Comment by gibolt
1 day ago
The real issue is all the current bad drivers. A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.
1 day ago
The real issue is all the current bad drivers. A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.
I'm from the UK, took driving lessons in the UK but then passed my driving test in the USA (in California).
The USA driving test is so much easier than the UK one!
UK: Varied junctions and roundabouts, traffic lights, independent driving (≈20 minutes via sat nav or signs), one reversing manoeuvre (parallel park, bay park, or pull up on the right and reverse), normal stops and move-offs (including from behind a parked car), hill start, emergency stop.
California: Cross three intersections, three right turns, three left turns, lane change, backing up, park in a bay, obey stop signs and traffic lights.
My understanding is that the USA test is so much easier because it's hard to get by in most of the USA without a car, so if the test was harder people would likely just drive without a license instead.
Not to mention no stick shift. The driving test from hell in hilly Adriatic cities: parallel park facing downhill
To be fair even people who have been driving many years do this by grinding up the clutch.
>To be fair even people who have been driving many years do this by grinding up the clutch.
What would be the alternative? There's no other way to inch uphill than to grind the clutch. It's fine as long as the engine stays below ~2000 rpm.
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It depends on the area. My (rural) test was harder than your CA one. My test was easier than many of my big-city friends' tests.
But I've heard of areas that's it's easier, too, like your CA experience.
have you taken the maryland test? no road test. an obstacle course
Similarly, when I did a US driving test (with a UK license), the examiner himself commented on the relative difficulty.
Complete unrelated, I just wish every driver on the road re-learn that cyclists have the same rights of being on city roads like cars.
How this issue skews probably depends on where you live, but in the area I live, I have the opposite complaint: that bicyclists should re-learn that they are legally required (in my city) to ride on roads, rather than barrelling down sidewalks.
That said, this is coming from me as a pedestrian, so maybe someone who was primarily a driver would have a completely different take from both of us.
I don't personally care whether bikes (or scooters) ride on the road or the sidewalk, but my one ask is that:
If they ride on the sidewalk, they should behave like pedestrians. That is, do not blast into the crosswalk at 20mph (impossible for drivers to safely check for in most environments), do not randomly enter the road from the sidewalk, pass pedestrians at a respectful speed and distance, etc.
If they ride on the road, they should behave similarly to motorists. That is, actually obey stop signs (rolling stop, or even treating it like a yield is okay), and actually obey traffic lights.
I'll even tolerate transitioning from one to the other at appropriate traffic stops. Just please don't get upset if I almost run you over for abruptly taking right of way you never legally had.
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Where I live, there are definitely places where I end up cycling on the sidewalk, because it would be nigh-suicidal to actually take my bike on the road.
But I don't go barreling past pedestrians, and make sure I give them the right of way.
I have noticed a huge uptick in agressive behaviour from motorists over the past couple of years. By huge uptick, I mean behaviour that I used to see once every couple of weeks I am new facing multiple times daily. Quite bluntly, the politicians in my area are enabling life endangering behaviour towards cyclists by blaming cyclists for traffic congestion that have nothing to do with cyclists (e.g. road construction projects for motorists, or waterworks or building construction that have nothing to do with cyclists).
While I am sticking to the roads, I don't blame other cyclists for seeking refuge on the sidewalks.
Has your city made an effort to make it safe and attractive to ride on every street?
Or is that a de-facto ban on cycling.
And I wish cyclists would re-learn that pedestrians have more rights of being on sidewalks. That said, the bigger plague on sidewalks are e-scooters.
Additionally, most cyclists I see never stop at stop signs no matter how busy the intersection is.
That's the "Idaho stop". You're moving at speeds slow enough to be easily able to check for traffic without stopping, plus losing inertia as a cyclist is much more annoying (and arguably even dangerous) than for a car.
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In many places cyclists are not required to stop for stop signs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop
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> And I wish cyclists would re-learn that pedestrians have more rights of being on sidewalks.
That's not universal, but I do wish they would just learn those laws for their state.
In my state, they have equal rights, and that is that no one has the right of way. If you run into someone, it's your fault full stop. If you couldn't stop in time, then you were travelling too fast for the situation. If someone is blocking the sidewalk, they're a dick, but you can't do anything about it without getting arrested except to find another way around.
Also, if you're on a bike and about to pass a pedestrian, you must give an audible (to the ped) signal so as to warn of your approach. Even then, if you hit them, it's because you were going to fast to stop safely in case they wandered into your path.
I love the laws in my state regarding shared cycling/pedestrian ways, and sidewalks in particular. Very reasonable and fair.
Cyclists contribute to congestion and occupy road space that was created through taxes on motorists while paying nothing for these benefits.
Cyclists are not licensed and their bicycles are not tagged or inspected for safe operation on roads, unlike motorists.
Cyclists are rarely subjected to traffic law enforcement despite demanding all of the rights that motorists pay for and are licensed for.
Cyclists are a danger to themselves and others while operating in the same area as motorists, but are not required to carry insurance or wear safety equipment, while motorists are held to more stringent regulation.
In a nutshell, cyclists are free-riding risk takers who are arrogant to boot. When they start acting like motorists and pay taxes like motorists and are fined like motorists for violating the law, I will happily change my opinion.
