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Notes -
Some notes on John Forester and Vehicular Cycling
After the discussion on last week's cycling CW post had waned a bit, it occurred to me that the name of John Forester had never come up. Indeed, in the context of the two broadly defined "sides" in the discussion we had then, Forester stands out in a manner analogous to the early 20th century eugenicists and imperialists who essentially founded the US National Park system and comservation movement. Some of their ideas pop up uncredited in our discourse to this day, but they dramatically fail to be on either side of the current CW and probably as a result are not widely remembered by name. I am a lifelong cyclist and reasonably knowledgeable about bicycle history and had never heard of Forester until a recent troll thread on 4chan, though some of the advice my dad (also a lifelong cyclist) gave me when I first started riding for transport is pretty clearly Forester in the intellectual water supply--don't be scared of the streets, claiming the lane, staying out of thendoor zone, setting up for left turns, and so on.
John Forester was an engineer by trade and lifelong avid cyclist. The main thrust of his cycling-related advocacy was that "bicycles should be operated like any other vehicle — ridden in the same lanes and manner as cars and trucks rather than in bike lanes or separated infrastructure", a philosophical position which he called Vehicular Cycling. So far, so recognizable, you may well think. However, Forester made himself notorious for actively arguing against the construction of separated bike lanes and bike paths, often in fairly acrimonious terms. His general argument was that the very existence of a designated bikeway, even a hilariously inadequate one (in the door zone, frequently blocked, full of debris, disappearing, located in the right-turn lane but intended for through traffic, etc), would be used to force cyclists into more dangerous and less effective riding strategies, and even a bikeway that avoids these obvious pitfalls exposes cyclists to significant collision risk when it inevitably intersects with a road. Indeed, it sounds like there were a few legal battles along these lines in Forester's area of operations in the 70s. If this all sounds rather baffling to you, it may help to consider the question of whether it's safer to drive on interstates or surface streets. Kinetic energies are much higher on the interstate and it's much harder to just pull over and stop than it is on most surface streets, but interstates are well known to be safer than surface streets (see e.g. https://www.thewisedrive.com/side-streets-vs-interstate-which-is-safer/). Now imagine that, in order to make life easier for commercial trucks and keep passenger cars safe from vehicles much larger than them, it was proposed to legally limit passenger traffic to surface streets. You might, of course, dispute the analogy to cycling on roads vs bikeways, but perhaps it helps clarify the point.
As far as I can tell, nobody in the conversation uses scientific research in what those of us who are familiar with old SSC review articles would consider a convincing and intellectually honest manner, so I'm not going to bother engaging either Forester's studies (he likes to cite Kenneth Cross) or the Marshall paper from the Chi Streets link below. This being the Motte, I'll note that nobody in the conversation seems to have considered the likely impacts of 13/50 on either motorist or cyclist behavior.
Forester claims pretty plainly in his book Effective Cycling that an actually existing credible threat of severe punishment effectively deters truly negligent and malicious driving, which I dunno about. Every so often a motorist kills a cyclist and gets off remarkably easy. (I have been in online conversations about this where someone pipes up to say, well, what about cyclists who kill pedestrians? Sure, them too.). Forester actually cites a number of these cases in his book, but seems to regard them as an advocacy issue more than anything. "Other people should behave differently" would be nice in a lot of cases but is generally not a viable solution to your problem.
On the other hand, in Forester's favor, a lot of actually-existing bikeways in the US do in fact suck in one or another of the ways I've described and my experiences riding in them versus acting like a car generally agree with his. Forester himself was by all accounts an outstandingly disagreeable nerd and a pretty strong recreational cyclist; a good deal of his book is concerned with going faster, though I don't believe that part has been updated since the widespread adoption of the power meter so it's a bit of a 70s endurance broscience time capsule. His interlocutors (e.g. in my links below) seemingly all say things like "don't you know the population that's scared to ride in traffic is more Diverse?", a point which he essentially ignores when the interviewer brings it up. I suppose I take these as indicators of which side I should be on. From a more substantive standpoint, the problem of people who are too slow to ride effectively in traffic is at least somewhat mitigated by e-bikes, though I guess that's a whole different Culture War battle of its own.
Some further reading
Long interview with Forester: https://archive.is/5GwSs
FAQ from the training and advocacy organization that succeeded Forester's Effective Cycling courses: https://cyclingsavvy.org/road-cycling/
Unsympathetic from Strong Towns: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/28/why-john-forester-was-wrong-design-streets-for-the-humans-you-have-not-the-humans-you-wish-you-had
And from Chi Streets: https://chi.streetsblog.org/2020/04/24/r-i-p-john-forester-a-worthy-adversary-in-the-battle-for-safe-biking
Sure, and the special needs kids should be in the same classes as any other student, not segregated into their own classes, but free to completely shit up ordinary high school math by eating the exercise papers and wailing at maximum volume.
Holding everyone else back to accommodate the slowest is morally monstrous and more importantly, just wasting a ton of people's time for no good reason.
This may be different elsewhere, but the number of pants-on-head idiotic drivers who waste my time is... at least 1, but more probably 2 orders of magnitude greater than the number of cyclists I encounter on a day-to-day basis.
We tolerate cars that are falling apart, weaving between lanes, stopping abruptly, and just fucking around far under the speed limit whenever they want.
As a driver first and foremost I'm sympathetic to your point that slowing others down is a moral problem. Do you contend that cyclists, as a group, are more responsible for this than drivers?
If so (and I'd love to know where in the world this could be the case), is the moral problem caused by cyclists worthy of the murder and maiming visited upon them by vehicles when they use the roads?
Yes, probably. One hundred percent of encounters I have with cyclists result in me having to slow down. Single digit percent of encounters with other drivers.
No, and as such, they should get off the roads.
I understand on a per-capita basis that cyclists are going to slow you down more, but that's not the point I'm making. To inconvenience you, a traveler needs to be:
I can count on one hand the number of times I've been slown down by a cyclist in like, 2 years. The places I drive aren't particularly cycling friendly which is part of it, but I just don't see this as a problem to eliminate in any meaningful way.
It happens to me roughly half the time I drive. Just some lone cyclist holding up a queue of 5 or 6 cars. This is an old town, and the roads here aren't very wide, so even when they aren't being deliberately annoying by sitting in the middle of the lane, it's hard to pass them. They will happily skip up onto the pavement to avoid stopping at a crossing or a red light at a junction, but not to show any consideration to the line of people they're holding up by choosing to ride a child's toy on a real grown-up road.
I can't take this barb very seriously. Using your body and a simple machine to travel self-sufficiently is "childish", but cocooning yourself in a 4,000 pound air-conditioned couch for even the most trivial trip is "adulting"? It doesn't line up, and it's pretty lowbrow discourse.
Yes. Adults have better ways of doing things than children. You might as well be pogo-ing or roller blading to work.
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