I don’t think an individual instance is ever a good argument for a policy change, like making all cyclists buy liability insurance. I’m sure I could find incidents where pedestrians have through their carelessness caused accidents where it would seem appropriate for the pedestrian to have liability insurance. For instance, consider the scenario where a pedestrian steps out onto a road without looking, causing a vehicle to swerve to miss them, causing an accident causing death. But again, I doubt purchasing liability insurance for pedestrians would be very expensive – so maybe this is something society could afford to do communally.

It is because cars are so quantitatively dangerous, and cause such a high amount of injuries that liability insurance for them is expensive. Less dangerous means of transportations can still cause individual accidents of great trauma, but individual instances do not make solid basis for policy.

I agree that with getting morepeople on bikes. You have not commented on injuries caused by cyclists to innocent pedestrians which was the subject of Milan and my last comments.

What do you think of the actions of the 49 year old cyclist who cycled the wrong way and struck a 56 year old woman in a crosswalk resulting in a skull fracture to her and serious head injuries?

What about the trauma caused to by a driver proceeding on a green light who kills a cyclist who runs a red light?

Like any person operating a vehicle – a cyclist has rights and duties. It is a two way street.

No society can be completely insured, we accept the externalizing of a lot of risk as a condition for a life which is not infinitely bureaucratic. While it would seem fair to ask cyclists to all individually purchase liability insurance, I think overall the result of this would be more negative than positive. The few serious injuries caused by cyclists could just be insured out of the public purse at this point – cyclists are not yet a community which is a net consumer of transportation resources, or at least they are not yet a group against which we should be placing negative incentives.

I notice this topic created considerable discussion and diverse discussion. I quite enjoyed following and participating in it.

Since this thread began 3 years ago, in my cycling area there have ben considerable improvements and addition of bike lanes – eg the Hornby Street and Dunsmuir Street bike lanes in Vancouver, a bike lane in a previously questionable 500 meter stretch on Capilano Road.

These are generally at the expense of the space previously occupied by motorists or parking. I am pleased to see this direction and applaud our municipal governments for this direction.

I continue to advocate that as cyclist we have an obligation to follow the rues of the road and to be seen as doing so, so as to lend credibility to our view that cyclists also belong on the roads.

It this case it is clearly the cyclist who is wrong in cycling the wrong way up a one way street and hitting a pedestrian. The pedestrian has suffered a skull fracture and serious head injuries. There is no excuse for this cyclist. If a motorist did this, I expect we as cyclists would condemn that motorist. I think we should also condemn this cyclist.
I do not expect that the cyclist had a criminal intent, but I wonder if the injured woman and her family take any comfort from that.

The intersection of Dundas St. W. and Huron St. is very busy as seen from the southeast corner on Wednesday. A cyclist was charged after a woman was knocked over and left with serious head injuries.

A cyclist who was going the wrong way on a one-way street when he struck a 56-year-old woman and fractured her skull will be fined $400, whether the woman lives or dies.

In a case that raises questions about the strength of the province’s traffic laws, the 49-year-old man — whose name was not released — was charged with careless driving under the Highway Traffic Act. He faces no criminal charges or jail time.

The incident occurred Tuesday, before 11 a.m., in Chinatown at the intersection of Dundas and Huron Sts., just east of Spadina Ave. The woman, who was crossing Huron on the south side, fell back after she was struck by the cyclist, hitting her head on the road. She suffered severe head trauma and was rushed to hospital, where she remains.

Police say they lay charges based on the offence, not the outcome, and there was no criminal intent on the part of the cyclist.

“If [the woman] dies that’s going to be handled in civil courts,” said Toronto police Const. Hugh Smith.

But critics charge the province’s careless driving law should distinguish careless acts that cause serious injury or death from those that don’t.

Mark Frauenfelder at 4:36 PM Saturday, Nov 13, 2010

People who enjoy getting mad will enjoy getting mad at Instructables user Aleksi for making this emergency parasitic bike pump that steals air from car tires.

None of this is surprising, given Manhattan’s thriving pedestrian culture, high population, and density. People were spilling off of sidewalks and into car traffic long before bike lanes were a gleam in the city’s eye, and likewise people were looking for creative places to park and shortcuts around traffic since traffic congestion was invented. People on bicycles, meanwhile, have simply been trying to get where they’re going in one piece.

There’s a tendency to talk about people who ride bikes as though they’re a lawless bunch of yahoos. This study is a breath of fresh air in showing that no, they are simply, like all other people, responding to an environment that doesn’t always serve their needs. When you’re driving, the extra space a bike lane offers is a matter of mobility and convenience; if you’re riding a bike, it’s a matter of being seen and staying alive.

People run red lights on bikes not out of wanton disrespect for the world’s moral order, but because when you’re riding in a sea of cars occupied by people who probably don’t notice or care about your existence, you’re much safer getting as far ahead as possible.

So it’s a relief to hear that the study’s policy recommendation to address red-light compliance is not enforcement or even education but installing more bike boxes. A bike box — basically a space between the stop line for cars and the crosswalk where someone on a bike can wait for the light to change in a more visible position — provides a safer and more comfortable alternative to running the light, rather than penalizing or reforming behavior that’s already motivated by safety.

Now think of the message that mother was sending to any cars travelling south on Avenue A. It’s unambiguous: “I act like a pedestrian, I follow no rules, I don’t care about you, and you just have to navigate around me.””

The result is decidedly suboptimal for all concerned, but mostly for the bicyclists themselves. New York needs to make a collective quantum leap, from treating bicyclists like pedestrians to treating bicyclists like motorists. And unless and until it does, bike relations will continue to be marked by hostility and mistrust.

Consider the bicyclist-bicyclist encounter, first. Most of the time, bicyclists get on just fine with each other: we’re all riding along the street in the same direction, and if you need to do it, overtaking is pretty easy. You look behind to check for cars, you might announce a polite “on your left”, and off you go.

But all of that falls apart with the introduction of the evil bike salmon, which have reached pandemic proportions in New York, even on insanely busy avenues. If you’re riding the wrong way down the street, that’s always going to be dangerous for any bicyclists coming towards you. Sometimes, it’s downright lethal. I bike up Sixth Avenue to work, which nominally has a bike lane running up its left-hand side, but like all bike lanes this one is often filled with large opaque trucks. So I need to look behind me, merge into traffic, and skirt around the truck. All of which is no big deal, just so long as I don’t run headlong into a suicidal bike salmon coming the other way, who of course I couldn’t see in advance because the truck was in the way.”