> Cyclists contribute to congestion
How many cyclists can fit in a space of one car? Or, would you rather that every cyclist was in a car instead? Would that increase or decrease congestion?
> occupy road space that was created through taxes on motorists while paying nothing for these benefits
So roads get funded in full by motorists and cyclists can't possibly also own motorized vehicles and they don't pay tax that definitely doesn't contribute to the roads that they surely wear down at a rate that's not on the order of tens to hundreds of thousands lower than cars. Oh and 16 lane highways are built because of all the damn cyclists clogging up the roads.
> Cyclists are not licensed and their bicycles are not tagged or inspected for safe operation on roads, unlike motorists.
A cyclist on the road is only a danger to himself. A motorist can mow down a school trip on a pedestrian crossing on a whim.
The latter two points just repeat the above. Yes, driving a 2 ton machine at 80 mph is going to have be a little more restricted than a 20 kg bicycle at 20 mph.
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I do pay taxes, just like a motorist might. Where do you live that you think your car or your gas is taxed in a way that contributes to road upkeep? In the US gas taxes haven't been upped in decades, roadways are maintained out of the common coffers (incl. large federal incentives which come straight out of your income tax payments).
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Motorists __DO NOT COVER__ the costs of roads. Your existence as a motorist is entirely subsidized. The cost of driving is borne by government and society. Road infrastructure, maintenance, and space for cars is actually insanely expensive.
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Yep, including not being allowed to run red lights. It would also be great if they had license plates so you could easily report dangerous behaviour.
Which state are you in? There are a lot of US states (like, more than 10) where cyclists specifically are permitted to go through red lights in some circumstances.
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> It would also be great if they had license plates
Lol, like hell it would. The supposed "danger" is not worth more legislation and overreach.
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At some intersections the sensor loops literally never activate for bikes (especially carbon bikes with very little metal). If you don't run the red light then you'll be stuck there until a car happens to come along and trip the sensor for you.
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I just wish every cyclist would re-learn that they're bound by the same traffics laws as every driver on the road. I'd bet accidents are more often than not mostly their fault.
There is no US state where the traffic laws for cars and cyclists are identical. Where are you located that they are?
> I'd bet accidents are more often than not mostly their fault.
That's actually not true. Most surveys I've seen show that drivers are at fault ~80% of the time.
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I would support re-testing on some interval like every 5 years. That said, so much could be done to make the environment safer. Lower speeds, more traffic calming, safer intersections, safer alternatives (public transit, walking, bicycle).
I can't help but think about the failures of basic human-oriented infrastructure when I can't safely ride my bike to the grocery store 2 miles from my home. I don't know what it'll take to change this in our cities, and it feels like an uphill battle when seemingly very few people care about problems like these.
"Safely" is a subjective term. Plenty of motorists are injured in MVAs on 2 mile drives to get groceries too. What cyclists should pursue is an accident rate equivalent to cars, per hour in traffic.
Everyone agrees to this, the problem is there needs to be a way for this to be done efficiently so it's not another regressive tax on poor people's time and money.
I think the US at least does sight tests periodically? The UK still doesn't do that, you're required to have decent vision to drive, but the license renewals are just paperwork, pay the money and click a web form.
There is talk in the UK of requiring sight tests for the elderly. Historically UK licenses required frequent renewal, when they were centralised for convenience they ceased to have a renewal step, and it was kinda-sorta reintroduced much later once they had photographs because of course a 40 year photo is unrecognisable. But because of the focus on photographs the renewal step is integrated to passports, and is a chain-of-likeness documentation process. If I look a big greyer than last time in the photo I upload, pay, wait a few days, OK, some mix of humans and machines says that's the same guy as the other photo except older, replace image, print new ID.
Since it's aligned with passports (which also care about image similarity) there's no room in that step for like "Do your eyes still work?" let alone "Do you know what this fucking sign means?" or anything resembling mandatory continuing education.
> I think the US at least does sight tests periodically?
Depends on the state because drivers licenses are their remit.
Yeah the mindset is essentially drive to spec in the test and then skirting the law from then on.
I think a lot about this (bad drivers) and I’m not really sure how to fix it since I think it’s really a problem of underlying selfishness and perceived-exceptionalism mixed with overestimation of skill.
Nailed it.
Mostly the selfishness part. The whole idea of being courteous with other people on the road just doesn’t exist.
Sadly, this also extends to bicyclists. Entitled instead of courteous.
cars can easily be programmed to detect bad driving.
> A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.
1) Are you going to fund that? Because it means a significant increase in testing examiners.
2) The data say over and over and over that the single best traffic safety enhancement would be to ban drivers until they are 21. People have to be in their 80s(!) before they are as bad as drivers in their teens and early 20s.
1. The people who want to drive should fund their own testing. This is how it works for every other heavy equipment operator's license.
2. Sounds good
1) could reasonably be self funded. $150 per driver every 5 years is a rounding error compared to all the other costs of car ownership.
2) how much of this is because the drivers are young, and how much because they are inexperienced? If you ban teenage drivers, your 22-year-old drivers will still be inexperienced.
Is that because they're young, or because they're inexperienced?