Which Cycling Politics: Doom or Possibility?
“If you don’t stand up, you don’t stand a chance.”
– Genesis, Squonk
A woman walks into a marketing and public relations firm and sits down to talk with their lead strategist.
“Our organization has a fun, safe and healthy activity we wish to promote, but we’re struggling to figure out the right approach,” she says.
The strategist thinks for a moment, then responds, “I recommend the approach bicycle advocates have been using for the past 20 years; reinforce the public’s fears about your activity.”
The woman is taken aback, pauses for a moment, then says, “Oh! You had me going there for a moment!”
“What do you mean?” asks the strategist.
“Well, you were joking, right?…”
If only.
The Politics of Doom
Think about the things that keep people from bicycling these days. Fear of traffic. Fear of injury. Of looking awkward. Of the equipment. Of being left behind. Discomfort.
On what do most bicycle advocates focus? Bike lanes, new laws, and helmets. None of the three do much to reduce those fears, and to a significant extent they increase them.
Let’s start with helmets. A little perspective would be nice. According to the Florida Department of Health, three times as many pedestrians, three times as many motorcyclists, and ten times as many automobile passengers suffer brain injuries as bicyclists do each year. Florida bicyclists suffer between 80 and 90 brain injuries per year. We account for about six percent of traffic-related brain injuries, and three percent of all brain injuries. European nations have very low helmet use, but much lower bicycle fatality rates than the USA and especially Florida. But we act as if bicycling were the primary cause of brain injuries and berate people for not wearing helmets.
New laws. “We’re special. We deserve special protection.” Some advocacy groups have either managed to or attempted to pass laws to increase penalties for motorists who kill or seriously injure “vulnerable users” such as bicyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists. Well “why?” one might ask. Is the rationale for such a law, “We deserve special justice because we’re at such high risk?” Once again the underlying message is, “Bicycling (and walking and motorcycling) is risky.” While the laws usually cover all “vulnerable users,” it is bicyclists who take the prominent role in pushing them.
Imagine a wife who enters a courtroom to watch the case of a careless (not reckless) motorist who caused the death of her husband, who was in a car the defendant ran off the road. The guilty driver gets a fine of a couple hundred dollars and a few points on his license for careless driving. But the wife learns that in the previous case in that courtroom, a driver who killed some other woman’s husband who was on a bicycle was fined a couple thousand dollars, had his license suspended, and was required to do community service. Should she feel it was fair because the other man was on a bicycle? Now add into this picture the high percentage of bicyclists who run red lights and stop signs, drive at night without lights, or ride in large groups that sometimes back up traffic. This group deserves special justice?
Bicycle lanes are sold as an essential safety strategy. The problem with this strategy is that bike lanes can only affect about six to eight percent of crashes between motorists and cyclists; the ones involving overtaking motorists. But since that is exactly the type of crash non-cyclists and novice cyclists fear most, we have a problem. It’s just paint. While many experienced cyclists feel bike lanes provide some improved passing separation, many non-cyclists reason that motorists can obviously just drive right over them. So the next “logical” strategy is some sort of barrier separation between motorists and bicyclists. Aside from the fact that such barrier-separated bikeways force cyclists and motorists into intersection conflicts (which account for about 90% of crashes), such facilities even further reinforce the belief that bicycling is risky. The logical next step in reasoning for the uninformed and inexperienced is that only streets with barrier-separated bikeways are safe. (I was right-hooked by a motorist on my one-and-only trip on St. Petersburg’s barrier-separated bikeway on 1st Avenue South. It was the first time I’d been right-hooked in about 20 years.)
Both helmets and bike lanes offer some positives while simultaneously contributing to fear, and they don’t necessarily add to the fear level for everyone. We just need to first realize how they add to fear, and weigh that against potential benefits. Some new laws might be useful, but they must seen as fair by all.
Generally I see our culture’s beliefs about bicycling heading towards this: Bicycling is…
A. Very risky, and requires head protection and physical separation from auto traffic in order to be made safe, and
B. Is done by a minority who believes they deserve special justice, even though they often violate the law.
The efforts of many advocacy groups are strengthening this belief. Not only by focusing on bikeways, helmets and special laws, but by prominently featuring bicyclist deaths in their communications: covering the stories in newsletters; putting up “ghost bikes;” holding “Rides of Silence.” Certainly we should honor our friends who have been killed on our roads, but let’s figure out a way of doing it that doesn’t reinforce the belief that cycling is exceptionally risky.
The Politics of Possibility
Because cycling is not very risky. The average bicyclist – and this includes all those ones who ride in a less-than-competent manner – will travel about 4 million hours before experiencing a fatal crash. That is equal to 456 years of non-stop cycling. Cyclists who follow the basic rules of the road will travel significantly farther before a fatal crash. But we focus way too much on these rare crashes, instead of on the hundreds of millions of miles cyclists travel every year without incident.
How exactly are these common strategies increasing cycling?
If my fictitious marketing strategist understood these numbers, he’d likely spin it like this: “In spite of the fact that many bicyclists routinely violate the rules of the road such as traveling at night without lights and running red lights, and that motorists are often inattentive and careless, and that Florida’s bicyclists travel hundreds of millions of miles each year, only about 120 Florida bicyclists are killed each year. It’s hard to imagine a safer activity, especially if you learn how to do it properly, which is easy to do.”
The strategy bicyclists have been using for too long is the same one used by most environmental organizations:
Scare people with stories of doom and gloom, and attempt to use the law to force governments and individuals to do things they don’t want to do.
It is the failed strategy Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have described in their book Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. (And no, the authors are not right-wing ideologues; they are liberals who care deeply about the environment.)
Even when we do focus on the positive aspects of cycling, it is simply elaborating on what people already know: “biking is fun,” “it’s good for the environment,” “it’s good for your health,” “it saves you money.” And we wonder, “Hey, why hasn’t everybody started biking already? Let’s repeat those things louder!” To which the masses reply: “Well, none of those things matter if you’re dead!”
The solution is to help people to see bicycling as safe and personally rewarding. Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s alternative “politics of possibility” points us in the right direction. It is based on five key experiences all people find rewarding: Flow, Service to Others, Self-Mastery, Belonging and Fulfillment.
Flow
Flow is of course inherent to cycling. But the “flow” they are talking about involves challenge and mental engagement. Truly enjoyable flow requires just enough challenge to be interesting, but not overwhelming. Vehicular cycling in urban traffic fits this perfectly. We also need to apply flow to our education programs. They are often too classroom- and lecture-oriented, and don’t spend enough time on the bikes. Bikeways can sometimes interrupt flow, so we need to plan and design them carefully.
Service to Others
Service to Others is something the bicycling community needs to do better. It’s certainly true that many cyclists participate in rides to raise funds for a variety of charities, but few events have the kind of direct service Nordhaus and Shellenberger mean. In Orlando we’ve seen some good examples. In the Parramore Kidz Zone Pedal 4 Pride ride, club riders help underprivileged kids learn to ride properly. The local allycat racing folks put on a race which included buying and hauling groceries for the needy for Thanksgiving. Earn-a-bike programs are making new community connections across the nation. I’d like to see “street spam” (all those illegal advertisements littering the roadsides) clean up rides. Imagination is needed.
