work, in the UK anyway, have a tendency to change from being rational beings to irrational as soon as they pull on the lycra. There’s very much an us-against-the-world mentality, which they’re able to shift out of once they change back to normal clothes and take their place behind the wheel of a car, which most of those of my acquaintance possess and drive at evenings and weekends. Then, lycra-clad cyclists shift from being their allies in the fight against the evil car to “wanker this!” and “idiot that!” as they cut them up.
Cyclists who travel at speeds in excess of 30 MPH and weave in and out of traffic, and jump red lights, are asking for trouble. While, judging from the comments they make when talking about drivers, they seem to understand that standards of driving are not always very good, they don’t take this into account when they’re in the saddle. Something very like a warzone mentality takes them over. As a result they make many mistakes of judgement. Some are critical; some sadly fatal.
I don’t believe you. I have little doubt at all that either you are making this bullshit up, or in fact you manifested your negative attitude to cyclists in a tangible fashion to an extent sufficient to enrage the cyclists in question.
You have already stated in this thread that you intend to maintain your negative attitude to cyclists and that you are not interested in responding to or engaging in fact or logic based debate where doing so is incompatible with your predetermined attitude. When you are confronted with same you just ignore it, or adopt a pathetic faux “I don’t care what you say” attitude.
Against that background, your personal anecdotes have no credibility.
Sure, if that’s what the law demands. Of course, earlier in this thread I pointed out that hit and run accidents by plated, registered motor vehicles on cyclists are commonplace but hit and run accidents by cyclists are unheard (of outside your bullshit anecdotes) but of course that didn’t suit you so you’ve just pretended not to hear.
You still seem to think that is an insult. The law does not agree with you.
Which is non-sequiter, since I live in Philadelphia.
As Princhester pointed out, your anecdote is likely bullshit. One thing I have learned is that such vandalism is almost entierly anectodal tales from drivers. If your gith turned across a cyclist how the heck is he going to smash your mirror from the middle of your bike? Is he Mr. Fantastic, or are you the world’s slowest turner?
I have been assaulted and even once struck by vehicles that fled the scene. Even with the plate the police did nothing. Its fairly typical.
It was based entirely on your statements.
No. Because if it is not working for cars with assault cases, it sure is heck isn’t going to work on bicycles for imaginary cases of vandalism. Invariably, such registration would be used to control bicycles.
Not to mention registration of bicycles seriously curbs bicycle activity. But that is obviosuly what you really want.
Your prejudice is noted.
And I likewise note your unwillingness to address the rest of the argument, along with your pompous and affected use of the passive voice. :rolleyes:
I don’t demand anything. I’m aware that cars need to be licensed and registered by law, but I don’t remember demanding this be so.
I’m really not sure why you aren’t applying your reasoning for wanting bikes to be licensed to pedestrians as well, since the root cause seems to be your wanting criminals to be easily identifiable. Pedestrians are no more or less anonymous than cyclists, should pedestrians have to be licensed for identification purposes as well?
Why you think cyclists aren’t liable for whatever damage they cause escapes me; if I get caught breaking taillights with a tire iron, I can be charged with vandalism. Being on a bike doesn’t change that.
I didn’t say we aren’t discussing cars at all. I said, and I’ve quoted it here so you can look at it, that “we’re not discussing OTHER cars in this thread” {emphasis mine}. We can have a thread about car-on-car action, have had, I’m sure we will have again, but this thread is about car and bike and pedestrian interactions.
No, actually you missed the original point that oulau was trying to make. That is, that careless (or purposefully rude) biker is to pedestrian as careless (or purposely rude) motorist is to biker.
Stranger was saying that because of the dangers on the road, he was going to TAKE the right to ride on the sidewalk, regardless of its not being legal, or that it may in turn endanger a pedestiran. First off, because he feels that the danger to him offsets any illegal acts on his part, and secondly because he’s “cautious and mindful”, so he won’t really be endangering anyone.
Again, all it would have taken for the little idiot who scared the dickens out of me yesterday would have been for me to move to my left (I was being a good little ped and staying on the correct side of the trail) to see if the bus was coming. He would have plowed right into me.
And yes, quite obviously it wouldn’t be deadly as is auto vs. biker, but hard metal object with many sharp edges and hard surfaces smashing into flesh can and does hurt. And can certainly cause injuries.
First off, once again, I nearly became a victim of such danger myself just yesterday morning. Second you “dug out the statistics”? Meaning you had actual hard data? Well, I’d have to see that. I only know what I see on the local trails. And that is, a ton-o-near misses and a couple of quite nasty accidents with biker on walker.
And around here, bikers on the MUTs are far and away the biggest bother and the rudest users on those trails. So much so that in the summer, the editorial page frequently has blazing complaint letters against them.
They seem to feel that they are the only ones on the trails, and it doesn’t matter where the trails are.
There are several trails that go through the dog park.
Let me repeat that, through the DOG park.
That is, the park that the Muni has specifically set aside and made LEGAL for dog owners to let their dogs run loose in. The only rules are 1. Clean up after your pets. 2. No vicious dogs, your pet MUST be able to get along with other dogs. 3. Must have its license.
But yet, every blasted day some dweeb who’s a Lance wannabe in training for “the” race comes barreling through and gets all snotty and offended when he gets drenched by a dog running up out of the lake and shakes off on the trail.
Or stops and yells when a dog gets in front of him on the trail. Well DUH, what part of "dirt path, lake, DOG PARK, frisbee chasing, dogs wrestling don’t you idtiots get?
And lastly, once again, I ALSO ride a bike, and drive, and I do my best to be a “good” citizen in both modes of transportation. The problem is that too many don’t. And those too many are the ones that are creating the backlash that good bikers see from motorists.
Yup. Mr Misk was good enough to provide a link, even.
PS, a few moderate “cites” regarding bikes hitting peds.
The following few are “only” university papers, from what I could gather, but do contain quotes from peds and police talking about cyclists hitting pedestrians.
http://www.mail-archive.com/bike@list.purple.com/msg00265.html
http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=17189
And apparently it’s a problem in DC and NYC as well…
http://www.messmedia.org/messville/GRID1093.HTM
http://www.communitypolicing.org/publications/comlinks/cl_5/c4_sciara.htm
Maybe in England (where your site seems to have been from), bicyclists are all sweetness and light. But yes Virginia, there really ARE rude bikers out there, and potentially dangerous to pedestrian ones. And from the looks of things, quite a lot of them.
Yes, I got to his post, which was quite a bit after yours. I also noted it was from the UK Dept of Transport. I freely admit that I know next to nothing of UK politics between bikers and walkers.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
If anything the UK has more cyclists and pedestrians than the US. There is no reason to think the data for the US would be much different.
No one is denying that cyclists hit pedestrians. The question is whether it happens often enough for it to be a real problem. The data suggests not.
The thread in which I originally posted that data was started by a UK pedestrian who was engaging in counter factual whinery about perceived danger from cyclists to pedestrians. He was joined by several other whining UK pedestrians.
Clearly, there are UK Doper pedestrians who perceive cyclists not to be all sweetness and light but to be a real problem for pedestrians. The reality, as shown by the data, is strikingly different.
Unless you can come up with some actual data to make me change my mind, I will assume that US Doper pedestrian perceptions are similarly counter factual.