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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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