Self-Mastery
Self-mastery is also a natural aspect of bicycling, but we often fail here, too. Self-mastery often requires some hand-holding in the early stages, but too often bike clubs do not serve the needs of novice cyclists. I’ve heard too many stories of people who went to one club ride and gave up, or were just too intimidated to even consider trying. Too often we’re asking new riders to climb a much-too-high first step. Shimano tried to address this through bicycle design with their Coasting components, believing that a bike which shifts on its own and has a simple coaster brake would bring more people into cycling, but they forgot to take the human factors into account. The bike worked against self-mastery in the opposite way; there was nothing to master. Note that the Coasting line has quickly gone the way of U-brakes and BioPace chain rings.
Too many “bicycle advocates” in academia insist people don’t want bicycling to be an effort; that training and practice are somehow anathema to cycling. People don’t hesitate to take lessons for a wide variety of activities; what is so special about cycling? Some say, “Well, we all learned to ride bikes when we were kids. What do we need to take lessons for?” Yet their bikes stay in their garages gathering dust. The bikeway side argues that these people are waiting for the bikeways to be built so they can “feel safe.” (Never mind that the data from Europe shows those facilities have higher crash rates than shared roadways.) Metro Orlando now has over 90 miles of trails and over 400 miles of bike lanes and paved shoulders, up from virtually zero in 1995. Where are the cycling hoards? No doubt waiting for the million-dollars-per-mile barrier-separated bikeways; a $1.5 Billion project if applied to Metro Orlando.
Keri Caffrey and I taught vehicular cycling to a group of teens this past spring. One girl, perhaps 12 years old with minimal cycling experience, was having trouble just keeping the bike moving in a straight line, but with some one-on-one coaching from Keri, she made great improvements. By the end of the day she was confidently cruising down four-lane Robinson Street in downtown Orlando in full control of the right lane, bridging from the “slow-poke” group to the faster kids. As she rolled up to the back of the lead group she was absolutely beaming.
That is Self-Mastery.
We can make people feel safer now (and actually be safer, too), on nearly every road.
Belonging
The sense of Belonging is achieved by those who make it up enough steps to keep up with the club riders. But we are not offering enough opportunities for everyone to be part of a community of bicyclists. Critical Mass does this; the need to belong is a huge part of its growth. Sociologist Robert Putnam explored the lack of social capital – the lack of strong social ties – in modern American cities, and especially in suburbia. But there is also a “strength of weak ties,” which Richard Florida discusses in The Rise of the Creative Class. Increasingly people have many weak ties in their communities instead of a few strong ones. Bicycling lends itself well to this, and we must take advantage of it. Social networking sites have enormous potential for us, if we learn to use them. For example, there are 101 members of a Facebook group supporting an urban mountain biking park under I-4 near downtown Orlando, and this park is nothing but a dream for the moment.
Most importantly, Belonging for cycling must mean anybody can participate, no matter what kind of bike, what attire, how fast or slow. Not just weekend mornings at 8:00 a.m., but weeknights, mornings, afternoons too. It’s not a 9-to-5-Monday-thru-Friday world any more. Paved trails can act as “bicycling nurseries,” but we must help people move beyond the paths for the sense of Belonging to meet its full potential.
Fulfillment
Cycling has great Fulfillment potential. Just ask anyone who was unhealthy, overweight, depressed, or otherwise feeling inadequate who took up cycling and found themselves living a more positive life. That’s why people stay with it. If we strengthen those four previous factors the Fulfillment quotient will grow even larger.
It’s not that “only certain people can be capital B Bicyclists.” We just haven’t done a very good job as a community of helping more people get there.
Ultimately it comes down to what story we will tell about ourselves as a community.
Story One:
“We are bicyclists. We are vulnerable road users who are being killed and maimed at unacceptably high rates. We are an aggrieved minority who are bullied by motorists and ignored by law enforcement, and we respond either by behaving unpredictably as individuals or gathering in large groups and impeding motorists. We believe the majority of our class are unwilling or unable to learn to safely integrate with the motorized users of our roads. We wear helmets to protect ourselves from the inevitable head injury, and support laws which compel others to do so as well. As an aggrieved minority we call upon our federal, state and local governments to build special places for us to travel, because without such segregation we are at great peril. Please come join us!”
Story Two:
“We are citizens who often drive bicycles. We are confident road users who pose very little danger to others, and only rarely are we seriously hurt ourselves. We are highly competent and predictable. We work to make our public roads safer for everyone, especially pedestrians and children. We are healthy and positive because we get regular moderate exercise; we engage positively with our community, instead of being walled-off behind steel and glass. We believe anyone can quickly learn to bike competently and confidently on our roads, and offer a variety of fun and effective ways for people to do so. Many of us wear helmets because they are cheap insurance to protect against the rare head injury, but we don’t get too worked up if others don’t wear them. We encourage federal, state and local governments to treat us as vehicle drivers with the same rights and responsibilities as all other drivers, and not as second-class citizens who are “in the way.” Please come join us!”
It’s not that one story is “right” and the other is “wrong.” Or that these are the “only stories.” The real questions are, “What collective story do cyclists want to live by?” and “What kind of story will get us to where we want to be?” A story of limits and tragedy, or a story of personal growth and freedom?
Posted in Politics92 comments to “Which Cycling Politics: Doom or Possibility?”
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1. October 2009 at 10:38 pm :
This tore at my heart. Today, one of my engineers came to ask where he could ride where he didn’t have to worry about cars. I swallowed and stifled the urge to say “anywhere.”
I told him – ride the trinity trails, ride charity rides. Get comfy on the bike. If it works, come back and we’ll get you knowing how to do more.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that traffic cycling is easy and safe, but classes are almost impossible to take in the 4th largest metro area in the country. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I did get a LCI to coach me so I’m not worried about it other than it says you understate how bad things are.
1. October 2009 at 11:07 pm :
Nice story 2!
Where do you get your statistics such as “…4 million hours before…”?
I am simply curious.
Peace
1. October 2009 at 11:31 pm :
“Too many “bicycle advocates” in academia insist people don’t want bicycling to be an effort; that training and practice are somehow anathema to cycling. People don’t hesitate to take lessons for a wide variety of activities; what is so special about cycling?”
What’s so special is bicycle advocates are DESPERATE to get people to ride bikes. Cycling is unique that way. I can’t think of another activity for which proponents prefer to reinforce inhibiting mythologies at great expense, rather than overcome them with Truth.
Sadly, our culture makes it easier to exploit/coddle/cater to mythology/superstition/prejudice than to challenge it (just turn on a cable news network). Even if challenging it is what ultimately would lead to a healthier culture and a more civil and livable community.
1. October 2009 at 11:36 pm :
Mighk, the way you write boils things down so well and so clearly. Bravo. I’m using this post as my go-to article when arguing (discussing, I should say) things with other cyclists and non-cyclists as well.
2. October 2009 at 7:59 am :
Steve:
Think of the last story as a combination of what is _and_ what we are striving for. The story one lives by is where he or she is headed.
The 4 million hours number comes from a study done by Failure Analysis, Inc. in the ’90s. They compared a variety of activities, including auto travel, motorcycle, bicycling, and commercial air travel on a fatalities per millions hours of exposure. It was not done for a bicycling org, so if there’s any bias it’s from poor data, but the late Ken Kifer did an analysis of the FAI numbers and thought they were reasonable. FAI used 0.26 fatalities per million hours; I made it more understandable by converting it to one fatality per 4 million hours.
