Thank you for engaging in an argument rather than just feeling attacked.
Cycling accidents definitely happen, and they’ve become a lucrative industry. Just look up "bicycle injury attorney" and you will see tons of ads claiming that they "have recovered over 50 million for bicycle injury clients". The market here speaks for itself. Of course, a reasonable person doesn’t set out expecting to mow down a cyclist, but accidents happen despite the traffic laws designed to ensure everyone’s safety, and, to follow your example, a 3 y/o toddler doesn’t need a license to ride her trike down the street, but there’s nothing in the law, aside from common sense, stopping the child from continuing down the street and joining a major highway. At least "a multi-ton piece of steel" is visible and moves at the speed of traffic.
What I don't understand, why is it accepted, that both pedestrians and motorists should "watch out for cyclists", yet there is absolutely no campaigns for cyclists to watch out for cars and pedestrians and to follow the law. The easiest solution, imho, is to make the requirements equal for all - if someone wants to use a public road, they should be licensed and insured.
Why do cyclists need an injury attorney when motorists have insurance? Why are there so many attorneys offering this service? High demand? Is it because personal injury law is a well paying grift? Would any of these attorneys represent a driver if it was a cyclist fault? Much harder to collect from a private person than from insurance.
You either discovered a massive unreported cause of harm to our society or you are fitting a narrative you have in your mind.
The anger against cyclists is so weird to me. Like I can relate to seeing a cyclist taking up a whole lane on highway 1 somewhere they shouldn’t be riding and me thinking, this is ridiculous, they shouldn’t be risking their own life and slowing everyone down like this (and feeling some anger). But I have only encountered this a few times and even then, it’s just a minor inconvenience… Most cyclists ride relatively responsibly through city areas and are a net positive on the community, environment, parking, traffic, city budget, etc. Look at some data instead of coming up with some narrative in your head based upon some immediate emotion.
This negative sentiment towards cyclists is real, I see it on Facebook all the time and at first I thought it was a joke. Maybe they should add a few questions to the drivers test
Insurance does whatever it can to avoid paying and having an attorney represent you is almost a matter of course.
But please continue theorizing that this zero effort google search you went in to knowing nothing about is instead evidence for a world in which there is a large market for attorneys forcing payment by cyclists causing significant damages.
Next, have your last word because this conversation appears completely disingenuous and I will not be continuing it.
> Why I don’t understand, why is it accepted, that both pedestrians and motorists should “watch out for cyclists”, yet there is absolutely no campaigns for cyclists to watch out for cars and pedestrians and to follow the law.
There are several reasons:
First, your assertion is simply not true. There are campaigns to educate cyclists, and markings for them to yield. I’ve seen them first-hand in multiple US cities.
Second, there are far far fewer cyclists than cars, therefore you need to expect there to be proportional spending. More education for drivers mirrors the (many) more drivers.
Third, cars are heavier and faster by a huge factor. Cars cause far more deaths in practice than bikes. There is a much much bigger problem with cars than there is with bikes. Over 40000 people die in the US in car crashes. As far as I can tell, fewer than 10 pedestrians die from being hit by a cyclist. The number of minor injuries of pedestrians caused by cyclists is dwarfed by the number of cyclists or pedestrians kills by cars.
Cars require way more education because they’re way more dangerous. As a cyclist, if I hit a car, I die. If a car hits me, I die. It seems really weird that your arguments are ignoring basic facts of physics and ignoring the realities and statistics of accidents and fatality rates.
Cycling accidents definitely happen, and they’ve become a lucrative industry. Just look up "bicycle injury attorney" and you will see tons of ads claiming that they "have recovered over 50 million for bicycle injury clients". The market here speaks for itself. Of course, a reasonable person doesn’t set out expecting to mow down a cyclist, but accidents happen despite the traffic laws designed to ensure everyone’s safety, and, to follow your example, a 3 y/o toddler doesn’t need a license to ride her trike down the street, but there’s nothing in the law, aside from common sense, stopping the child from continuing down the street and joining a major highway. At least "a multi-ton piece of steel" is visible and moves at the speed of traffic.
What I don't understand, why is it accepted, that both pedestrians and motorists should "watch out for cyclists", yet there is absolutely no campaigns for cyclists to watch out for cars and pedestrians and to follow the law. The easiest solution, imho, is to make the requirements equal for all - if someone wants to use a public road, they should be licensed and insured.