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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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Vehicular cycling is a local optimum. Dutch-style dedicated cycling infrastructure is better, but you have to survive a decade or two of painted-on lanes, disconnected infrastructure, endless complaints from the drivers and other trials and tribulations until a sufficient part of the city is rebuilt to have protected lanes, protected crossings and ample parking for bikes.
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I think he’s fundamentally wrong. Like many things, it’s not about equality (which has increasingly been used to deny outcomes people don’t like) but about the physics of bicycles. Very few cyclists could hope to maintain a constant speed much above 25 mph, and to do that you’d need to be in pretty good shape. That’s about the minimum speed a car can possibly do without constantly braking. Add in the visibility issue (a small bicycle is pretty hard to spot, especially if the rider isn’t wearing hi-visibility clothing — which rarely happens) and the extreme vulnerability of the cyclist (F=MA, you’re in for a serious injury if a car hits you), and anyone looking at this from a pure safety perspective would absolutely not want cyclists “sharing the road” because it’s not possible for a small human-powered vehicle and a 2000 pound vehicle doing 45mph to “share” safely.
Coming from the perspective of someone who learned vehicular cycling techniques in order to use my bike as a practical form of transport in a place (Cambridge UK) where this made sense, there is an underlying assumption that you are cycling on city streets (reasonable - rural distances are too far to cycle) with a design speed of 30mph or less (true almost everywhere where the street plan was laid out pre-WW2). This is consistent with speed limits in towns which are 30mph in the UK and 50km/h in the EU and Canada. (The US has a 25mph speed limit in neighbourhoods in most states, but critically the street plan is designed to force through traffic onto arterial roads with higher speed limits).
From an urbanist perspective, if the traffic is moving faster than 30mph then either you are in a rural area (in which case biking is a slightly weird recreational activity, not a form of transport), on a freeway (where biking should be banned anyway and alternatives exist), or the cars are dangerously too fast.
Vehicular cycling makes a lot of sense for sober, competent, adult cyclists who are trying to get somewhere in a hurry cycling on city streets where the actual speed of traffic is 30mph or lower. In my experience, this is the only use case where cycling makes sense anyway, but I am aware that my views on urban transport (best articulated by this guy) are considered weird by both sides of the culture war.
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I hate to be pedantic about what is kind of a minor point, but F=MA is almost totally irrelevant here. What matters in a collision is (to a first approximation) the kinetic energy of the two participants, which is given by 1/2mv^2.
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In addition to what everyone else has said, this is clearly not so. Idling in D is under 5mph in everything I've ever driven, same with giving it just enough gas to not stall in 1st in a manual (I can actually idle in 1st in my truck, which has a torquey diesel and a low first gear, but generally not in passenger cars).
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The jacked-up station wagons everyone drives and EV sedans are 4000 pounds, not 2000. Larger SUVs and smaller trucks get to 5000, larger trucks are 6000, and the Hummer EV is over 9000.
Compact cars from 20 years ago were pushing 3000, and even a Miata from 30 years ago was still slightly more than a ton.
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And yet I bicycle on roads often and have for years, certainly cannot maintain 25mph, and the only serious injuries I have suffered involved no cars but rather a 0 mph hole in the ground.
Of course, if you're looking at it from a "pure safety perspective" you shouldn't be bicycling. Nor driving. You should probably just stay home .
I thought an alarmingly large percentage of accidents happen in or near the home....
And if everyone just stays home that will rise to 100%!!!
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I think he's right that, at least some of the time, bike lanes are not really for the benefit of bikers- they're used to force bikers out of the way so that cars can go faster. It seems like we've basically accepted, as a society, that you have a right to drive at whatever is the speed limit on your current street. And anyone who interferes with that is blocking traffic and needs to get out of the way. Which is a little odd, when you think about it- in normal life there's no "right to run" where you can sprint at top speed and just expect people to get out of your way. It might make sense on a freeway dedicated to motor vehicles, but even then, you'll encounter stuff like trucks going at a slower speed and you just have to wait until you can pass them safely.
I've been wondering if this will come up more in the future, as EVs have given a lot more people access to speeds that in the past you'd only see from ultra-expensive supercars. If I pay for 200MPH "plaid speed" from Tesla, why should I be stuck behind some granny going 60 in her 1980s honda civic? Make a "slow car lane" and force her to drive exclusively in that lane so that the rest of us can drive as fast as we want! Oh, and if she accidentally drifts into the "regular" lane, make her pay for the damage to my car. Or at least, that's how it feels like from the perspective of someone who got used to cycling on rural roads and is suddenly told he's not supposed to do that anymore.