2. October 2009 at 9:58 am :
Thought provoking. Thank you for this.
re: the two stories
Yes, that’s the dichotomy. But I wonder about the grey area between. I find that my own thinking wanders into that grey zone.
Keri’s comment about “advocates are DESPERATE to get people to ride bikes” is apt. And I confess to feeling this emotion sometimes. I want more out there for a number of reasons. That “desperation” has actually lead me in very interesting directions. It lead me to blog about my utility cycling. It lead me into formal advocacy. And it lead me to thinkers who have challenged me and made me a better rider/driver (in a number of ways).
2. October 2009 at 10:09 am :
It’s not that one story is “right” and the other is “wrong.” Or that these are the “only stories.” The real questions are, “What collective story do cyclists want to live by?” and “What kind of story will get us to where we want to be?”
(Perhaps I need to add that to the end of the essay?)
2. October 2009 at 11:10 am :
Mighk… Yes. Not right v. wrong. We egg heads would ask: What master narrative controls, or ought to control, our understanding of bicycle advocacy, and what are the results of the controlling narrative? This essay does offers a good examination of that question.
I think those questions you’ve asked would be an excellent update to the essay.
2. October 2009 at 11:17 am :
Thank you for yet another fantastic essay. I appreciate how effortlessly you bring in statistics to make a strong argument for cycling. Perception is everything and I absolutely agree that there is too much focus on the negative.
One thing I struggle with as a newer cyclist is that, though the statistics make a case for cycling being almost exceptionally safe, it seems that a high proportion of people on cycling forums have had some sort of accident with a car – albeit generally minor. In this essay, you mention experiencing your first right-hook in 20 years – to me implying you’ve been right-hooked more than once. I’ve read other responses about being bumped by cars, etc. It doesn’t seem to match up with the statistics to me, so it’s hard to get my heart to fully believe in the numbers – no matter how hard and cold. Stories of even small fender benders seem to be pretty rare among my car-driving friends and colleagues, so it leaves a “logic gap” for me that I can’t quite rationalize. Is cycling safe in regards to fatal accidents, but more dangerous when it comes to falls and “minor” injuries or is it that the anecdotal stories make it seem that way? I ride in spite of my fear, but it sure would be nice to just lose that extra baggage during my ride.
I continue to advocate trails. I agree that there is harm in making the case for trails as a safety measure, but I don’t think they should be relegated as “bike nurseries” either. The trails allow for a ride along scenery that is pretty hard to find otherwise in Orlando and I get to actually say hello to people with a smile – something I can’t do when riding in the road either by bike or car. The perceived removal from the “threat” of cars is a bonus.
I love the focus on belonging. While I would rate the subliminal messages of danger as worse, the almost “otherness” of some bike advocates has its own alienating impact. When people don’t talk about the fears at all, or act as if they are unfounded, I think to some degree cycling stops seeming attainable. Sort of like “you can cycle because you are an exceptionally brave/experienced/fast person” and not “you cycle because it’s rationally safe.” It’s hard to simply argue away fear. I love the idea of the community rides for this very reason – seeing everyday people out riding helps reinforce that cycling is, in fact, a very rational thing to do.
Thank you again for this great resource!
2. October 2009 at 1:34 pm :
Great article! In general agree with your analysis, however I do feel that many drivers in my city (Toronto) have unnecessary anger toward cyclists that puts me in danger every day. But it’s true that it would more likely be a non-fatal injury if a car actually hits me.
While traveling to Virginia a couple weeks back I was shocked at how accommodating drivers were – they gave me lots of space, they often gave me the right-of-way at four-way stops (even though they stopped first), and it’s perfectly acceptable to ride on sidewalks (with the exception of high-traffic downtown streets).
Here is an article I posted with some of my thoughts about cycling in Toronto vs. Virginia (if you’re interested): http://www.theurbancountry.com/2009/09/bicycles-and-sidewalks-can-get-along.html
Cheers!
2. October 2009 at 2:41 pm :
Angie: You are right of course that trails are more than just “bicycle nurseries,” and I didn’t mean to imply they were limited to that. Even “time-hardened road warriors” like me enjoy riding on well-designed trails in their own rights-of-way, because it’s simply an enjoyable experience.
Injuries are of course far more common than deaths. Based on Florida Dept. of Health EMS data, for every cyclist fatality, there are 27 cyclist emergency room visits involving motor vehicles, and another 150 emergency room visits that do not involve motor vehicles. But for every bicyclist trip to the emergency room there are three trips for “bites and stings,”and about 17 trips for “falls.”
In over 160,000 miles of cycling I’ve had only a few injuries. A few gashes and scrapes, and one thump to my helmeted head at a mountain biking event. By comparison, my three brothers have suffered the following:
One nearly killed while sitting at a red light in his car and struck from behind by another motorist (a TV flew from the back seat and hit him in the head)
The second was hit by a tire that flew off the back of truck and hit his leg while he was on a motorcycle on I-4. His knee was permanently damaged. If the tire had flow just a couple feet higher it probably would have killed him.
The third was killed on an ATV; he crashed it and his helmet wasn’t buckled.
Of course these stories don’t “prove” anything, but they help me to put things in context. People don’t stop traveling in cars after friends and family — or they themselves — get seriously injured or killed in them. But almost certainly take more care when they do drive. But when it comes to bicycling we think differently. Instead of saying, “I’m going to learn how to reduce my risk,” most just say, “It’s too dangerous.” These decisions — either for auto travel or bicycling — rarely have anything to do with any understanding of statistical risk.
2. October 2009 at 3:09 pm :
Angie asked about right-hooks. In addition to the St. Pete one, the I’ve had three. All happened before I got any formal training. One was my fault as I passed on the right in a wide lane. In the second I was riding in a parking lane. In the third I was with a group. None of them involved injury; just some quick evasive action.
Normally I wouldn’t have been riding in the St. Pete side-path, but did so to assess it as a bike planning professional.
Most of the stories of close calls and injuries I hear from cyclists involve situations they probably could have avoided if they’d had good training.
2. October 2009 at 6:12 pm :
James says cyclists can safely share sidewalks with pedestrians, which is true, but at the cost of slowing to not much more than pedestrian speed. In which case, why bother biking?
Bikeways will not reduce antagonism between cyclists and motorists. In some cases they facilitate such aggravation, because too many motorists expect cyclists to keep to bikeways at all times. Keri had to fend off a motorist ticked off that she had the nerve to be out of a bike lane while preparing for a left turn. I also know of at least one cyclist run off the road because he wasn’t on the sidepath.
You must attack the problem directly. Let’s take the car and bike out of the picture for a moment to get some perspective. Some guy gets ticked off every time somebody ahead of him pays for groceries with a check at the grocery store. It takes much longer and delays him. One day he just snaps and starts verbally berating an old lady. “Why don’t you use cash you old fool?”
Is that really any different from the problems law-abiding roadway cyclists experience?
2. October 2009 at 8:56 pm :
“As she rolled up to the back of the lead group she was absolutely beaming.
Watching that little girl ride with confidence all by herself and turn around and wave to me with a huge grin, was perhaps one of the happiest moments I’ve ever had on a bike.
2. October 2009 at 9:16 pm :
The things about the stories is that they are not just what we project as a community, they are what we internalize as bicyclists. The story we tell ourselves very much forms the lens through which we see our interactions with others.
