I said "most".... Your case would be the exception, not the rule. Statistically, wearing protection reduces the probability of fatality or serious injury by over 85%. Not to diminish what occurred in your case, but only to point out that in general, there is no reason for a cyclist to actually *expect* to get seriously hurt before it ever happens if they are following the law than it is for a pedestrian to expect to get hit before they cross a road where the "walk sign" has just lit up and the vehicles are all stopped and waiting for the red light in their direction.
Yes, if there isn't a safe space between you and the person in front and the person merging dives in (with or without signalling intent) then it is likely if an accident occurs they are at fault.
And this is exactly what is generally going to be the case when there is a moderately heavy flow of traffic moving in the same direction as the bicycle, and why it isn't possible for the bike to safely change lanes... hence my recommendation about just manually walking the bicycle across the road at the crosswalk on the far side of the intersection when as a pedestrian walking on a walk light, you would have full right of way.
How would that go with "I changed lanes when he was about 2 football fields behind me, and over 10 seconds later he hit me, failing to take due care."
I can tell you exactly how that woud go.. You'd get as far as "I changed lanes..." and the insurance company would rule against you. Immediately.... automatically. 100%. Every time.... you will need irrefutable proof to support absolutely any claim you could ever hope to make that the behavior of the other driver was actually unreasonable.
Just slow down, be patient, and there won't be an accident.
If you slow down to change lanes, then you only make the matter worse, and that much more difficult to safely merge.
Bear in mind that legally speaking, merging requires that you are already moving with the flow of traffic in the target lane, and that other vehicles will not need to slow down to accommodate you because of your speed (they may have to slow down to accommodate you for purposes of vehicle spacing, but because bikes move so much slower than cars, this isn't going to be the predominant factor).
Once you have merged left and taken the lane, any traffic behind you must yield right of way (i.e. slow down) to you.
*ONCE* you have merged, yes.... but if you are moving much slower than that traffic lane, then again... unless there's almost no traffic in the lane you intent to pull into, you're not going to finishing merging before the car behind you is going to feel that you've pulled in front of them. If there is an accident, all they would ever have to do is say that you changed lanes and pulled in front of them. Bam... it's instantly your fault unless either you had video evidence showing that you had signalled in plenty of time to indicate your intent, and that you had completely finished merging and were travelling safely in that lane otherwise (which is possible of the car behind you had a dash cam, and if the insurance company knows about it being there, they may ask to review the footage), or enough witnesses to the accident who would say that the fault was clearly that of the other driver and not you.
Whether they are "entitled" to use it or not is irrelevant if they cannot safely enter the lane in the first place, because cars move much faster than bicycles, preventing a cyclist from being able to change lanes from the rightmost lane (designated bike lane) to the leftmost without causing an accident that they would actually be considered entirely at fault for.
Yes, you are right... bicycles are entitled to use that lane just as cars are... but that entitlement does not also entitle a cyclist to cut off any traffic (because they move so much slower than cars) as they try to move from the bicycle lane on the right to the leftmost lane... even if it is simply because they are making a left turn.
To leave the bike lane, you still have to yield to vehicles that are not in the process of changing lanes. Since cars are typically moving faster than you, you generally wouldn't be able to do this safely unless there was absolutely no other traffic moving in the same direction (which isn't impossible, but is unlikely on a road that has high enough traffic volumes that it would warrant having a controlled intersection), and if you got rear-ended by a car while you were trying change lanes, you would be 100% at fault for the collision.The safest thing to do, in my experience, is just stay on the right hand side and manually walk the bike across to get onto the road you intended to turn onto.
Cars turning right on a green light need to yield to bicycles going straight through in a bike lane just as they would need to yield to pedestrians. Many intersections that I've seen where there are bike lanes also have a special stage in the lights for bicycles, and vehicles are not permitted to turn during that stage. It is illegal for a bicycle at such an intersection to advance when that stage is not active... just as illegal as an automobile running a red light.
Turning left on a bicycle would generally mean that you just come to a stop at the far right corner of the intersection, where pedestrians would wait to cross, and walking your bike across the street as a pedestrian when you get a walk signal. After clearing the intersection, you can get back on your bike and continue riding, completing your the left turn.
Really... it's not a remotely hard concept to grasp.
