Joel Fishman

In my opinion, special facilities advocacy in the US is unwitting motoring advocacy, since it clears the travel lanes of bicyclists for the benefit of motorists. This is why I find it so bizarre that the anti-motorists advocate for facilities that increase cyclist crash risk, like the cycle tacks in Copenhagen (see this publicly accessible FaceBook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54796&id=1574017310&l=6d6baf5bf4
And this table in particular:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=993353&l=4c23bb70e3&id=1574017310 ), and benefit motorists by removing cyclists from the roadway. Only Kafka could fully appreciate this type of “advocacy”…

Uninsured motorists is also a US problem (that is not cycling specific, since they are a problem for anyone with whom they collide), but again there are distractions from the rights questions; the ones we are dealing with in the US. With discriminatory laws on the books, cyclists are virtually guaranteed to lose in court, as a police officer can ALWAYS cite the cyclist of find the cyclist at fault in a crash for not being at the road edge. if you don’t remove the tools of discrimination, then it makes it even easier for police and the courts to mistreat cyclists.

Regarding your friend’s death, the article implies that he died from a road hazard, and that he fell in front of the truck. We have people dying, by trying to pass turning rucks on the right at driveways and intersections, which is why some of us work at educating cyclists not to do this. Sadly, special facilities encourage, and in countries or US states where these facilities are mandatory, force cyclists to make these types of hazardous maneuvers.

Having equitable laws is a necessary, but not sufficient condion for an equitable cycling environment, and with discriminatory laws in place, cyclists are always under Bicycle Driver Apartheid and cannot make the lowest risk traffic movements.

Those who think mandatory segregation is “good” and admonish us uppity cyclists to stay in our place are the “Uncle Toms” of the cycling world, because they put fashion, popularity, and a desire for mode share above rights and the ability of cyclists to manage their own risk.

The legal situation in countries that have mandatory facilities use laws is an anathema to low risk driver behavior. I’d much rather bicycle in countries like GB or US states like NC, where bicyclists are free to operate as drivers, because I’m much less likely to be in a crash, as opposed to other countries or US states where I’m obligated to court crashes. I don’t want to interact with the courts and medical establishments, I’d much rather avoid crashes in the first place, and I can’t do that when I forced to operate at the road edge or on parallel paths/cycle tracks, where I’m much less visible to motorists.

Speaking as a cyclist in London, I can tell you that what this country specializes in: treating cyclists as second-class citizens at every level. That includes discriminatory police action and half-baked crap masquerading as facilities.

Cyclists die here under the wheels of trucks regularly. Including a friend of mine.

Also, if you are struck by a motor vehicle in this city, you better pray that it’s not one of the 13% of drivers who are uninsured.
And if the driver ends up in court, your smashed bones are less important to the law than a cigarette butt.

That is what being “treated as a driver” in the UK entails. You are unsafe at every level, at all times, regardless of whether you engage in “bicycle driving” or not. If this is the model you support for the US, I pray for their sake that it never arrives.

By the way, peppering your comments with inflammatory rhetoric about “sheep” and “slaves” does your arguments no favors whatsoever.

While there is sometimes incivility (mostly in the burbs, rarely in the urban core), I almost never have close calls that make me feel unsafe. I don’t have problems with turning cars. I don’t have problems with distracted drivers (except when I ride in bike lanes). I have had something thrown at me once. In Apopka. And I was part of a group. I have never experienced more than territorial honking while exercising lane control. If it was as you describe, I would not subject myself to it and drive a car instead. I’m not a martyr. I drive a bike because it is more pleasant, not because I have some other agenda.

Regarding distracted drivers; they are a threat to everyone, motorists, cyclists, peds, so there is NOTHING bicyclist specific, or facility discriminatory about this comment; it’s an education/enforcement issue, NOT an infrastructure issue, and it’s quite unreasonable to build a completely grade-separated clone of the existing road network for non-bicyclists as encouragement, when the road network already exists as a bicycling network!

Territorial aggression? A horn honk is a sign of weakness, not aggression. It’s an amplified whine. That the police aren’t responding to complaints about assault (thrown objects) is a police education/enforcement problem, which is also not a problem with the infrastructure. And how is this any different than when cyclists ride in the gutter. My own experience, documented with a lot of video is that motorist treat cyclists at the road edge much worse than those who control lanes.