I try to live in Story Two. The negative interactions are unavoidable, but they are not nearly the majority. In Story Two, a harasser or a mindless dope is a minority player and does not define the roadway environment. Negative minority behaviors need to be addressed for the good of the commons. Removing cyclists from the road certainly doesn’t accomplish that.
Admittedly, when I’m unlucky enough to suffer an outbreak of hostile or idiotic motorist behavior in a short period of time, I have to fight myself from wanting to grab onto Story One. After all, it is the more popular story, there is lots of community commiseration to be found in it. But it’s a downward spiral that leads nowhere good.
3. October 2009 at 2:04 am :
Bravo, Mighk!
3. October 2009 at 7:50 am :
Author, author! (or in modern parlance, “word.”)
I’m posting this to the “league cycling instructors” forum.
3. October 2009 at 9:17 am :
And many thanks for all the praise and forwarding!
3. October 2009 at 10:08 am :
Excellent job, as usual, Mighk. Will think about this today.
3. October 2009 at 11:49 am :
Great, thought-provoking essay, Mighk. Thank you!
3. October 2009 at 12:58 pm :
Eloquent! I agree with your premise. I bike to work every day. When taking the elevator to/from bike rack in garage to office, many look at my bright yellow gear and bike cloothes with admiration and ask “aren’t you afraid out there on your bike with those crazy drivers?” I always reply “Way less afraid on the bike than driving my car on I-25 with those crazy drivers.” That always induces a shocked silence, then a sheepish nod in agreement.
3. October 2009 at 1:44 pm :
Mighk, I think sidewalks are an appropriate option for cyclists in areas where there are few pedestrians – especially in city outskirts where cars drive much faster. If cars are driving 50mph+ and I feel like I’m being squeezed, I’d prefer to go on the sidewalk. I won’t be sacrificing a lot of speed as long as the volume of pedestrians is minimal. If there are too many pedestrians, then I would go back on the road.
“You must attack the problem directly. Let’s take the car and bike out of the picture for a moment to get some perspective. Some guy gets ticked off every time somebody ahead of him pays for groceries with a check at the grocery store. It takes much longer and delays him. One day he just snaps and starts verbally berating an old lady. “Why don’t you use cash you old fool?”
I like your analogy. However, I think to make it more comparable to cycling I would say it is more like some guy standing in a really long lineup at the grocery store check out and there’s a separate cash register for people who pay with a Citibank card. The Citibank lineup is always small and people fly through the line while the guy has to stand in the really long lineup. The guy eventually gets angry enough that he beats up someone in the Citibank line.
It’s a similar situation, except the guy is pissed off because someone else is getting ahead while he has to wait – which I think relates better to cyclist/driver animosity (at least that’s how it is here in Toronto). I honestly think that many drivers are angry simply because cyclists are able to get ahead while they have to sit in gridlocked traffic.
Having said that, this analogy still doesn’t capture one of the most important aspects of driver anger. Sitting inside a 4000lbs automobile and squeezing or brushing a cyclist at 40mph out of anger is much more likely (and common) than someone beating up an old lady. Automobiles provide a level of anonymity that allows angry drivers to use their cars to threaten cyclists – and I’m guessing that these incidents aren’t dealt with unless there is serious injury.
I met a cyclist last week whose husband was charged for assault. A car full of teenagers hit her husband with their side-view mirror – he was knocked off his bike but not seriously injured. He caught up with the car at the next intersection and confronted them. They were apparently taunting him instead of being apologetic, so he ripped off their side mirror. They called the police and he was charged. They weren’t held responsible for the initial incident that led to the confrontation.
Anyway, I honestly think the situation for us cyclists in Toronto is different than many other cities – especially after comparing the cycling experience in Virginia/DC to Toronto. Some of the driver anger that I see each day might not be as prominent in other countries or states.
Now that I’ve found your blog I’ll visit often – it’s interesting to read about other people’s experiences outside of your own city.
3. October 2009 at 1:45 pm :
Came up behind a novice rider this morning, who ran a red light after stopping and scanning.
As I pulled up along-side I bit my tongue and focused on giving her some pointers that would make her riding easier — raise the saddle a couple inches; use a lower gear. She was very appreciative.
3. October 2009 at 3:02 pm :
James:
It’s a shame what has happened in Toronto. I biked from Cleveland to Toronto in 1977 with a high school friend between our junior and senior years. We stayed with his aunt and uncle on the west side. We biked into and all around Toronto for a week, and it was completely carefree and a total blast. We also used the excellent transit system.
By “attacking the problem directly” I mean you need a strong social marketing campaign to reinforce the social norm of courtesy, and to portray cycling in shared lanes as normal as well. You will never have segregated bikeways on all the streets; the politics just won’t support it. So cyclists who are not “in their place” will always be at risk until the social norm of courtesy is strengthened.
3. October 2009 at 3:27 pm :
I agree that we cyclists don’t want to appear to be especially vulnerable road users in need of special consideration. But government attention to cycling and education of non-cyclists has changed Louisville in a few years from a place where a policeman would honk at a cyclist for straying too far from the curb to a place where we’re expected to ride in the right tire tread unless there’s a clear reason not to. This is a good thing. It doesn’t always hurt to agitate a little.
3. October 2009 at 4:30 pm :
Joe:
Sounds like Louisville is giving the right kind of attention to cycling. Official support for cyclist lane control is not a “special consideration;” it’s just support of equality. And agitating for such consideration is exactly what we need more of.
3. October 2009 at 4:39 pm :
Angie,
Of course the anecdotes we hear/read are about crashes and close calls. Who comes home and says “Gee, Honey, I rode 50 miles and had no close calls.”? Let there be a close call, though, and the whole world hears about it many times over and in great detail.
Then there is the dimension of self-critical analysis. In most of my “scary situations”, I can point to some thing that I did to at least contribute to it (if not cause it all by myself). As a certified cycling instructor, I better be able to do such analysis. I try to include that in my anecdotes but how many others do?
It turns out that many of the cyclists who tell me of their incidents also ask me what they could/should have done differently. Unfortunately, these are only the folks who are involved enough in the cycling community to know that cycling instructors exist and that I am one.
3. October 2009 at 7:28 pm :
One aspect left out of this discussion is who are the riders. Why are they riding? What are their objectives?
I think all of us are avid riders, skilled, mostly unafraid, and usually in a hurry to get someplace, or to get a workout. We usually travel around 25kph, 4-5x faster than walkers, and usually faster than taking the bus.
But if we want to expand the number of cyclists to something like the modal share in Denmark or Holland, we need the “cyclists” who see cycling as more low-energy than walking, and less hassle than driving & parking, and more convenient than transit. They don’t wear helmets or cycling clothes, don’t use racing bars, and hardly ever go more than 5km in distance, or 15kph in speed. They cycle because it’s easy.
So sidewalk cycling is no problem. Only a bit slower(down from 15kph to 10), but “safer” in their eyes, and still faster and much easier than walking.
Their slow road speed means they tend to hold up the same cars continually(because gridlock speeds average15kph),while faster cyclists usually get past all the cars.
But these are the people we need to encourage. The more cyclists on the road the better – and the safer for each cyclist, even if there are more accidents in aggregate.