If you're a motorcycle, you should be capable of going a lot faster.... and I wouldn't have any reason to suspect that you aren't going to be trying to keep up to the flow of traffic... If I know that you are a bicycle, I know roughly what to expect of your top speed, and will try to safely navigate past you... not try to hit you just because I know that you won't damage my car. Because even if you don't make a scratch in my car's paint job, I'll still have to face all of the other repercussions of being in an accident... which would include an insurance report at the very least... plus being on the hook financially for any damages to them or their bicycle -- unless I intended to do a hit-and-run (which is a jailable offense, so I better hope there are no witnesses who can take note of my license plate).
Most accidents involving cars and bicycles are not fatal, or even particularly debilitating in the long term for the cyclist unless the cyclist was not wearing proper protective gear.
Alas, the bill in question was pushed through despite otherwise unanimous opposition within a few weeks of the conservative party obtaining a majority government in Canada.
Update:
The gender restriction rule has been removed, we thank everyone who took part in this process.
I'm betting they received enough bad press and comments about it to realize that this particular approach was not the appropriate avenue to take for being "recognized",. as they say.... as equivalent to sports.
The function of the professional license in this case is to restrict employment mobility, nothing else.
That's the spirit... who needs facts when you can just form your own opinions without substantiation? It's so much easier, after all, to believe in whatever you want to think than it is to think that there are actually simple explanations. I gave you just one possibilty... but again, why should you let perfectly reasonable ideas get in the way of forming conspiracy theories?
You'd have to prove to unemployment that what they were asking you to was to actually break contracts. Clearly, if actually doing any work for them at all would violate contracts, you would probably have to first prove that those contracts even existed, whereupon it would probably be determined that those aspects of the contracts are unenforcible or inapplicable, and your claims are void. The onus is upon you to determine which aspects of any contracts that you signed with a previous employer are valid/invalid *before* you sign on with a new employer
Where I live, red lights average about 6 to 8 minutes and the cross street's green is typically so short the first car in line can't get across w/o it turning yellow.
Are the streets where you live so wide that it takes nearly 6 minutes to cross them or something? Because these two factoids don't mesh otherwise.
A professional chauffeur needs the same kind of special license.
It's not really a big deal when it's a one-off kind of thing, but if a person is doing it regularly, then it starts taking on the appearance of being a profession.
Ask your DMV why a special license is required to drive people for profit... they'll give you a far more informed answer than my speculations could (I think it has something to do with insurance, personally).
"It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought.... should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. " -- "1984", George Orwell
While this might seem to suck, I know from first-hand inquiries that it is not possible to allow a charitable organization such as a church, for example, that has a kitchen to allow their kitchen to be used even by one of its own members for any kind of commercial purpose, even if the church receives absolutely *NO* benefit from said use. Allowing it would jeopardize the church's tax-exempt status, so it's not allowed.
Really, if you want to be a charity, then you can't allow your resources to be used by people with commercial interests. Sucks for open source organizations that want to act as charities, and I can see it being detrimental for some donations because I know that getting a tax exemption does motivate some people to donate.
But bear in mind that if tax-exemption were really the only reason or even the primary reason why people might donate to a cause or organization that they may believe in, it's highly unlikely that something like crowdfunding would ever work, and we have plenty of evidence to show that it does.
Why should they need a special license? What kind of special skill is required when driving with a passenger, that is not required when driving solo?
The context of your question, and in particular, what you state immediately afterwards about the reason suggests to me that if you were to ask the DMV that exact question (who could give you a much more enlightening answer than I could... my own speculation is that it probably has something to do with insurance), you would probably suspect the DMV to be lying to you in whatever actual answer they gave anyways, or even at best just default to the assumption that the answer is just a cover for the notion that the different classifications of drivers licenses are actually just a money grab on the DMV's part.
Of course, they make the rules. So even if it is a money grab, the law is still on their side. If that is the case, then perhaps instead of focusing on the Uber issue, one should be investigating the underlying factors that influence it... since as long as they are in place, there's going to be a conflict.
... if a person *is* driving other people to places for purposes of commercial gain, then they should probably have to get a special kind of license to do so... just like a cab driver.
And of course, there's the issue that even if you weren't making a profit, as long as you are giving rides to complete strangers, then technically, you are really just picking up hitchhikers.
So yeah.... I can kind of see the problem that they might have with something like Uber.
