Car insurance

Bookworm Room » In England, another move to drive cars off the road

by Bookworm

Yesterday, while in San Francisco, I nearly got run over by a cyclist who ran a red light.  There was nothing new about this, except that I was a more vulnerable than usual position, being on foot.  Normally, I’m a driver, desperately trying to avoid bicyclists who run red lights, ignore stop signs, shoot across intersections, and drive in the middle of the lane on 45 mile per hour roads.

Not all bicyclists, of course, ignore the rules of the road, but a good number do.  What’s interesting is that it seems as if the statistical likelihood of fault — bicyclist’s or driver’s — may have a strong connection to whether riding a bike is a political act or a simple means of transport.  In Toronto, it appears that drivers are usually at fault in bike/car accidents .  In the San Francisco Bay Area, however, where bicycling is an aggressively political act , the numbers are turned on their heads, with bicyclists being at fault twice as often as drivers when bikes and cars collide.  I, of course, drive in the Bay Area, an area that is becoming increasingly known for its scary, aggressive bicyclists.

I think England is soon going to become one of those areas in which bicyclists rule the road.  Its government is on the receiving end of an aggressive campaign to bring England into line with the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, all of which hold,

Motorists should be made legally responsible for all accidents involving cyclists, even if they are not at fault, Government advisers say.

Cycling England, an agency funded by the Transport Department, wants the civil law to be changed so the most powerful vehicle involved in a crash is automatically liable for compensation or insurance claims.

The proposal will infuriate drivers, many of whom are angered by the antics of so-called ‘Lycra louts’ – cyclists who sail through red lights, go the wrong way up one-way streets and intimidate pedestrians on pavements and zebra crossings.

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