Berkeley CA has “bicycle boulevards” with wide lanes, no stop signs, and a low speed limit. Ideal places to bike, and to learn/practice to coexist with cars and other traffic. These are cheaply made from existing streets, are more friendly to pedestrians too, and can form the backbone of a “alternative network” of through Bike Routes which avoid most cars and trucks, and yet do not have the epidemic of stop signs traffic calmers have fallen in love with. Good for short distances, to shopping, church, school, if not to the office or factory. If necessary, close off through routes to cars by a planter or three every so often.
Or adopt a “fused grid” street network design philosophy, where there are plentiful local walk/bike routes, but through cars/trucks are relegated to arterials and collectors.
tOM
3. October 2009 at 9:36 pm :
Thank you Mighk. I found this article to be very inspiring and thought-provoking and I totally agree with your thesis that bike advocacy could much more effective at encourage people to ride more if they used a more positive message. I would like to see a discussion of how my local bike advocacy group, MassBike Pioneer Valley, might apply your lesson. I have some comments on specific parts of your article.
* I agree with you that helmets should not be a major priority. Fortunately, MassBike has not treated them as such. However, I have seen bike safety programs run by police departments that do prioritize helmets over everything else.
* Most of my bike advocacy colleagues in MassBike Pioneer Valley know, and probably dislike, that I, like you, am highly critical of bike-specific road features and facilities.
* I am very confused about your comments on bike-specific laws that purport to protect cyclists from motorists. Maybe this is more of an issue in Florida than it is in Massachusetts. I think that there is a huge problem with the justice system refusing to hold motorists responsible for their careless, reckless, and even antagonistic use of an extremely powerful, and consequently dangerous, machine but I do not see it as a bike-specific issue.
* I often try (and fail) to convince people that cycling is not especially dangerous if done right. You argue that cycling is not even that dangerous when done wrong. You cites statistics that seem to be much more optimistic than those cited by the League of American Bicyclists. I wonder if anyone is familiar with the sources of both and could comment on their merit.
* I greatly sympathize with your discussion about belonging. I have joined a few club rides but found myself left in the dust on most of them. Also, I often find non-club group rides to be very stressful because often even the ride leaders ride in a somewhat erratic manner. I find myself torn between trying to stay with the group and trying to follow the rules.
* Angie comments that “[t]he trails allow for a ride along scenery that is pretty hard to find otherwise in Orlando and I get to actually say hello to people with a smile – something I can’t do when riding in the road either by bike or car.” This is true in the short to medium term, However, I believe, for several reasons, that trails are harmful in the long term. (1) Just like road-building, trail-building is destructive to nature. (2) By “retreating” to trails, cyclists relinquish much of their influence over the development of roads. If cyclists occupied the road prominently so their concerns would be harder to ignore and they used their influence to fight for friendlier roads rather than more trails, they could reverse the trend of building roads to be increasingly bigger, uglier, more hostile, more impersonal, and more destructive. And then there would be no reason to build trails since the roads would have pretty much everything you want in the trails.
* I concur with James’s impression of Virginia and DC. I lived in northern Virginia for six months and my impression was that motorists were much more polite than in Massachusetts. There were still many hostile motorists and the roads themselves were much bigger and scarier but I did notice a difference.
* You propose a scenerio in which “[s]ome guy gets ticked off every time somebody ahead of him pays for groceries with a check at the grocery store. It takes much longer and delays him. One day he just snaps and starts verbally berating an old lady. “Why don’t you use cash you old fool?” Is that really any different from the problems law-abiding roadway cyclists experience?” To that my answer is an emphatic “Yes!” Motorist hostility toward cyclists in frequent and flagrant and usually constitutes a threat of physical violence. This kind of treatment would be shocking in almost any other context, including that of grocery store checkout line and would almost certainly be prosecuted as assault.
3. October 2009 at 10:26 pm :
Your essay points up some very plain facts that are often ignored or forgotten in the bike-advocacy web of debate. An exceedingly small % of bike/car accidents are from the rear, yet riders will choose to ride against traffic to combat this irrational fear.
Our problems are twofold: one, there is a cultural theme that permeates our entire nation, that we are less than we think we are if we are nice/polite/accommodating/agreeable with each other. Rude=manly, adult, assertive, in charge. We need to get rid of the “me first, f*** you” attitude. Two, education; this does spill over into the first issue I listed, but there is a fundamental lack of it. We hear all day every day about rights — how often to we hear the attendant responsibilities addressed? The right to freedom of religion does not mean you can squash everyone else’s if you don’t have one. The right to bear arms doesn’t mean you can wave it at someone when you’re angry. And none of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are absolute. Education has been failing us for decades, mainly because kids have decided they can pick and choose what they want to learn, and socio/psychological quacks have supported that. No, sorry — you WILL learn to read and write, you WILL learn math, you WILL learn citizenship. Otherwise, we will descend into anarchy, as more and more immature adults decide their own laws and codes of conduct. (And it is already happening….)
4. October 2009 at 12:06 am :
The number of hit from behind crashes is not inconsequential. For those of us living in the Southwest, these crashe types are often in the countryside and at high speed and even if they are a minor portion of the total crashes that occur, the results are almost always devastating.For example, this story of a tandem couple riding on the shoulder and hit from behind at 70 mph. Both cyclists dead, a seven year old orphan:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/63353167.html
It would seem to me that many of these crashes are preventable and therefore should be prevented. By combating inattention, DWI, driving too fast for conditions, riding without lights, and the general notion that there is no accountability for screwing up, many of these can be avoided.
That’s not to say I disagree with Mighk. I wholeheartedly agree with him. We will not promote cycling by handing people a bicycle, a scarf, and a cup of sake. Having said that, when a cyclist is killed or maimed it exerts a chilling effect on the cycling community, esp when more and more people are driving distracted, thus putting some of our theories of crash avoidance to rest.
We have to do a few things. One is to encourage cycling and point out these are unusual events and for the average cyclist, all he or she can expect is a rewarding ride and exceptional health benefits, not to mention a carbon free commute. Secondly, we have to work hard to change the minds of the cops and district attorneys who think that “accidents will happen”. Many are not accidents in the sense that there is clear culpability–people doing things that greatly enhance the probability of something going wrong. Bottom line is to raise the bar on expectations out on the road.
4. October 2009 at 5:13 am :
Nicely written,
Couple comments, there are road sections that just are narrow, lots of curb activity, with heavy fast traffic that are basically unridable and even with few bikers fairly advanced that desparately try to use them have extremely high fatality rates. One such street in our medium town is 9th worst in California. Point is even experienced cyclist have their limits on the hazard they will ride, and it’s well documented they will go long ways to bypass unacceptable risk. If that extra route is too long, numbers able to take the option drop dramatically. In urban/dense suburban areas, trails with no intersections provide a safe bypass, which considering traffic light often are faster than streets. Basically “expressways for bikes” as John Forrester advocated along with teaching proper street riding decades ago. So a logical interconnected network of trails, bike lanes and streets with reasonable bikable traffic volume is needed. As experience, is gained more streets is used, but trails remain essential for all bikers.
Many people, especially back east confuse the separate path parallelling with lots of motor vehicle crossings with trails. These are abominations and statically inflate accident rates for trails. Intersection crossing are the issue as propery stated. The route ( trail or street) that has the fewest crossing or interleaving is safest regardless you are biking or in a car ( that’s why roundabouts are needed in trails as for cars). We also have one 40 – 45 mph street which is highly sucessful with large amounts bikers and cars day and night because it has virtually no driveway between long blocks and intersections where right turning cars are facilitated in turning right (and made to) by merging into the bike lane
(that was developed in Cupertino years ago).