Most people who might be willing to take something that belonged to somebody else, especially if they felt the person wouldn't find out about it (or wouldn't notice until they had at least gotten away with taking it) are not likely to commit any kind of violent crime, even if not because there are limits on what kinds of immoral practices they might engage in, it could fall to the simple notion they would probably feel less likely to be able to successfully get away with such an act than one that is performed without anyone seeing them.
Most thefts are crimes of opportunity, and not associated with any kind of threat of violence.
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I said "most".... Your case would be the exception, not the rule. Statistically, wearing protection reduces the probability of fatality or serious injury by over 85%. Not to diminish what occurred in your case, but only to point out that in general, there is no reason for a cyclist to actually *expect* to get seriously hurt before it ever happens if they are following the law than it is for a pedestrian to expect to get hit before they cross a road where the "walk sign" has just lit up and the vehicles are all stopped and waiting for the red light in their direction.
And this is exactly what is generally going to be the case when there is a moderately heavy flow of traffic moving in the same direction as the bicycle, and why it isn't possible for the bike to safely change lanes... hence my recommendation about just manually walking the bicycle across the road at the crosswalk on the far side of the intersection when as a pedestrian walking on a walk light, you would have full right of way.
I can tell you exactly how that woud go.. You'd get as far as "I changed lanes..." and the insurance company would rule against you. Immediately.... automatically. 100%. Every time.... you will need irrefutable proof to support absolutely any claim you could ever hope to make that the behavior of the other driver was actually unreasonable.
If you slow down to change lanes, then you only make the matter worse, and that much more difficult to safely merge.
Bear in mind that legally speaking, merging requires that you are already moving with the flow of traffic in the target lane, and that other vehicles will not need to slow down to accommodate you because of your speed (they may have to slow down to accommodate you for purposes of vehicle spacing, but because bikes move so much slower than cars, this isn't going to be the predominant factor).
*ONCE* you have merged, yes.... but if you are moving much slower than that traffic lane, then again... unless there's almost no traffic in the lane you intent to pull into, you're not going to finishing merging before the car behind you is going to feel that you've pulled in front of them. If there is an accident, all they would ever have to do is say that you changed lanes and pulled in front of them. Bam... it's instantly your fault unless either you had video evidence showing that you had signalled in plenty of time to indicate your intent, and that you had completely finished merging and were travelling safely in that lane otherwise (which is possible of the car behind you had a dash cam, and if the insurance company knows about it being there, they may ask to review the footage), or enough witnesses to the accident who would say that the fault was clearly that of the other driver and not you.
Whether they are "entitled" to use it or not is irrelevant if they cannot safely enter the lane in the first place, because cars move much faster than bicycles, preventing a cyclist from being able to change lanes from the rightmost lane (designated bike lane) to the leftmost without causing an accident that they would actually be considered entirely at fault for.
Yes, you are right... bicycles are entitled to use that lane just as cars are... but that entitlement does not also entitle a cyclist to cut off any traffic (because they move so much slower than cars) as they try to move from the bicycle lane on the right to the leftmost lane... even if it is simply because they are making a left turn.
To leave the bike lane, you still have to yield to vehicles that are not in the process of changing lanes. Since cars are typically moving faster than you, you generally wouldn't be able to do this safely unless there was absolutely no other traffic moving in the same direction (which isn't impossible, but is unlikely on a road that has high enough traffic volumes that it would warrant having a controlled intersection), and if you got rear-ended by a car while you were trying change lanes, you would be 100% at fault for the collision.The safest thing to do, in my experience, is just stay on the right hand side and manually walk the bike across to get onto the road you intended to turn onto.
Cars turning right on a green light need to yield to bicycles going straight through in a bike lane just as they would need to yield to pedestrians. Many intersections that I've seen where there are bike lanes also have a special stage in the lights for bicycles, and vehicles are not permitted to turn during that stage. It is illegal for a bicycle at such an intersection to advance when that stage is not active... just as illegal as an automobile running a red light.
Turning left on a bicycle would generally mean that you just come to a stop at the far right corner of the intersection, where pedestrians would wait to cross, and walking your bike across the street as a pedestrian when you get a walk signal. After clearing the intersection, you can get back on your bike and continue riding, completing your the left turn.
Really... it's not a remotely hard concept to grasp.
