Cycle Law: Should Bikes Be Treated Like Cars?

Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Even this 3 wheeler that looks like a car is considered a bike.

One of the beauties of bike riding is the freedom. You buy one, or find one, and just jump on. There are no taxes, no fuel to buy and almost anything that goes wrong can be fixed by the rider. They’re also cheap enough that anyone can own one.

But should bikes be treated more like cars? Further, is it even possible to do so? Bike riding seems to be getting more and more popular, a result of green concerns, money concerns and the attentions of politicians. London Mayor Boris Johnson plans to spend £111 million on cycling infrastructure in the capital in the coming year. It might not surprise you to learn that Johnson is a keen cyclist.

So as the use of bikes explodes, and bike-sharing schemes in many European cities bloom, are we heading for a changes in the law?

Taxes

One way to pay for bike lanes is to levy a tax. This could be on sales, or something like the vehicle tax on cars. Many drivers like this idea, as they bemoan that they are giving cyclists a free ride. But road tax doesn’t exist, and there are many other taxes which pay for their upkeep, including the vehicle license of cyclists who own cars.

Also, once bike lanes are built, they require little maintenance other than stopping cars from parking in them. It’s also likely that taxation would be impossible to enforce. How would you know who had paid for what? Bikes would need to carry registration plates, and that seems unlikely. A sales tax on new bikes would slow sales and be, in these times of peak oil, political suicide. It looks like we’re safe for now.

Insurance

Car-advocates often propose mandatory third party insurance for cyclists. It is available, and it’s cheap — a testament to the difference in damage-causing capability beween a two wheeled, human powered bike and a two-ton, gas-fuelled monster.

As bikes become more common in cities, it is likely that pedestrians will start to sue cyclists for crashing into them, so insurance could be useful. But again, how would you possibly police mandatory insurance without registering all bikes and making them carry license plates? Add to this that most policies would be void the moment that a rider runs a red light of hops onto a sidewalk and you’re looking at a whole mess. Which brings us to:

Road Laws

Cyclists flout the law. We run stop lights, drive on the pavement (legal here in Barcelona, although wearing an iPod will get you a fine) and head in the wrong direction down one-way streets. All clearly illegal, but all, at times, the safest thing to do. Sure, a bad cyclist will likely do all three at once, at top speed, and give some poor grandmother a heart attack. But for the more careful rider, a slip down a one-way street can avoid a dangerous junction, for example.

It has been argued that red lights and street directions shouldn’t apply to cyclists anyway, as they are not inventions for safety but inventions to lubricate traffic-flow, specifically motor-traffic. As a bike, carefully and sensibly ridden, cannot cause a traffic jam, it follows that they should not have to abide by these traffic schemes. With the exception of driving on the correct side of the road, why should bikes obey car laws?

Roadside Assistant

As easy as bikes are to fix, not everybody want to repair a flat or gets their hands dirty on their way to work. Roadside assistance for cyclist has just been announced for AAA members in Oregon and Southern Idaho. The catch is that you’ll have to have a car to get it, as there is no standalone package for cyclists: It’ll come as part of the Plus, Plus RV and Premier packages. These start at $105 per year.

Neither will the mechanic fix it for you. He will give you a lift, for up to 25 miles, but apparently it is too hard to mend a bicycle. Marie Dodds of the AAA told Oregon Live that “There are a million sizes of tires and tubes. Our people are not prepared to repair bikes.”

This seems like an excuse: apart from removing the bottom bracket of my bike, I can repair everything on it with a multi-tool, a 15mm wrench, a pump and a puncture repair kit (slipped into a pocket made from an old inner-tube section). I can true a wheel, break and remake the chain and swap in a new saddle, all with a kit that fits into a pocket. I’m sure that an AAA van could carry everything needed in a small tool-box, and how much space does a box of different sized tubes take up?

Still, late night rescue in the rain is still a nice service to have. Or you could try the Better World Club, which has offered a bike assistance scheme for some time. It’ll cost $40, and they will even fix a puncture for you.

What do you all think? Should bikes be, legally, treated like cars, or should cars be penalized further to push people onto bikes? There are plenty of opinions, and we haven’t even started on the savings in health costs made by riding instead of driving. Have at it in the comments, and keep it clean.