So bikers ( which either make biking a lifestyle option or not by early 20s) are much more proactive about safety. If you do not ride by your 20s, rarely will you adopt biking later in life. Northern Europe has had a generation of working in faciliies where possible. Also medeval towns/ villages just give the bike a great time of transit advantage over any other means. It no wonder there 30-40% primarily bike in town. Fashion and low speeds make being lidless reasonable.
Recently in California a new spirit especially amoung young has taken with nightime ride street parties such as San Diegos and San Jose’s bike party. Thousands flood the streets to what is an moving exhibition of the unusual artistic and crazy fun, mostly alcohol free. Those events are part of an American experince to make biking streets commonplace.
4. October 2009 at 9:50 am :
Khal wrote:
“Having said that, when a cyclist is killed or maimed it exerts a chilling effect on the cycling community, esp when more and more people are driving distracted, thus putting some of our theories of crash avoidance to rest.”
I think it has a chilling effect because we let it. As I noted in the essay, auto users don’t stop traveling in cars after they or friends and family are seriously injured or killed. If they operated purely from reason and knowledge they might shift to bicycling. Here’s the thing: the choice to continue using autos after injuries and deaths is just as irrational/rational as the choice to avoid bicycling after injuries or deaths.
I’m not convinced cell phones are a serious issue for urban/suburban vehicular cyclists. I have crash data for Metro Orlando from 1993/94 and 2003/04. If cell phones were a real problem, one would expect overtaking crashes to rise as a proportion of overall crashes, but they have not. (Rural is another story, and I don’t have data for that.) Texting however does concern me; I think it should concern everyone, no matter what mode or whether one is a cyclist in a shared lane, bike lane, or on a sidewalk.
Using the principle that close calls far outnumber actual crashes, if cell phones are a serious problem, we vehicular cyclists should have at least a handful of situations in which we hear screeching brakes behind us. I have never had that experience.
BTW, for those who think vehicular cycling requires speed, I rarely ride over 15 mph. My bike, with Xtracycle extension and miscellaneous accessories, weighs about 45 lbs.
4. October 2009 at 10:56 am :
Pat Grant wrote:
“…there are road sections that just are narrow, lots of curb activity, with heavy fast traffic that are basically unridable.”
Setting aside the matter of whether or not that is true, I have to ask, “Why focus so much of our attention there, instead of helping people get out to use the thousands of miles of streets that are very rideable?”
Why do we try to start at the finish line?
4. October 2009 at 11:21 am :
I’m reminded of how many people are using Enrique Penalosa’s idea that every street must be accessible to children. A laudible goal, but why does everybody insist on _starting_ there? Most parents today aren’t letting their kids ride bikes on low-speed neighborhood streets (where are they? I don’t see them), but we think putting a “cycletrack” along a 6-lane high-speed arterial will suddenly get all the families out there?
The bicycle advocacy community has a serious failure in strategic thinking.
4. October 2009 at 11:55 am :
However poorly, I was trying to make the point facility wise, the bike community has to promote a general overall network of bikable streets (some with bike lanes where there is value to the novice biker) AND TRAILS which provide an extremely positive biking experince, loosely tie a network together, and bypass these unbikable street and monster intersections. It’s a positive sale that does show the improvement from a strong negatve. Agreeded the policy to make all streets bikable and Start with the worst that may be essentially unsolvable is backwares, start with the streets or trails that will or are currently drawing the most bikers and work out from the demand model and cost/ benefit model. Officially our city model does it the backwards way, so the top street on the list is a very car centric strip mall 6 lane faster speed than bikes street, while streets with high volumes of bike traffic due to topology funnels, schools, and highest accident rate in city, are far down the list for even simple improvements at choke points.
4. October 2009 at 12:07 pm :
Good observation, Pat. Our plans do the same. We combine the highest “latent demand” with the worst “bicycle level of service” and say “This is the most important corridor to fix.”
And I am the regional bike coordinator!
Believe me, the writing of this essay (and responding to the comments) has been a huge process of discovery for me.
4. October 2009 at 5:15 pm :
I think trails can serve 2 good purposes: offering a pleasant alternative and creating essential connections (permeability). We have trails here that do both, but many of them are falling far short of their potential simply because they are being built as recreational facilities and with a mindset that bikes must be kept separate of cars at all times. As a result we have long stretches of trail that pass behind the walls of broccoli subdivisions, but the residents of those neighborhoods can’t access the trail without riding their bikes on major arterial roads. We also have miles of trail which just become wide sidewalks, or become completely asinine Frankenstein’s monsters — carving through areas where there are far better on-street alternatives (interrupting flow!). Until we correct the cultural ignorance that insists bikes be kept separate from cars, we won’t be able to create sensible integration between trails and the rest of the transportation grid.
Every urban core has on-street assets — grids of quiet, shady streets that connect multiple close-to-home destinations. If we maximize those first by teaching people to use them effectively, creating wayfinding systems, making sure traffic signals detect bicycles, ensuring secure parking at destinations, etc., we can nurture an integrated, cooperative cycling culture. Meeting the needs of that constituency can be done with lower-cost, targeted solutions than meeting the needs of one created with dependence on separated infrastructure.
Moving out toward the suburbs, permeability can be created with strategic connector trails that allow cyclists to use low-volume streets to bypass busy roads. If we were doing that we might see much better results than we’re getting from carving out 5 feet of gutter on hot, noisy, 6 lane traffic sewers. It all starts from the perspective that integration is best for flow, best for access-to-destinations and best for safety.
4. October 2009 at 8:36 pm :
WRT making gritty arterials more bike-friendly – I agree with Keri that shouldn’t be the prime objective. Better to promote many friendly connected routes on calmer streets with signs and maps.
But sometimes that arterial is the only way from A to B, eg, if there is a bridge or tunnel. Then making the arterial bike-friendly, for some part of it, is essential to connecting a bigger bike route network and supporting commuting.
tOM
4. October 2009 at 8:44 pm :
Keri, you wrote: “It all starts from the perspective that integration is best for flow, best for access-to-destinations and best for safety.” Thank you. It’s good to find someone else who thinks so.
4. October 2009 at 9:08 pm :
In New England, at least in Maine, where I live, I think we often start with arterial and other very car-centric streets is because, as someone noted above, here they are often the only way to get from Point A to Point B. Most of New England predates grid street layout. I don’t think I’ve ever successfully gone “around the block” in Boston. Portland (Maine) seems to be a collection of neighborhoods, some of which are vaguely grid-like, connected by arterials and major intersections without parallel routes. It’s a challenge.
Mighk, I see you’ve begun mixing it up on BikeForums.net, on the thread someone started about this essay. Be strong, my friend!
5. October 2009 at 7:56 am :
tOM wrote:
“But sometimes that arterial is the only way from A to B, eg, if there is a bridge or tunnel.”
Indeed. I won’t be pulled into the usual Foresterite argument that says “bike-ed good; bike lanes bad.” I’ve fought for bike lanes on arterials which provide exactly such necessary connectivity. Each situation must be assessed for its own factors. Too often people simply push an ideology.