If you're a motorcycle, you should be capable of going a lot faster.... and I wouldn't have any reason to suspect that you aren't going to be trying to keep up to the flow of traffic... If I know that you are a bicycle, I know roughly what to expect of your top speed, and will try to safely navigate past you... not try to hit you just because I know that you won't damage my car. Because even if you don't make a scratch in my car's paint job, I'll still have to face all of the other repercussions of being in an accident... which would include an insurance report at the very least... plus being on the hook financially for any damages to them or their bicycle -- unless I intended to do a hit-and-run (which is a jailable offense, so I better hope there are no witnesses who can take note of my license plate).
Most accidents involving cars and bicycles are not fatal, or even particularly debilitating in the long term for the cyclist unless the cyclist was not wearing proper protective gear.
Alas, the bill in question was pushed through despite otherwise unanimous opposition within a few weeks of the conservative party obtaining a majority government in Canada.
I'm betting they received enough bad press and comments about it to realize that this particular approach was not the appropriate avenue to take for being "recognized",. as they say.... as equivalent to sports.
That's the spirit... who needs facts when you can just form your own opinions without substantiation? It's so much easier, after all, to believe in whatever you want to think than it is to think that there are actually simple explanations. I gave you just one possibilty... but again, why should you let perfectly reasonable ideas get in the way of forming conspiracy theories?
You'd have to prove to unemployment that what they were asking you to was to actually break contracts. Clearly, if actually doing any work for them at all would violate contracts, you would probably have to first prove that those contracts even existed, whereupon it would probably be determined that those aspects of the contracts are unenforcible or inapplicable, and your claims are void. The onus is upon you to determine which aspects of any contracts that you signed with a previous employer are valid/invalid *before* you sign on with a new employer
Are the streets where you live so wide that it takes nearly 6 minutes to cross them or something? Because these two factoids don't mesh otherwise.
A professional chauffeur needs the same kind of special license.
It's not really a big deal when it's a one-off kind of thing, but if a person is doing it regularly, then it starts taking on the appearance of being a profession.
Ask your DMV why a special license is required to drive people for profit... they'll give you a far more informed answer than my speculations could (I think it has something to do with insurance, personally).
"It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought .... should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. " -- "1984", George Orwell
It applies equally to anyone who drives people around for profit... not just taxi drivers. Limo drivers and bus drivers are in that category as well.
While this might seem to suck, I know from first-hand inquiries that it is not possible to allow a charitable organization such as a church, for example, that has a kitchen to allow their kitchen to be used even by one of its own members for any kind of commercial purpose, even if the church receives absolutely *NO* benefit from said use. Allowing it would jeopardize the church's tax-exempt status, so it's not allowed.
Really, if you want to be a charity, then you can't allow your resources to be used by people with commercial interests. Sucks for open source organizations that want to act as charities, and I can see it being detrimental for some donations because I know that getting a tax exemption does motivate some people to donate.
But bear in mind that if tax-exemption were really the only reason or even the primary reason why people might donate to a cause or organization that they may believe in, it's highly unlikely that something like crowdfunding would ever work, and we have plenty of evidence to show that it does.
The context of your question, and in particular, what you state immediately afterwards about the reason suggests to me that if you were to ask the DMV that exact question (who could give you a much more enlightening answer than I could... my own speculation is that it probably has something to do with insurance), you would probably suspect the DMV to be lying to you in whatever actual answer they gave anyways, or even at best just default to the assumption that the answer is just a cover for the notion that the different classifications of drivers licenses are actually just a money grab on the DMV's part.
Of course, they make the rules. So even if it is a money grab, the law is still on their side. If that is the case, then perhaps instead of focusing on the Uber issue, one should be investigating the underlying factors that influence it... since as long as they are in place, there's going to be a conflict.
Pizza delivery boys don't drive passengers for profit
And of course, there's the issue that even if you weren't making a profit, as long as you are giving rides to complete strangers, then technically, you are really just picking up hitchhikers.
So yeah.... I can kind of see the problem that they might have with something like Uber.
The difference is Dish pays broadcast rights. Aereo doesn't.
Most people who might be willing to take something that belonged to somebody else, especially if they felt the person wouldn't find out about it (or wouldn't notice until they had at least gotten away with taking it) are not likely to commit any kind of violent crime, even if not because there are limits on what kinds of immoral practices they might engage in, it could fall to the simple notion they would probably feel less likely to be able to successfully get away with such an act than one that is performed without anyone seeing them.
Most thefts are crimes of opportunity, and not associated with any kind of threat of violence.