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MichaelBluejay

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From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,455

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Laws, not facilities make cyclists safer

Governing is my new favorite website. Here's an excerpt of a provocative article claiming that it's laws, not facilities, that make cyclists safe.

At a street corner somewhere, a pedestrian, a bicyclist and an automobile driver enter an intersection. The person in the car turns and hits either the person on foot or the person on the bike, killing her.

Question: What happens to the driver? In most states, nothing. Unless the driver is drunk or can be shown to be speeding or driving recklessly, it is, in the words of Aaron Naparstek, founder of Streetsblog, “a free kill.” The driver walks away without criminal charges, civil liabilities or administrative penalties.

This is crazy....

Without laws protecting bikers and walkers...the goal of having truly livable cities in America remains out of reach. Legal lines are more important than physical lines. Creating the right laws to govern the interactions among walkers, cyclists and drivers is more effective than painting new stripes for a bike lane.

“Ultimately, the thing that changes people’s behavior are the penalties,” says Steve Vaccaro, a lawyer in New York City who specializes in bicycle injuries....

Personally, I think the way to go is increased civil liability. The countries where cycling is an integral part of life, such as Holland and Denmark, as well as much of the rest of continental Europe, have something in effect called “strict liability.”  It means that if you, the driver, strike a pedestrian or cyclist, you are automatically at fault, even if the walker or cyclist literally jumps out in front of you. This may not seem fair, but a system where a cyclist and a driver are on equal footing is not a fair one either, because the results of any collision are so unequal. A system needs to acknowledge that it is the driver of a car or truck that is doing something inherently dangerous.

Bicycling in Holland, where such a system is in place, is an amazing experience. Cyclists there ride in heavy traffic, commuting to work, carrying groceries and children, secure that the drivers are looking out after them. Holland also has plenty of bike lanes, but it’s not the bike lanes that keep cyclists safe. The car and truck drivers are held legally responsible for the potential consequences of their vehicles. It’s appropriate too that if a cyclist in Holland strikes and hurts a pedestrian, the cyclist is presumed to be at fault.

Full article at:

http://www.governing.com/columns/eco-en … -them.html