What if all road users were treated as if they mattered?

I've been thinking a lot about how screwed up our thinking about energy and transportation is lately, as the signs of peak oil and the permanent transition to a much lower energy economy become stronger and stronger.

A post about bikes as tools vs. bikes as toys at a bicycling blog helped crystallize something I've been mulling over -- how do we undo the damage caused by the "Driver's Ed" moment that serves, for most people in our society, as the only clear dividing line between childhood and adulthood? That is, people think of bikes as kids' toys and cars as "adult" because you have to take a special class and pass a test to drive a car.

How about we reorganize our thinking and start licensing people to use the roadways instead?

That is, instead of giving people a license to drive, we create a single roadway user's license with various endorsements for various modes -- so if someone wants to use the roads on a bicycle, they get the basic roadway user's license; if they want to add a motorcycle endorsement, they can use the roads on a motorcycle; and if they want to add an automobile endorsement, then they can drive a car (and so on up through commercial vehicle licenses ...).

The point being that everyone (except those waived due to physical disability) who wants to get one of the motorized endorsements has to get the basic license first, which teaches how to be a basic non-motorized road user and tests the person's ability to ride a bike safely. We wouldn't have to use the DMV -- schools and community groups (YMCA, Scouting organizations, neighborhood centers) could be trained to administer the tests and grant the basic license to anyone 10 or older, upon completion of a basic course of instruction, and it would provide safety training, basic rules of the road, explain the helmet and its use, etc.

You could exempt current motorized license holders if you think teaching older folks how to be bicyclists is too much to ask (although I think we should not).

I think this would help people's thinking a lot -- they would start to see that bikes are valid road users, and it would sure help bike safety if every motorized road user had firsthand experience as a bike-only user.

A comment further down in the original thread made some interesting points:

As a Dutchman it is very strange to read something like this. For us a bike is first a mode of transport and then a toy, not the other way around. I guess that’s because bikes were an established mode of transport here long before cars became affordable.

To get people to use bikes as tools you need more than available utility bikes. You need a change of mind.

In the Netherlands where I’m from school kids can voluntarily enroll in a theoretical and practical traffic course and test. The practical test is of course done on a bike. In the Netherlands most kids take the bicycle to school, so most of them take the test. This early start is invaluable, because it teaches the bike as a mode of transport.

It is a fact that cyclists are more vulnerable than car drivers. So car drivers need to be very aware of cyclists, and/or you have to separate bicycle and car traffic. We’ve done both.

Holland is riddled with separate bicycle paths, which makes for much safer and nicer cycling. Even if the drivers are mindfull of cyclists, it is unnerving to have cars zoom past you with a 40 mph speed difference.

The best ways to make drivers aware of cyclists are driver education and to give the latter enhanced legal protection. In the Netherlands in case of an accident between a car and a bike, the driver of that car is assumed to be responsible for the accident unless he can prove that the cyclist acted recklessly. This makes drivers much more mindfull of cyclists.