We sort of already have this. Many states reserve the far left lane for passing only, and cops will absolutely pull you over and ticket you for driving too slowly in it. Speeders get a pass; those following the speed limit get a fine.
This is true, but enforcement in the US is quite a bit more notional than real, ime. I wonder what the equilibrium effects of a stricter norm around this would be--maybe slower traffic would be less disruptive if the left lane was consistently open for passing.
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Sure, but that's different because it's temporary. You wait for a safe chance to pass, gun it, then move back to the normal lane and speed once you're clear. You're not supposed to just continuously barrel along the left lane at twice the speed of the right lane, which is the equivalent of cars vs a bike lane. Of course, people do that anyway...
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Yes, because speed limits are one of the most abused tools of legislation in the modern world (over the cross-section of people affected by them).
Legislators/certain factions of society impose them for reasons that have nothing to do with safety, but forget that respect for their laws is a two-way street; drivers then treat the laws (and by extension those who insist they be followed religiously, or those who aren't capable of breaking the lowest-common-denominator speed limits due to some infirmity) with the zero respect the law affords them.
They're also a way to put the bikers in a place where drivers are expecting, or can learn to expect, them to be. Though really, it's just a hack around not having the space to put in a grade-separated lane because drivers stupid enough to be on their phones (or the aformentioned granny who can barely even see) can't lanekeep (as in, not intrude on the bike lane) to save their lives.
It still gets people killed when the bike lane empties onto the road for that reason, too; the "everything needs to be high up because people who are bad enough drivers to get into rollovers deserve to die less than the pedestrians" safety standards don't help (you can't see out of modern cars unless you make the effort; that and modern hyper-bright eye-level [if you're in a normal car] headlights are why everyone loves tall SUVs simply because tallness gives you [the illusion of] better visibility, and I'd argue that if you screw up so bad you end up on the roof you deserve to die more than the people someone else is going to run over because they can't even see them when pulling out of the drive-thru or making a right turn across the bike lane).
This is why the meta is "put things in between the cars and the bikes at the expense of road usability", because it takes away the road's ability to support reasonable speeds by putting things in the way while at the same time functionally getting a grade separation between cars and bikes. Even those fucking texters still have self-preservation instincts and you can trigger them by making the lanes so narrow that they're more scared of the F-350s and the collapsible-yet-still-capable-of-damaging-the-front-end separation pipes/rails boxing them in than they are missing the latest Facebook post for 5 more minutes.
Wouldn't you normally expect them to be in the road, like right in front of you in the easiest possible place to see? Not shunted off to the side, into their perepheral vision, in a place where you can 99% ignore them until it's time to make a turn and then "oops, I never saw him." But ok, maybe you're right that drivers are just so phone-addled these days that the periphery is the only place they can actually see. Too bad modern car designs (like you mentioned) make it exceedingly difficult to see the blind spots.
Yeah, this is a fairly significant component of practical vehicular cycling advice.
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Forester's intransigence was, in my opinion, largely an effect of his own political experience. He had been riding for 25+ years at the time the '70s bike boom started, and prior to that period there were so few cyclists on the streets that no one really gave them a second thought. He'd been doing it for so long that he was comfortable and developed his own set of best practices. When the bike boom cause the number of cyclists to swell, motorists started getting irritated, and their superior numbers led to local governments installing bike lanes and forcing cyclists to use them when available. Forester didn't view this as an accommodation but as a statement by government that he was a second-class citizen. I don't know what these '70s bike lanes were like, but I'll give Forester the benefit of the doubt here and assume there were safety problems with them that don't apply to contemporary designs. He fought back against this and got enough grassroots political power to convince local governments that vehicular cycling was better than dedicated infrastructure.
His advice is generally good for when it come to how to behave when riding on urban streets. But it really only works for the kind of person who isn't intimidated by riding on urban streets, i.e., an experienced rider who has both the equipment and fitness to maintain 20 mph and isn't intimidated by aggressive drivers. But it isn't going to convince casual riders to bike rather than drive. Luckily no one pays attention to him anymore because most cyclists weren't around for the California Bike Wars, don't know or care about the politics behind them, and instinctively feel safer when protected from traffic.
Yeah, this is a solid summary. Always interesting how these things shift over time.
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The threat does deter malicious driving, and negligent driving to some extent, but it deters it only, it does not eliminate it. And as I said in the previous thread, motorists who kill anyone (not just cyclists) and aren't drunk or on drugs and don't leave the scene usually get off without any criminal consequences. This is likely an effect of nearly everyone driving; no matter how often someone whips up a moral panic and gets consequences increased, the fact that people who drive all the time (including judges, jurors, legislators, and prosecutors) don't want "one mistake and I get raped in prison" hanging over their heads every time they get in the car tends to keep it from taking full effect.
