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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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