Grand Original Idea for Cyclist Safety on the Roads, Alternative to"Bicycle Facilities"

Grand Original Idea for Cyclist Safety on the Roads, Alternative to "Bicycle Facilities": Apply Existing Laws Strictly

We get a lot of worthless, dull hot air on RBT from unemployables and retirees with time on their hands, but this is the first *original* idea I've seen since Sheldon died:

Tom Kunich wrote on 30 January:
'The ONLY "adequate" bicycle facilities is to demand safe driving and the arrest any drivers who break the law and seize their cars. After they have to pay those fees off they would be a hell of a lot more careful next time.'

While normally I would condemn such non-judicial seizures out of hand as a fascist assault on liberty, the fact of the matter is that in America administrative seizures of this nature happen every minute. There is already a law on the books to seize any property (including specifically cars) and funds even suspected of being implicated in involvement in drugs crime, under arrangements that make it almost impossible to recover the confiscated good, and recently this practice has been much extended because the police get to keep the confiscated goods, money etc, and are permitted to spend it on the police ball, comforts for the station house, air conditioning for their cars, etc, etc. You can easily see why the scheme is popular with the cops..

So why not extend an existing scheme with wide police support to the protection of cyclists?

I'm not enamored of "bicycle facilities"; I've never seen one that wasn't badly planned, poorly executed, and all of those I've seen have in fact endangered bicyclists more than the previous arrangement. Bicycle "facilities", as far as I'm concerned, are virtue signaling by official clowns, nothing to do with cycling safety. (It needn't be like that, but that's a different -- and very expensive -- case to the one I'm arguing here. The point *is* that it is like that, and will be like that for the foreseeable future, possibly for generations.)

On the other hand, if the police can be incentivized to apply existing laws strictly -- for instance the law we have in Europe that an automobile driver must give a bicyclist 1.5m (about five feet) of clearance -- that would instantly make every cyclist on the roads that much safer. Tom's suggestion hits the sweet spot at the conjunction of these concepts: make cyclists safe, do it by applying existing laws, incentivize the police to do their job..

Andre Jute
All the best ideas are really simple

bicycle legal protections, separate paths, were advancing....and nutball demands for auto seizures

the current administration is intent on destructuring 21C organization to 18C. Yawl expect a severe stop on cycling from the trumpites wether state local or federal

EG http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...127-story.html

I had my disability camping permit pulled on a directive from DC.

On 1/31/2017 12:40 PM, DATAKOLL MARINE RESEARCH wrote:
EG http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...127-story.html

I had my disability camping permit pulled on a directive from DC.


disability camping permit? What, the only campfire cooking
you know is to call room service?

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Grand Original Idea for Cyclist Safety on the Roads, Alternative to "Bicycle Facilities": Apply Existing Laws Strictly

We get a lot of worthless, dull hot air on RBT from unemployables and retirees with time on their hands, but this is the first *original* idea I've seen since Sheldon died:

Tom Kunich wrote on 30 January:
'The ONLY "adequate" bicycle facilities is to demand safe driving and the arrest any drivers who break the law and seize their cars. After they have to pay those fees off they would be a hell of a lot more careful next time.'

While normally I would condemn such non-judicial seizures out of hand as a fascist assault on liberty, the fact of the matter is that in America administrative seizures of this nature happen every minute. There is already a law on the books to seize any property (including specifically cars) and funds even suspected of being implicated in involvement in drugs crime, under arrangements that make it almost impossible to recover the confiscated good, and recently this practice has been much extended because the police get to keep the confiscated goods, money etc, and are permitted to spend it on the police ball, comforts for the station house, air conditioning for their cars, etc, etc. You can easily see why the scheme is popular with the cops..

So why not extend an existing scheme with wide police support to the protection of cyclists?

I'm not enamored of "bicycle facilities"; I've never seen one that wasn't badly planned, poorly executed, and all of those I've seen have in fact endangered bicyclists more than the previous arrangement. Bicycle "facilities", as far as I'm concerned, are virtue signaling by official clowns, nothing to do with cycling safety. (It needn't be like that, but that's a different -- and very expensive -- case to the one I'm arguing here. The point *is* that it is like that, and will be like that for the foreseeable future, possibly for generations.)

On the other hand, if the police can be incentivized to apply existing laws strictly -- for instance the law we have in Europe that an automobile driver must give a bicyclist 1.5m (about five feet) of clearance -- that would instantly make every cyclist on the roads that much safer. Tom's suggestion hits the sweet spot at the conjunction of these concepts: make cyclists safe, do it by applying existing laws, incentivize the police to do their job..

Andre Jute
All the best ideas are really simple