OK, OK — this is not a fair comparison, but in writing about today’s scheduled inauguration of D.C.’s self-service bike rental program, I have to begin with Vietnam.

My daughter Rose and I were in the coastal city of Hoi An, on the South China Sea. We wanted to visit the Buddhist shrines at Marble Mountain, about 30 miles down the coast. We asked to rent motorbikes from a few men across the road from our hotel. We haggled them down to 100,000 dong, or about six bucks. They gave us keys and helmets, we zoomed off, visited the shrines, returned two hours later. Done deal.

When I subscribed to the SmartBike DC program, the price was right. For $40 I get a card that will allow me to grab a bike in one of 10 locations in downtown, use it for up to three hours, and return it to another. But I also had to agree to a contract with 215 clauses that boil down to this: You are totally responsible for the bike, and if you get hurt for any reason, don’t expect SmartBike or D.C. to be responsible.

Welcome to America, land of litigation.

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I signed and forked over the $40. I can’t wait to try out the program, which is the first of its kind in America. This bike rental system started in France and spread to Spain and Scandinavia. Paris has one.

Being a longtime cyclist, I am a fan of any program that will get people pedaling on two wheels. Major shout-out to Jim Sebastian, manager of D.C.’s bike and pedestrian programs, who with many others brought SmartBike to life. Let’s hope it expands and gets cars off the streets and makes us all svelte like the Parisians.

But I have a serious reservation: Has the city prepared bikers and drivers for the kind of confrontations that have led to warfare in other cities? From the San Francisco Bay area to New York City, cyclists and motorists are crashing into one another with bloody results.

“I don’t see that happening here,” Eric Gilliland, executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, told me when I asked about the coming conflict. WABA offers classes for schools and adults on bike safety. He worries that cyclists won’t signal or be seen; he fears that drivers won’t respect the rights of cyclists to share the road.

And he did relate the story of the cyclist who was hit by a driver who took a right turn into him on Independence Avenue recently. The police followed the biker to the hospital and gave him a ticket for riding on the sidewalk.

“We’re meeting with the police Friday to talk about enforcement,” he said.

Seems to me the city, especially our uber-cycling Mayor Adrian Fenty, owes it to both drivers and bikers to prepare the streets for more two-wheeled traffic.

In Vietnam, besides being less lawyered, cycling is accepted and respected. It will take education and patience to reach that level of enlightenment here.

E-mail Harry Jaffe at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.