BICYCLES-CARS-PEDESTRIANS and TRAFFIC LAWS
It should be obvious to car drivers that the number of bicycles on the road is increasing. Cities like New York, Washington and Toronto have begun the process of putting in dedicated bike lanes. It is not an easy process as car drivers are not happy and a lane is taken away from car traffic. If you drive along a major street you can see literally 100`s of bikes locked in to lamp-posts or bike racks .It is not the first time there was a bicycle boom, as in 1974-76 ten speed bikes sold in those years even more than autos. At that time the boom ended. There is a question I would pose. Why do people ride bikes and of course in this case I refer to adults. The simple answer is there is no one answer. What comes to mind it is cheaper, is environmentally friendly , you get to exercise and last but certainly not least there is no problem finding a place to park.
But like all things in life, there is a price to pay for more bike riders, and the price is not cheap because it involves accidents and human lives. I have not ridden a bike for many years, but the average biker as I have observed does not give a hoot for traffic laws. Most bikers do what they want and many accidents and loss of life have been caused by bikers and in many cases the victims are bikers themselves. What do bikers do to break the traffic laws? They ride on the sidewalk, they go the wrong way on a one way street, they go through stop signs , they ride over pedestrian crosswalks when there are people on them, and they do not obey traffic lights. The irony is they do not have any protection when they fall off their vehicle in an accident. Bicycles do not require registration, licence plates, vehicle insurance and a drivers licence. This makes some sense as in the past bicycles were mostly used by children under 18 years old. The only law I see that is regularly obeyed, is they must wear helmets. In theory they must have proper lighting and obey traffic laws but it is not enforced. But the Ontario Government has recently passed laws that affect cars and their relationship to bikes. Car drivers must leave a minimum of one metre when passing a bike and there are fines for non-compliance of a total of $110.00. There is an offence called “dooring” which can cost the car driver $365.00 and involves opening a car door in front of a bike. Laws that apply to car drivers are ignored by bikers here in Ontario. In Germany wearing ear phones, riding through red lights and riding on the sidewalk can bring on fines to the biker and riding side by side is illegal. They even have fines for biking and drinking. It is obvious that bike use is taken seriously in Germany and that will have to happen here in Ontario or the bike car accidents will increase. Exactly what Ontario should do is complicated because of the number of children using bikes and there is no such thing as bicycle licences and bike driving permits There are many more bikes in use and expect accidents unless action is take by the government and even then with more vehicles there will be more accidents.
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