A licence for license

So many more young people, particularly in the central city (Downtown and Inner Rings), are choosing not to get driver’s licences because they’re not getting cars – or at least putting it off until later in life.*

So when, asks a friend, do they learn the rules of the road?  When do they go through the collective experience that getting a licence entails – and learn the respect for the other drivers who had to go through the same induction?  Obviously, they don’t.

That, obliquely, connects to cycling.  How?  Well, we don’t any longer (and unlike the northern Europeans) put young people through a ‘how-to-cycle’ experience, where they would learn a similarly collective respect for the other.   Instead, we just throw cyclists into traffic, where they’re expected to survive using their own smarts, or rely on a foolhardy belief in their own immortality.  And they have a very improvised approach to those ‘rules of the road’ that were never designed for them in the first place.

Hence, the irritation so many drivers express whenever the subject of cycling or bike routes come up.  Immediately they have an anecdote of some yahoo on two wheels, and conclude that cyclists should only be catered to after they’ve cleaned up their act.  Or that they should have to be licenced.  Just like them.

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* “Statistical evidence recently released in America indicates that young people are driving less and fewer own a car. Young people are opting to catch public transport and Richard Florida believes that this shift away from driving is a positive sign of innovative change. … ” (More here.)