Another thing about vehicular biking is, outside of fairly small areas of cities, is the choice is between that and no biking at all. There's no reasonable way to build up an entire separated bicycle infrastructure covering even a metro area, let along a large country; the cost per user would be enormous. Some bicycle advocates are indeed arrogant enough to demand this, but aside from a few token "share the road" signs, it ain't going to happen.
Quoted from Effective Cycling, not necessarily endorsed:
Forester would dispute the factual truth of the bold based mostly on the Kenneth Cross study. Of course, equilibrium effects and so on....
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It seems that the main difference between bikes and motorized vehicles is speed, and that's also the main difference between different types of roadways- highways go faster than main roads go faster than side streets go faster than residential streets. It's perfectly reasonable for a typical cyclist to ride on residential or side streets but not main roads, and only the most elite cyclists ever have any business going on the highway.
Honestly, highways are much safer for cycling than a lot of main roads. They tend to have wide shoulders and long sightlines, making it easier to stay out of traffic and maintain visibility. Main roads often have limited room on the side and blind curves that can send motorists a little over the edge; add in traffic and it can be pretty nerve wracking. Even country roads can be bad, because people fly on them without regard for other traffic, let alone bicycles.
i'd endorse most of this post, but ime the rural roads around me are actually pretty friendly because it's easy to pass in the oncoming lane and people are used to passing tractors going from field to field, and honestly if you're in a hurry there are state highways and interstates to take instead. obviously not universal.
My experience in midwestern corn country is that it's a big flat grid where you can pretty much see to the horizon when the stalks aren't up, see cross traffic coming from miles away, and know that there are no cops because there's nowhere to set up a trap and not enough traffic to make it worthwhile anyway. As a result, you can basically drive as fast as your balls will let you, knowing that no one will ever make it to you in time if you manage to somehow wipe out going in a straight line. Trying to drive anywhere near the posted speed limit just means you occasionally get blown past by irritated locals.
Mind you I'm talking real Children of the Corn territory, well away from population centers. The kind of countryside where roads have reference numbers rather than names and you're eerily aware that this isn't the wilderness, but isn't really civilization either. It's fantastic, you can go fast as fuck and make better time than if you were on a freeway where traffic and construction existed.
Of course when the stalks are up, you have to keep your dick in your pants a bit, but during the winter and early spring if the pavement is dry it's basically the autobahn.
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There's another rather major difference between main roads and side streets, and that's that the main roads go through. I live between two ridges; all the roads (except the highway) which cross the summits are "main streets", so is the road along the eastern summit and so is the road that goes along the valley. The side streets are mostly just little networks that either lead to the main roads or dead end without going far. The one partial exception which parallels a large section of the valley road is rather unpleasant to bike on because it's covered in speed bumps to keep people from taking it as an alternative to the valley road.
So, if you want to actually go anywhere, you will be on the main roads.
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I'm not at all sure about this (lots of main roads move pretty damn slow through town, lots of country two-lanes with driveways entering them where everyone does 70 in good weather, classification by density of access points or something like that seems a good deal more rigorous), and I don't think your conclusion makes sense either. How well slower vehicles mesh with everything else is going to depend much more on how much of everything else there is, how many lanes there are, what the shoulder looks like, and infrastructure for overtaking (passing lanes, sight lines, etc) than it will on speed alone.
Well yes, bike lanes, wide shoulders, etc, make slower bike traffic mesh better with main roads- this is probably why the main road in my neighborhood has such wide shoulders(many of the boarders cannot afford cars). But those dirt-poor boarders who need their bikes to commute to wherever they work don't go on the highway and stay out of the left lane, because they will never go fast enough and they're smart enough to take some responsibility for not getting run over.
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I am a novice to this debate, but why wouldn't two other relevant differences be stability (cars don't fall over or spill their driver/occupants onto the pavement nearly as easily as two-wheeled vehicles) and occupant safety features (seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, etc.)?
Another difference is the amount and types of data to be processed by the driver/rider.
As a person with high-functioning autism, I’ve been blessed with a computer mind and very few sensory issues. I’m a car driver with no blemishes on my record and a good feel for safety.
However, I didn’t learn how to ride a bike until the age of 21 due to severe autism-related clumsiness. The person who taught me was surprised when I wasn’t able to do with my left side what I could do on my right. He said it was the first time he truly knew I had a disability.
I wouldn’t survive a week on the bike lanes and intersections of Albuquerque.
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Besides thicker clothing and a better helmet wouldn't motorbikes be the same as bikes under this standard?
Sure.
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Hence why I said motorized vehicles, not cars. Motorcycles use the highway uncontroversially.
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