Joy Beeson writes:

On Wed, 21 Feb 2018 12:22:24 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

And those ignore interactions with bicyclists. I know a smart and
dedicated bike advocate who has worked a long time trying to influence
them to teach respect for cyclists, care when passing cyclists, etc.
She's also lobbied to get appropriate questions into the official
driver's license exams. She's been repeatedly rebuffed, but she keeps
trying.

She's holding the wrong end of the stick.

No amount of instruction will give a driver the gut-deep understanding
that is required when one's spine is making several life-and-death
decisions per second.

What she needs to do is to say "Our teenagers wrap themselves around
trees and crash into other vehicles because they are trying to learn
too many things at once. We should start teaching the rules of the
road a few years ahead of time, and take our children out on their
little bikes for on-the-road supervised practice. Then when they turn
sixteen, all they will need to learn is how to control a car."

*That* would give the drivers a gut-deep understanding of how bikes
move.

I suspect you're right. If that could be shown with some sort of
quantitative evidence it's not completely inconceivable that car
insurance companies would give young drivers a break for experience
cyling in traffic. Obviously an objective measure of useful experience
would be needed. Car insurance is a significant expense, so provides
a significant incentive.

One problem, of course, is that eventually one of those children would
die, and the "if it saves one life" brigade would do their very best to
shut the whole thing down.

But it's quite out of the question, of course. It would cost almost
as much as building ten feet of separated bike path, and you'd have to
pay it again every year. No way the taxpayers would ever stand for
such a ridiculous expense.

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