Bike safety training good for the community
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We’ve all seen it on campus: the collision between a car and a bike. More often than not, the car wins. If the cyclist still can pedal, he or she might be able to ride or walk away with a few scratches and some sore body parts, but it’s not pretty.
The House of Representatives might be able to make the streets a little safer for bikers and drivers alike by amending the Driver Education Provider and Instructor Act, which would require more education about laws pertaining to bicycles during the classroom instruction of segment one of driver’s education.
Although it sounds like a good idea, apparently not everyone is sure whether driver’s training is the best place to teach new drivers rules about bicycle laws.
Keep in mind, the bill passed 74-30, and individuals such as Ken Silfven, spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, disagree with the bill.
“There’s a short window of opportunity for instructors to teach youngsters the fundamentals of driving, and that should be the focus,” Silfven said. “If you try to cram every possible issue into the course, it will become overwhelming for students.”
Driver’s training programs are full of new drivers who will soon take to the road with little experience. It might be a great idea to prepare them for everyday situations they might encounter.
If programs prepare drivers to handle a raging driver or a tractor on the road they also should include cyclists, whom drivers would be much more likely to encounter in daily life.
Both MSU and the city of East Lansing are encouraging more people to ride bikes, and with more bikes on the road, drivers need to know what to do.
One dedicated page in a driver’s training manual and some discussion time about bike safety won’t derail the entire program or make it significantly longer.
This knowledge could be seen as common sense, just as stopping at a stop sign is obvious; still, one can’t always assume people know what to do. Giving new drivers proper instruction on what to do when a cyclist enters the road would ease the nerves of everyone involved.
Cyclists need to be prepared as well because understanding the rules of the road doesn’t only fall to drivers.
According to nolo.com, a website that offers legal information, it’s a good idea to learn basic legal rules of liability as a driver and a cyclist, because the blame could be the responsibility of either party.
If a cyclist is not following road rules, such as driving against traffic and not keeping a proper lookout, he or she is to blame.
Cars are dangerous. Knowing exactly what to do as a driver or a cyclist — especially in the MSU community — will further protect and save lives. As communities encourage more people to use two wheels instead of four, they must do so responsibly.
Commentary
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Kristin
(11/12/10 9:50am)Report
Forget trying to teach drivers about bicycles. Beyond knowing that if a bicycle is in the road that it should be following the road rules, what else is there to know?
Instead, why don’t we train the bicycle riders? Train them that it’s not okay to morph from vehicle in the road to pedestrian on the sidewalk and back again on a whim. Train them that if they are going to ride in the road, that they really do need to follow the rules of the road.
Rob
(11/12/10 11:34am)Report
Kristin-
Since there is no “Bicycler’s Ed” Program that exists, training bicyclists would be infeasible. Driver’s Ed, however, already exists, and adding a bicyle awareness proponent is something that could only improve public safety. Also, we shouldn’t put up more barriers for people who wish to rely on a bike for transportation—the dangers of the road are barriers enough.
Elton
(11/12/10 8:13pm)Report
Many of the cooler & more prosperous places outside MI are moving to more biker pedestrian friendly policies, we need to also. Part of this includes drivers aware about basic things: that bikers have a right to the road, one yields to (instead of speeding up) pedestrians at marked crosswalks, when at a stop sign this means stop for cyclists too, etc. All of which apparently most licrnsed MI drivers are not aware of and can be traced to state officials clueless to a growing desire by many for alternatives to cars.
Eliot Singer
(11/12/10 8:22pm)Report
For all the pretense of promoting cycling, East Lansing is a terrible place for cyclists and pedestrians, and East Lansing’s government doesn’t give a damn, as long as it can grab positive headlines about being green, which it is not. (For those who haven’t figured it out yet, everything East Lansing government does is a self-promoting PR campaign—these people are incompetent.)
You want an educational campaign: start by getting motorists to stop at the crosswalk and to actually look both ways to see if anyone is coming on the sidewalk. And let’s train the cops to actually ticket people who go through the crosswalk or fail to yield (most of these reckless drivers are not students, who are most of the cyclists and pedestrians). East Lansing cops are the most vehicle-centric cops I have ever come across—make them walk the beat or cycle like MSU cops and they’d soon change their tune. And lets stop with that idiocy about how cyclists are supposed to share the street and not use the sidewalks. I share sidewalks with cyclists all the time and have never had a problem. But I take my life into my hands every time I try to cross at Michigan and Harrison, and that is very much the fault of government for refusing to make simple safety changes because it might make the motorists unhappy and because the people running city and state government are arrogant and stupid.
Irene
(11/13/10 3:20am)Report
Forget trying to teach drivers about cyclist? Do you know how many drivers think cyclist “have no right” to be on the road? I’ve been yelled at, buzzed, and had things thrown at me to “get off the road”. Motorist need to be aware that cyclist are allowed to be there and that their safety should be respected. That said, drivers education would be a great time to teach them sharing the road as well as the rules of cycling.(i.e. going with the flow of traffic)People who choose to bike need to know the rules as well as motorist. Too many bike commuters don’t take it upon themselves to look up the rules. If it is “too overwhelming” to learn this, perhaps they shouldn’t be behind the wheel.
I also agree with Eliot Singer. I just saw a person get hit by a car in Ann Arbor because the driver did not look for crossing people before making a left turn.
Marvin
(11/13/10 11:31am)Report
Hard to believe someone thinks teaching a new driver not to run over everything in their path should not be included in Drivers Ed.
Including more information safely manuevering a 4,000 vehicle around cyclists and life forms is definitely a step in the right direction.
BoBo
(11/16/10 2:48pm)Report
As much as I sympathize with the plight of cyclist, there’s only one lesson that counts: PHYSICS.
You and your Trek vs a two-ton motorized vehicle driven by somebody with the intellect of a Journalism major. You do the math.
In the end, no one is going to look out for you but YOU.