5 year olds don't ride alone on a large road though. They are usually/should always be accompanied by an adult when riding on a road with other trafficants. Also their vehicles won't be as deadly as one necessarily operated by an older person, e.g. a car.

I feel like your view of "vehicle" is a bit black and white. 😬 There are nuances to this, of course.

I guess all this is exacerbated by the fact that America is a terrible bike country. It's a car country. So bikes are often forced to ride with cars, which is not good. But it makes sense that they should follow the same rules, because consistency is important.

It was said that "for some reason people don't know these special rules for bikes". Yeah, no kidding. Special rules are hard. Consistency is simple and predictable and the most important for safety IMO. 👍