SURPRISE: I’m all in favor of bicycle licensing

bikepl8Let’s be clear what I’m talking about first. I’m not talking about a special license for people that would be required to operate a bicycle on the roads.  As as been stated over and over, most cyclists are actually already licensed drivers. What I’m talking about is a license (or registration) on the bicycle itself. Yup. I’m actually 100% in favor of this. This will probably surprise some of the motorists that like to bring this up as a requirement or them to feel like they need to share the road with me.

And I will undoubtedly piss off some of my fellow cyclists. But let me tell you why… Keep reading →

Levi’s GranFondo causes crashes … of servers.

Levi’s GranFondo spawned a significant crash before the riders even made it to the start line.  This wasn’t bicycles piling up, however.  Instead, the popularity of the ride apparently resulted in a significant outage on the first day of registration as folks rushed to ensure a place in the hugely successful event.  Despite having reportedly “planned for several times the traffic from 2010’s registration opening day” folks were unable to register, and the registration system was taken offline and postponed.

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License to Ride

I’ve received some interesting responses – both directly and indirectly – about my recent post titled ‘Anti-bike Propaganda.’  In that article, I picked random comments made by folks on various websites, forums and news posts.  All of the quoted comments – by design – had a decidedly anti-cycling flavor.

I’ve now taken some time to ponder some of the responses, and I think I’ll start selectively addressing some of the statements I collected.  The first statement I’d like to examine deals with the issue of bicycle registration, or licensing

Share the road. Make insurance mandatory along with license plates on bicycles, they can cause accidents just as cars, and be used in crimes just like cars so the laws should be made “center of the road” so it is equal for both parties using the road. Simple.

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