5. October 2009 at 10:05 am :
I guess I am confused… which is it… “European nations have very low helmet use, but much lower bicycle fatality rates than the USA… ”
Or is it… “Never mind that the data from Europe shows those facilities have higher crash rates than shared roadways…”
You can’t have it both ways… Either bikeways work, or they don’t work.
5. October 2009 at 10:35 am :
First off, not all crashes are fatals.
Second, not all European cycling happens on bikeways (don’t really know how much, but I’m sure it’s significant).
Third, fatality is strongly tied to impact speed, and Europeans are probably riding in generally lower speed environs.
So the two facts don’t contradict.
And “Either bikeways work, or they don’t work” is an overly simplistic statement. They “work” at making it easier for motorists to go faster than cycling speed. Watch the Copenhagen video I posted before this essay. The lack of bikeways seemed to “work” pretty good, too — if you were a cyclist; not so good if you were a motorist who wanted to go faster.
5. October 2009 at 1:44 pm :
Thought provoking essay. Well done.
After reading your essay and the comments I am struck by the post about the article telling of the tandem riders being killed. How many people driving cars, motorcycles or trucks were also killed or seriously injured that day by inattentive or impaired drivers? The fact that an event which has no national relevance receives national coverage demonstrates how unusual the event is. Unfortunately, this kind of occasional story is enough to keep our irrational fears alive.
5. October 2009 at 2:01 pm :
I think this is a great essay and addresses one of the greatest weaknesses of the vehicular cycling community. Though we claim to promote a positive and empowering image of cycling, in fact the largest part of the energies I see exerted by those advocating Vehicular Cycling (of which I am one) involve providing negative feedback on projects and programs, however misguided, to improve cycling and community collaboration by well-meaning, civic-minded groups and individuals. It will take a much more enlightened and positive contribution to the community than this to earn the respect of those who are sincerely committed to providing a broader range of transportation options. Let’s hear it for a positive agenda for the vehicular community!
However, there is also on assumption that you make concerning bike lanes and their limited utility that I believe is unfounded; that bike lanes are only valuable for the 3 – 8 percent of bicycle accidents involving overtaking traffic. It seems to me this disregards the logical, if not statistical, prospect, that bike lanes also reduce two other types of bicycle collisions that account for a much higher percentage of the total; collisions caused by cyclists riding against traffic and cyclists riding on the sidewalk. Though I know of no studies that provide reliable information on this, it does seem this is a possibility that those opposed to bike lanes cannot dismiss.
Thanks for your essay, and if you have any information about traffic studies that address the effect of bike lanes on these types of collisions, I’d like to hear about it.
I
5. October 2009 at 2:19 pm :
One factor that is often ignored by cycling enthusiasts is that looking at the absolute number of crashes and fatalities is very misleading due to a failure to properly normalize the data. For instance, let’s say that there were 40,000 auto fatalities in year X, and 700 bike fatalities. Biking seems way safer, until we consider the fact that bikes made up about 1% of the traffic. So, relative to the fraction of the traffic, cycling would be more dangerous in this example.
OTOH, choosing a proper denominator to normalize by is tricky. IIRC cycling is safer per unit time. On a per unit distance basis, it’s notoriously hard to measure since it’s difficult to know the number of miles ridden by cyclists as a whole. And yes, cyclists tend to adapt (say by combining trips and such) so that the distance travelled is less than if they went 100% by car.
5. October 2009 at 3:23 pm :
There is nothing irrational about fearing a hit from behind crash such as the tandem case. They are usually fatal or cause massive injuries and thus, are far more lethal than your garden variety fall down and go boom crash. Irrational is fear of a goblin under the bed or of government death panels in the health care system. Rational is fear of something that has a credible chance of happening.
We get one or two of these crashes a year out in these parts and since these are caused by cars approaching from behind, the fear factor (i.e., what you don’t see can kill you) is pronounced. You cannot treat stuff like this in a strictly logical way, since people don’t work that way. Aside from a few coneheads, folks don’t carry around statistics about crash probabilities in their heads. Besides, the cycling community, like the motorcycle community of a few decades ago, is small. A lot of time you know the guy or gal that just got wasted.
The fact that this received attention is due to two reasons. Fatals get more attention than broken collarbones; wiping out a married couple and creating an orphan is great grist for the “bleed and lead” mill. Also, in this age of instant information, the stories get spread around fast. This one was on at least three e-lists (LCI, tandem@hobbes, and a New Mexico list). It was sent to me by a cyclist I know in Las Cruces. So to some degree we are hapless victims of the information age.
Some here accuse cyclists of behaving irrationally as though this is uncommon to fear a crash. Frankly, the SUV was promoted in large part to sell perceptions of safety to worried motorists. Drive something huge and no one can hurt you. Most cars these days are sold with safety pitches. I don’t think cyclists alone are worried about safety, but cyclists can lobby for separate facilities just as motorists buy tanks. Same motive, same shortcomings of the thinking. Traffic safety is not a cycling issue. Its a transportation issue and most traffic fatals are not cyclists. We need to work on the broader context.
How we treat these issues is where we can help or hurt. I try to teach people to ride responsibly and defensively, to ensure facilities we build are as well designed as possible, to remind people that it is easy to get worked up over a crash out of proportion to its probability of happening, to be a vocal public critic of sloppy operation, and set a good personal example. And most of all, keep riding.
5. October 2009 at 3:57 pm :
Khal, you are right. I don’t know whether you are a cycling instructor or not or what you opinion is on vehicular cycling but my problem is: How can I, as a cycling instructor, convince people to give serious attention to the notion of vehicular cycling? The hardest part of being a cycling instructor is convincing people that there is, in fact, something valuable to learn. The real benefit of vehicular cycling is not safety per se, but freedom, the ability to go wherever you want, whenever you want without obsessing over every stretch of read and every intersection, even going so far as to insist and they be redesigned or that new ones be built before making the trip. With the rules of the road on your belt, you can quickly check a map and just GO. The benefit of freedom was immediately clear to me after reading “Effective Cycling”. I tested John Forester’s lessons gradually and every time I tried being a little more assertive, I clearly observed an improvement in the way other drivers behaved around me. So far my promises of safety and freedom have wrought me little success in convincing people (even people who have expressed interest in utilitarian cycling) to give me chance to show them another way.
neither freedom nor risk avoidanceI have had little success so far
5. October 2009 at 4:22 pm :
Nelson: Crash statistics might fail to take into account the fraction of total travel distance or time that cycling comprises. However, at least as often they fail to take into account the cyclists behavior leading up to the crash. Sometimes, the cyclist was acting improperly, which contributed to the crash. Sometimes the cyclist was acting properly but could have avoided the crash with a different technique. Sometimes the cyclist could only have avoided the crash by hiding under their bed until they died of dehydration. I believe that the first category is the most common, the second far less common, and the third so rare as to be inconsequential from the perspective of overall risk.
5. October 2009 at 4:44 pm :
this post is right about the need to stop marketing bicycles as a fun fear activity, but it’s wrong about everything else.
for instance, bikers don’t need special laws for special protection, we need laws for protection. just some sanity, that’s all. it shouldn’t be legal nor a relatively minor offense to murder someone just because the murder weapon was a car. even things that are common sense require laws.
i didn’t finish the post — it was all wrong after the opening graphs.