But then again, this type of mistreatment is amplified when inadvisable special facilities, like bike lanes in an urban core with frequent crossing conflict zones or located in the door zone are present and cyclists with trafic skills instead use the travel lanes to avoid crossing conflicts. Special facilities OTOH do promote territoriality by training motorists to think (wrongly to be sure) that cyclists aren’t drivers and don’t belong in travel lanes; hence the honking.

Is this whack a mole game fun for you? We shoot down your utopian dreams and misunderstandings, and the response it to keep finding new nits to introduce. I’ll give you a little clue; it won’t wear me down one little bit. I know your MO very well, and how to deal with it.

I can hardly wait for the next rationalization of cyclists as happy road slaves, mode share ideology, sprinkled with non-sequitur anecdotes and anti-bicycle driver propaganda.

Kevin’s comment:
My experience cycling in Orlando is that it is both dangerous and unpleasant. The same design and behaviour mentalities that make it dangerous for pedestrians also make it dangerous for cyclists. Issues I have personally encountered include:
*Conflicts engineered into intersections with turning cars.
*Distracted car and truck drivers. I’ve seen talking on cell telephones, eating, and many other inappropriate behaviours while driving.
*Territorial aggression. While exercising lane control, I’ve experienced everything form honking to thrown objects. When I carefully wrote down the license plate number and description of the thrower and called the police, they were somewhat less than enthusiastic about finding the violent criminal and laying assault charges.

You also seem to be ignoring all the other factors that affect mode share, such as density, climate, topography, and demographics.

In locations in the US where such defects are “mitigated” such as 9th Ave, in NYC, cyclists on the cycle tracks have a much lower level of service because of the limited cycle times needed to separate them from the left turn phases at all the at-grade intersections, compared to cyclists who would use the roadway, except NYC has a mandatory use law that forces the use of this slow cycle track. Such is the result of forcing cyclists to the edge and then having to mitigate the safety defects of these facilities. Worse still, cities like Long Beach, are planning to clone the 9th Ave facility but unlike 9th Ave, the Long Beach streets have numerous uncontrolled driveways which the city sees no need to control.

Again we see the results of treating cyclists as non-drivers who can be forced to the road edge or onto a cycle track, like a kind of rolling ped who can be kicked off the roadway at the whim of local government. The only saving grace for the Long Beach facility is that it can be ignored by cyclists wishing to take advantage of the relative safety and higher level of service of the adjacent roadway, because CA has no mandatory path use laws.

Those of us, who operate freely as drivers and teach others to do so, have little use for laws and urban planning that seek to force us to be compliant sheep, herded into special facilities. There is nothing more green than taking advantage of existing infrastructure, and our mission is to teach cyclists, some times one at a time, to realize the benefits of the existing road network:

http://www.cyclistview.com/ITC-Intro/slide07.htm

And definitely not bicycle drivers. Only 8% of crashes involve bicyclists operating on the road and obeying the law. And almost all of those were preventable by the cyclist.

Bicyclists who act like rolling pedestrians face the same risks as pedestrians, only at higher speed with less maneuverability.

We should not tolerate the selling of facilities (of any kind) with fearmongering. All that does is make things worse for cyclists and cycling.

Kevin’s comment:
I’ve heard that before. In Amsterdam they said “Car-free zones??!! That will never work here. We’re not an Italian city.” In Toronto they said “Protected bike lanes??!! That will never work here. We’re not a European city.”

There is never any shortage of nay-sayers who come up with reasons why something cannot be done. Until it is successfully implemented. Then they go on to saying why the next step cannot be done.

I see cities around the world as falling upon a continuum. At one end are world-class benchmarks, like Amsterdam or Groningen. In the middle are cities like Paris or Toronto, that are moving in the right direction, but still have a ways to go. Unfortunately, Orlando lies at the extreme wrong end of the scale. My experience cycling in Orlando leads me to agree with Transportation for America’s assessment of Orlando’s roads as the most dangerous in the USA.

Perhaps it would be better to hold out as examples for Orlando cities like Toronto or Paris. As John Henry Newman wrote in “Lead, kindly light”:

“I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.”