Bicycle Safety and Licenses

licenses to do what? ride intelligently? and how enforce this? at what
cost? the enforcement is death and injury at a shared cost like beach
housing

wrote:
licenses to do what? ride intelligently? and how enforce this? at what
cost? the enforcement is death and injury at a shared cost like beach
housing

Time-share road rash?!? I like it!

BS (well, OK, a little)

i have an experiment for yawl
i am asshole deep in beloew average intelligence and sometimes menatlly
disturbed bike riders here in ride all year whoreville.
i find that the suggestion, for example, your pants are on fire, or
your chain needs lube, or wearing black is not inorder-
results in an immediate and usually totally illogical,unreasoning and
unrelated forcefull arguement from the other party.
now how yagonna legislate this?

On 20 Jul 2005 07:59:14 -0700, wrote:



i have an experiment for yawl
i am asshole deep in beloew average intelligence and sometimes menatlly
disturbed bike riders here in ride all year whoreville.
i find that the suggestion, for example, your pants are on fire, or
your chain needs lube, or wearing black is not inorder-
results in an immediate and usually totally illogical,unreasoning and
unrelated forcefull arguement from the other party.
now how yagonna legislate this?

The First Amendment has recently been reinterpreted by the masses as
meaning "*My* assholism is Protected Free Speech, *yours* isn't."
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

On 15 Jul 2005 13:20:50 -0700, "Chip C" wrote:

Hmmm. Is the line in the sand more defensibly drawn at "operating a
powered vehicle" or "operating a machine of any type"? I'd never
propose requiring a license to pedestrianize your way about town, but
is a bike not more like a car than a pair of feet? Is the presence of a
motor the big deal, or the quantitative ability to cause damage and
injuries to others?

And a bike going at 30 kph crashing into a pedestrian -- not wearing a
helmet after all -- can easily kill, because HELMETLESS RIDING IS SUICIDE!

What about licensing not riders but bikes and making them carry actual
legible number plates, a la Kronans perhaps, so a complainant could at
least hope to identify the miscreants among us? Unsecurability of the
number plates would probably kibosh that. Odd there aren't more stolen
car license plates, really.

Main reason car license plates aren't stolen is that you have a fair
chance of getting spotted during regular traffic control, and the
penalties are pretty high. One thing though: a major part of car license
plate rules isn't so much about tracking offenders, but about tracking car
theft. From the T-ford onwards, a car was likely to be the most valuable
piece of moveable property people were likely to own. As of the T-ford, it
became cheaper then a horse -- but there's a reason horse thieves
generally get hanged. Modern car license plate schemes became universal
post WWII, and by that time, a car was definitely the most expensive piece
of kit the urban man could be expected to own. It's also extremely mobile,
despite being very large -- a Steinway concert piano might cost nearly the
same as a small car, but it's a lot harder to steal. In fact, in one of
the burglaries at my parent's house whil I was growing up, our TV and VCR
were loaded into the back of our own car. That smarts.

PS What's up with Kronan number plates, anyway? Are they actual valid
license numbers, anywhere?

No. It's pure marketing. Of course, a Kronan without plates stands out,
and one with a plate number that's registered with the police and on one
website or another as being stolen might have a slightly higher chance of
getting back to you than a bike with a frame number in inaccessible places
registered as such.

Jasper

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:03:59 -0400, Sheldon Brown
wrote:

A universal dusk to dawn curfew enforced by martial law would greatly
reduce many sorts of crime.

However there are limits to what a free society is prepared to sacrifice ...

It's good that the US isn't a free society, then. Many cities enforce
curfews for all minors, for example.


Jasper

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 20:55:24 -0400, "Doug Huffman"
wrote:

Y'all didn't see or contradict the eager subjects earlier? Or are they
merely junior tyrants that want to decide what a reasonable regulation is.
Too bad all Rights aren't so clearly enumerated as the Second.


|A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,
|the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Yeah.. crystalclear. But only if you're illiterate.


Jasper

I wrote:

A universal dusk to dawn curfew enforced by martial law would greatly
reduce many sorts of crime.

However there are limits to what a free society is prepared to sacrifice ...

Jasper Janssen wrote:

It's good that the US isn't a free society, then. Many cities enforce
curfews for all minors, for example.

Dusk to dawn? I don't think so. My home town had a 9 pm curfew for
minors, signalled by 5 minutes of tolling the bell at Abbott Hall...

I don't know of any society that grants minors the same rights as adults.

Sheldon "Reductio Ad Absurdum" Brown
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. |
| --Robert A. Heinlein |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
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