Originally Posted by jyossarian
What would make me feel safer is if sharing the road w/ cyclists was taught in driver education so that drivers not only knew that bikes belonged on the road, but that they needed to share the road with them and be used to cyclists everywhere so they'd be on the look-out instead of seeing them and mentally dismissing them as being a danger to them as opposed to an SUV filling up their rearview mirror.
I think driver ed does teach that... it just doesn't stick with people.
I'm comfortable enough riding around NYC, but there are some dead simple things that would make life a lot safer for cyclists around town. Sorry, it prolly sounds like a bloody TransAlt press relief, but, well, I agree... Here's just a few of my top ones...
1. Ticket and summons the hell out of double parked cars and trucks, *ESPECIALLY* on main arteries. Make their wallet bleed. Take away their license if they do it more than 3 times or something. There should be no excuse for something so routine and yet illegal. Take away street parking during loading times, I don't care.
2. Give bikes and peds a head start green light/walk light. It'd give us a *legal* head start after filtering up so we could take the lane and stuff... So it makes cars/trucks wait a bit longer, what's their rush?
3. Slow traffic down more.