Avoiding Accidents On The Road



I think the bike lane should be installed in all main roads for the protection, not only of the riders but also of the vehicles particularly the new cars which are prone to dents and scratches that may cause by riders.

Besides this, there should also be more serious penalties for motorists caught parking or driving in the bike lane.

I lived in New York City for most of my life, and riding your bike there was a disaster. Then, they recently added bike lanes to most areas, in hopes that it would reduce traffic accidents and encourage more people to commute on their bicycles.

Well, soon a new issue erupted. Motorists were showing absolutely zero respect for bike lanes. Motorists driving, parking, and stopping in bike lanes made and still makes riding in NYC a nightmare. Lanes are only effective if people respect them and rules are enforced.
 
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Besides this, there should also be more serious penalties for motorists caught parking or driving in the bike lane.

I lived in New York City for most of my life, and riding your bike there was a disaster. Then, they recently added bike lanes to most areas, in hopes that it would reduce traffic accidents and encourage more people to commute on their bicycles.

Well, soon a new issue erupted. Motorists were showing absolutely zero respect for bike lanes. Motorists driving, parking, and stopping in bike lanes made and still makes riding in NYC a nightmare. Lanes are only effective if people respect them and rules are enforced.

Parking in bike lanes is also what I see here. I remember posting a picture of that in this site where a car was parked right on the bicycle lane. In the olden days, there was a campaign on the awareness of road-sharing. That you do not own the road so you should share it with the other users. But now, the roads here are in chaos with the 2-wheels, 4-wheels and big vehicles all in a scramble for front position. There are roads here with bike lanes but there is no enforcement so the bike lane has no benefit to the public at all.
 
By obeying the road rules you agree to keep yourself off trouble. By sandwiching yourself between two moving vehicles you risk being hurt. A small mistake might even result to a very fatal accident. You also risk being fined heavily if you do not obey road rules.
That's right, Road rules is not for the government, it's for all the drivers,for our own safety. The government can do is just to implement this rules and educate the drivers to follow this rules.
 
Besides this, there should also be more serious penalties for motorists caught parking or driving in the bike lane.

I lived in New York City for most of my life, and riding your bike there was a disaster. Then, they recently added bike lanes to most areas, in hopes that it would reduce traffic accidents and encourage more people to commute on their bicycles.

Well, soon a new issue erupted. Motorists were showing absolutely zero respect for bike lanes. Motorists driving, parking, and stopping in bike lanes made and still makes riding in NYC a nightmare. Lanes are only effective if people respect them and rules are enforced.

Yeah we have that happening even in a small city of Fort Wayne where I live, but here the cops won't ticket anyone for driving, parking or stopping in a bike lane. Heck I've seen, howbeit rarely, motorcycles and scooters on bike paths! I once saw a Smartcar (which I call Dumbcars) going down a bike path!!

Having bike lanes don't do a damn thing for the safety of a cyclist if the cops are ticketing people every time a motorist is using the lane illegally. This is why have a problem being a tax payer paying taxes for lanes, and even paths but that's a different story I get to in a bit, if the cyclist can't use it and feel safe on it.

Ok, so why am I not for paying taxes out of my gasoline taxes for bike paths even though I'm a cyclist? Because on average a bike path is only used by about 1.5% of the population, that percentage is low because most of the US is in a snow belt, only the sun belt states have higher usage but the average I quoted is nationwide. It also costs on average $130,000 per mile to build a 5 foot bike lane, a separate 5 foot paved bike path cost about $220,000 per mile. Where I live in Fort Wayne Indiana we have a total of 80 miles of separate paved bike paths, I couldn't get the cost per mile from the city but lets assume the average of $220,000 per mile, that means it cost $17,000,000 for those paths and that's just in one small city (Fort Wayne is considered a small city but larger than a town), I can't imagine what the cost would be for a larger city, and with larger cities the costs goes up because real estate is more expensive.

So what am I saying? I saying that gasoline taxes should only be used for building and maintaining roads and not bike paths and lanes. When I buy gas I pay taxes to make sure that my highways are done right, but when I'm riding a bike I'm not paying taxes to keep my bike running. This is why I think that there should be either an additional say 10% tax added onto new bike sales, or a registration fee mounting to the same amount that would go directly into a fund for building bike paths and lanes. I know some of you are thinking but that's not fair because than people won't buy better bikes, nonsense! People want what they want, the biking industry figured this out too and that's why they can charge $8,000 for bike that has maybe 1% of the technology you can find in a brand new $8,000 motorcycle! The cycling industry is ripping us off and we don't care, so another 10% for taxes to build paths and lanes isn't going to stop people from buying bikes or force them to buy a cheaper bike. And if the 10% was a fee instead of a tax they could entice us with marketing that says the fee is a one time registration fee that registers the bike's serial number on a national database so that if the bike is ever stolen and later recovered they can match the serial number up find it was marked as stolen and returned to the owner. If some of you are still crying over this will stop because I don't hear any of you crying over spending taxes at the pump!