Why Laws Banning Cyclists from Wearing Headphones Miss the Point. Eric Jaffe, CityLab
The issue here really isn’t about creating parity with distracted driving laws. People who ride a bike wearing headphones are primarily putting their own safety on the line, not someone else’s. Nor is it about pedestrian protections; there are already rules in place to keep negligent cyclists from slamming into people on sidewalks or in crosswalks. It’s about finding ways to make city streets not only safe for everyone but particularly attractive to people who choose not to drive.
There are, as you can see, several flaws in the logic behind these arguments.
Actually cyclists wearing headphones are putting others at risk as well. What the author refuses to recognize is that many, although certainly not all, motorists ARE attentive to cyclists and could be put in imminent danger were they forced to swerve to miss a cyclist who is not paying attention because they are intent on listening to "Hello".
Using the author's logic here however you would have to make the same argument against seat-belt laws, helmet laws and laws mandating reflective clothing. After all, the people who don't do this are "only putting themselves in danger" correct? (As an aside, I'm not a fan of these laws because they REALLY are just people putting themselves in danger)
The "there are already pedestrian protection laws in place" argument doesn't really work either. Because there are distracted driving laws on the books in most State's which prohibit driving while not paying the proper attention. i.e. talking on a cell phone. I don't hear many in the anti-car community talking about the sufficiency of those laws.
Nor should our "public safety" laws be skewed toward or against people riding bikes on the streets. The laws should be designed so that all users are to operate their vehicle, or persons, safely. NOT, as the writer envisions, to encourage a mode of transportation that he thinks is sorta, pretty cool because the Europeans do it (or something).
What is REALLY going on here is that the Statist, New-Urbanist crowd is now looking down the barrel of the regulatory State and are not finding it attractive when the restriction sites are firmly set on things that they like.
In reality, the laws banning cyclists from wearing headphones hit the intended mark exactly. They are designed to provide the State with even more power and say over what choices we make in our daily lives. They are designed to do this behind the veil of "public safety".
A simpler solution is to have the police enforce distracted driver laws as distracted vehicle operator laws. Cyclists should be required to maintain the same focus on their surroundings as are drivers of motor vehicles. Their inattention could lead to thousands of dollars of property damage or unintended injury or even death of other road users.
Quite frequently the answer is not to pass a new law, but to make better use of the ones we already have on the books that are designed to do the same thing if enforced properly. In many cases, the answer might be to either repeal or limit an existing law to prevent prosecution (or, in extreme cases, flimsy rationales to conduct searches) for the suddenly scorned upon crime of being stupid.
