Share the road, share the responsibility.

I love mountain biking, I head out for a quick two hour ride all the time. I just put in my headphones and ride. I know the basic safety rules I know uphill has the right of way, I know stacked up rocks means that’s where the trail is when cruising on the slickrock, all in all I know my stuff, well at least I thought I did. During a nice quick ride I rode up to some old women on horses about my grandma’s age. I gave a nod and started riding past then I heard yelling over my blaring music, I took my ear buds out and noticed that their horses were getting pretty nervous and moving around with anxiety, the women started telling me that horses think you’re a predator and riding past them can cause them to kick you or buck us off their back. I felt pretty stupid and I was very apologetic. I told them that no one ever explained to me this and I wont ever do that again. I continued on my ride but I didn’t forget about my stupidity and that’s what led me to my revolutionary idea.

Requiring licenses to operate anything that can cause risks on public roads and public lands this includes but not limited to, road bikes, dirt bikes, 4 wheelers and mountain bikes. I’d like to start out my argument by first off not by explaining my idea but by talking about past laws and regulations that it relates to. When cars came out it took a while for us to realize there was a danger behind them, people started getting hurt and killed due to negligence. Even with all these dangers It took them till 1913 to mandate the first license for the operation of a car that’s 25 years after the invention of the gas powered vehicle. The similar story goes for airplanes and forklifts. So if we as a society felt like it was a priority to regulate activities that can cause risk and injury to ourselves and others I believe we need to start regulating and issuing licenses to all gas powered vehicles and bicycles who use public roads and public lands, and enforcing it by tickets to citizens from park rangers and police.

There is two ways I can think we can change this, one is going through the government lobbying for a change and getting laws passed so that on our driver’s license we will have it marked what type of vehicles we are qualified for whether it be mountain bike, road bike, 4 wheeler, dirt bike..etc. The other route we could take is through the private industry. We could petition the idea of insurance company’s providing classes on four wheeling, road bike safety etc. If we could prove that education on these inherently dangerous recreational activities lowers injuries and deaths then insurance companies would agree that it is in their best interest to educate their customers.

They could do this three ways, providing a lower insurance rate to those who have taken the courses, Making it mandatory for them to have taken the course in whichever activity they got hurt doing for their accident to be covered and finally the most ideal insurance company’s could save even more money if the courses were required by law since the expenses of implementing the idea would be on the government not them and since industry has a better hold on the laws passed they could lobby congress to pass laws requiring courses to be required.

What exactly do I have in mind for a course? Well it’s not some long expensive class like a regular drivers course. It would just be a simple 4 hour course similar to hunter’s safety. Once we are qualified we are qualified for life, this is a easy change and that four hours course could do wonders for the environment. Most environmental damage is done in negligence; we just aren’t educated on what is right and wrong. in a simple short course it could teach everything someone needs to know. Its just another benefit and selling feature for insurance companies to require the course that they care about the enverment and are being active in finding solutions to help. I should make it clear the first priority of the courses would be safety, how to handle the vehicles correctly and teaching right of way.

The road cycling course would cover simple maintenance like how to fix a flat tire, how to tune a brake and gears. Since cars have to work properly to use roads why would bikes be a exception? The course would also cover rules of the road, right of ways and the importance of helmets and protection. There’s a common saying among cyclists they say “share the road” I would say that is only half of a sentence the rest is “share the responsibility” Share the road, share the responsibility. If cyclists break traffic laws they should be held just as accountable as a motorized vehicle. With traffic tickets, mandatory lights and helmets.

Four wheelers, motorized dirt bikes and mountain bikes would have a course that would stress the importance of staying on the trail and inform the riders of the consequences of breaking that rule which would include the fine information and a explanation of the environmental damage it causes. It would also teach a few basic skills to improve riders off road skills. All of these could be taught together and under a off road vehicle course.

All in all there might be a few things in my argument that they could say should be changed or fiddled but I think as a whole we agree that a change needs to happen. Safety and the environmental are getting pushed to the side just because we are too lazy to give some initiative and change things, we need to get educated.