Rights and Duties of Bicycle Riders

Obviously, if road users were 'competing' with each other, the heaviest/fastest would win, but the carnage would be unacceptable!

Bicyclists are entitled to go about their business without fear of collisions.

But surely all road users should be able to go about their business without fear of collisions? Pedestrians, most particularly! I recently noticed that at the newly created roundabout near Qualicum Beach (where the Island Highway/19A is intersected by Memorial/Hwy 4), the traffic engineers have added specific Yield signs specifying that Cyclists are required to yield right-of-way to Pedestrians using the crosswalks that precede that roundabout. Isn't it interesting, that while all motorists are presumed to know how to deal with pedestrians at marked crosswalks, the traffic engineers felt compelled to spell it out for all those (select your own adjective) cyclists approaching this situation? It maybe says something about cyclists and their average mentality,  do you think?

For years, I have heard people say something along the lines of, if they can have mostly bicycles in city/country X, we should be able to do that here.  Well the empirical evidence shows that it isn’t happening, and is not very likely to happen without policy changes.

The thing about city/country X, is that they will typically have an established system in place that both separates cyclists and other traffic, and a mindset to match (ie following the rules, and giving right of way whenever needed). Could be Amsterdam, Beijing, or Copenhagen. Whereas, here in Canada (in common with countries like Australia, the UK, or the US - and lots of other countries with long-established road networks) the accommodation of cyclists has been retro-engineered into the existing structure.

In London, England the cycle lanes (which are on the left of course) are often protected by a 4" hard curb, in order to prevent the bus and lorry drivers from cutting the corner and squishing them, as an interesting example.

This is the whole engineering challenge - and most of the responsibility for dealing with it seems to fall on the motorists, even though the cyclists are the most vulnerable. Which almost defies common sense ... although many cynics might consider that a prequisite for cyclists, perhaps.

In West Vancouver, there are only two arterial routes going east/west. One is Marine Drive, a very scenic but narrow, twisty road with many changes in elevation and blind curves. I wouldn't ride a bicycle along there if you paid me! Yet many cyclists choose to, and have done so for years; no doubt, some of them actually live in that area, but many others simply choose to ride along it just for their own enjoyment. The other is Highway 1, a 90 km/h multi-lane high speed high volume route with excellent sightlines that typifies the other extreme. So the traffic engineers have actually specified the shoulders of that highway as a bicycle route (with all the warning signs prior to the exits/entrances) in order to try and motivate cyclists to stay off the low road, for the safety and efficiency of all road users.

So, all a political candidate need do is state that all urban speed limits will be reduced to the average speed cyclists travel, that cyclists will have the right-of-way, and any collision between a cyclist and a vehicle operator will result in criminal charges.

Good luck with that! The fact is - from what I have seen over the last 50+ years behind the wheel (and sometimes behind the handlebars) - the police don't give a damn. Or maybe it's their political masters, of course. But evidently, they don't care about pedestrians who break the law, and neither do they care about cyclists who break the law. And apparently, we now live in a culture where this is OK.

For too many years the focus has been on giving motorized vehicles primacy on the roads with little thought to anything else. And you can see that attitude reflected in people saying that bikes shouldn't be on the roads or they should pay for their own space.

Any political player who gets up and says that the era of car supremacy will get laughed off by the majority sadly. We've become convinced that to have a good quality of life requires a car, even if the small number of people who have gone carless are typically happier and more organized.

"People" should be able to go about their business without the fear of collisions, no matter the mode of travel. Though only people in cars have government mandated safety features to keep them safe, the rest are expected to take personal responsibility, and when someone suggests we should make changes to roadway design so that when people in cars make mistakes it doesn't result in a vulnerable road user dying everyone screams that it's not intuitive (false) or way too expensive (how costly is injury and death?)

The population has to change their attitude, politcal will is chickensh**

Yes, when a person on a bicycle makes a mistake they get killed, and when a person in a car makes a mistake someone else dies.

That speaks to responsibility of the operator, yet people in cars still distract themselves or make other choices. How's that training program working?

Sorry, don't mean to be glib but all road users need to know what to expect of others and we're missing that. In our society everyone drives a car and that seems to be what everyone asprires to do from a young age. Our attitude is that until then you ride a bike, but who teaches you? Not mommy or daddy who are busy driving their car all over the place. Once you get your license, well, time to put the bike away.

We need to take the bike seriously as a mode of transportation, the first step is creating more separated safe infrastructure to keep modes apart as much as possible. When we can start enabling more safe cycling possible and the numbers are up there then we can start getting the kids on bikes with their parents and include the education into the primary schools.

Most people on bikes are drivers also, or have their license to show they passed their training to learn the rules of the road. But bicycles are not cars and people make choices based on their mode, both in cars and on bicycles.

And when a person on a bike does something outside the normal expected pattern your brain notices it, otherwise the bicycle fades into the background. For many people this creates a larger than actual group of "bad cyclists". Studies have shown that people on bikes break the law at about the same rate as people in cars.

1. The majority of people riding bicycles out there are already licensed to drive a vehicle. 

2. It's actually best if people in cars treat people on bicycles as if they were also 2m wide, passing with plenty of room just like they would other vehicles on the road. Ever had 3000lbs of metal whiz by you 30kph faster within arms-length? Passing a person on a bicycle requires the same judgement as passing a person in a car, make sure it's safe for everyone on the road. They are not allowed to ride side-by-side in the road, though they are allowed to be side-by-side if one of them is on the shoulder of the road. 

3. There are people who think if they can see the danger ahead they are safer, it's not true, but some people believe it. Also, there are plenty of road users, both in cars and on bikes, that don't seem to think about all the consequences their decision could have. Collisions occur when someone gets surprised, no one wants to be that surprise.

4. E-bikes and e-scooters are limited to 32kph by law, anything above that is considered a motor vehicle and requires insurance and a license.

And for your scenario of a car clipping a cyclist while hugging the yellow line, any officer will tell you that the person in the car was at fault, they didn't pass safely. Treat bicycles like any other vehicle on the road, if you're going to pass, move into the other lane just as you would for any slower moving vehicle. 

I teach people when they should take the lane, which is anytime that it is too narrow for a car to pass and allow for a 1.5m between the bike and car without the bicycle being squished up against the edge of the roadway. This can be a construction zone, a narrow residential street, or even when getting ready to make a left turn. 

No, licensing would be another barrier that would trap people in cars, it's not worth the effort. And looking at how well the driver's license program is at keeping people from making mistakes in a car you can see that it's not the tool you might think it is.