5. October 2009 at 4:59 pm :
Bruce said: “It seems to me this disregards the logical, if not statistical, prospect, that bike lanes also reduce two other types of bicycle collisions that account for a much higher percentage of the total; collisions caused by cyclists riding against traffic and cyclists riding on the sidewalk.”
Empirical evidence suggests bike lanes actually encourage wrong-way riders. No statistical evidence as to whether it’s resulting in more crashes (crash reporting lacks much important data and cycling is so safe that even fools can get away with it for a long time). I see an abundance of ww riders in bike lanes around town, certainly far more than in narrow or wide lanes. And that totally fits with their silly salmon logic. The BL offers a safe haven to ride against traffic without head-on conflicts. But head-on isn’t the primary crash type for ww riders.
I also have noticed no evidence that bike lanes get people off the sidewalk. I see cyclists on the sidewalk next to bike lanes all the time. And on pretty much every road that has them—from the high-speed arterial (can’t blame ‘em) to the residential collector (wth?). There’s little logic or pattern other than they clearly prefer to ride on the sidewalk.
Bruce is spot on about this: “It will take a much more enlightened and positive contribution to the community than this to earn the respect of those who are sincerely committed to providing a broader range of transportation options.”
It’s been my primary complaint with VC advocacy for a long time. Come up with a better offer, or expect to be marginalized.
5. October 2009 at 5:31 pm :
Eli, yes, I am an LCI. I am also the Los Alamos County Transportation Commission Chair, so I wear different hats. One of my hats is a Giro helmet as well.
I think the primary value of the League’s course or Forester’s version is as you say, to teach people to ride confidently, competently, and to in 8 or 10 hours, instill them with some of the best techniques for accident avoidance and riding confidence so that as you say, they can ride free from fear or self-limitation. I’ve ridden on some of the nastiest streets in Honolulu, primarily because I had the confidence to ride there. Certainly not because someone striped it for me.
Like Keri, I have seen sidewalk riders where there is a perfectly good bike lane present, and have seen more wrong-way riders on bike lanes than on travel lanes perhaps because they don’t think wrong way cycling matters in a bike lane. Almost hit one head on one night at high speed except for the intervention of my trusty Nightsun, which was on high beam. So not sure whether these help direct timid riders to do the right thing.
My problem with some of the VC “advocacy” as opposed to VC technique for riding is that some of the VC partisans see their role as one dimensional. Some are to cycling what the Taliban is to Islam or the Puritans were to Christianity. The Taliban could blow up the Buddhas at Bamiyan, but that didn’t make Islam any stronger.
Teaching vehicular cycling doesn’t remove the need for good infrastructure, effective traffic laws, down home empathy between users, and just plain having fun on a bike.
5. October 2009 at 5:43 pm :
Reading the comments here and on other forums, I’m struck by how some are reading things into my essay that I didn’t intend. Perhaps some of that is my fault. I will be reworking it based on all of your feedback.
But to clear up a few things:
On so many matters I see people dividing into camps. “Paint & Path,” “VC,” “bike lanes everywhere!,” “no bike lanes anywhere!”
The camps are the problem.
I am not anti-facility. I am not anti-bike-lane, or path. Pointing out the short-comings of something is not being against it. I suppose I could spend some time explaining the up side of facilities, but I didn’t want to write a novel.
I don’t believe one “achieves competency” or Becomes a “vehicular cyclist” at some specific point. If people are moving in the right direction — towards increased competence — I am happy. I’ve been cycling for over 40 years and am still improving; why should I expect anyone to suddenly jump to full proficiency?
Is bicycling safe? It’s a relative term, so the question is meaningless. I’d rather ask, “What are the most effective ways to help people BE and FEEL SAFER, and get what they want out of bicycling?”
I now see all those arguments about risk and facilities as a cul de sac. While we’ve been arguing, the masses have been waiting for leadership to help show them how to ride. I’m tired of going round and round in that dead end. The real action is out on the street Moving People Towards Confident Cycling.
5. October 2009 at 5:50 pm :
Mighk, a lot of times these comments take on a life of their own aside from the initial essay.. Esp. after fifty or more posts.
The risks and facilities arguments are absolutely a cul de sac. As one who has worried about them way too much, its time to move on and I value your leadership in saying so.
5. October 2009 at 6:00 pm :
Hi Mighk. The discussion has gotten off-topic. Your message was clear. It is just very hard to resist diving into arguments on these other topics that we feel so strongly about. I apologize for my part in it. It would be good to discuss in detail strategies that bike advocates can use to put out those positive messages you mentioned.
5. October 2009 at 6:07 pm :
Thanks Khal & Eli:
Believe me, I know how hard it is to leave those arguments behind! Writing this piece and answering the comments has really helped me to do so.
5. October 2009 at 6:17 pm :
Eli asked “How can I, as a cycling instructor, convince people to give serious attention to the notion of vehicular cycling?”
The product people want isn’t necessarily the one we’ve been offering. For one thing, what makes it so compelling and valuable to us (confidence in traffic), is not high on their priority list because they can’t conceptualize how it could even be safe to ride in traffic. One of the things I’ve found to works is offering an entirely different product (social rides or pace line training) and slip the other “education” into that context. I’ve had success getting the attention of female comfort bike riders that want to feel more confident controlling their bikes on the trail. It’s a great opportunity for value-added info that helps them ride to the trail (achieving much better flow than putting the bike on the rack, driving 2 miles, taking the bike off the rack…)
Plant seeds. Baby steps. Be patient.
The bike ed format as it is currently structured is hard to market. It’s not a product people want. Success depends on being prepared to jettison that structure in favor of delivery methods that resonate with what the audience wants.
5. October 2009 at 6:30 pm :
Mighk said: “I will be reworking it based on all of your feedback.”
Don’t. It’s fine.
Trying to preempt the tired arguments of ideologues (on either side) is a game of whack-a-mole. People with adult reading comprehension skills and no axe to grind can tell from the essay that you are not anti-facilities, anti-helmet or anti-justice.
The comments are good (mostly), they have a life of their own and value of their own. Fodder for another post, probably
5. October 2009 at 6:43 pm :
It won’t be an overhaul; just some tweaks. ;^)
5. October 2009 at 8:24 pm :
Mighk,
Great article. I have a comment on your comment of 5 October:
“But to clear up a few things:
On so many matters I see people dividing into camps. “Paint & Path,” “VC,” “bike lanes everywhere!,” “no bike lanes anywhere!”
The camps are the problem.”
The problem is that for most “bicycle advocates”, the only “solution to the bicycle problem” is facilities — segregated facilities — with no consideration to other alternatives and in total denial of the safety problems these facilities create.
I feel I have no choice but rear-guard attacks on these ill-considered plans. I know this is not very effective but how else to protect our rights and safety?
I wish we had pragmatic people like you in my area (Cleveland) and especially running our national advocacy organization — which is behind much of the damage.
— Fred
5. October 2009 at 10:55 pm :
“Empirical evidence suggests bike lanes actually encourage wrong-way riders. No statistical evidence as to whether it’s resulting in more crashes (crash reporting lacks much important data and cycling is so safe that even fools can get away with it for a long time). I see an abundance of ww riders in bike lanes around town, certainly far more than in narrow or wide lanes. And that totally fits with their silly salmon logic. The BL offers a safe haven to ride against traffic without head-on conflicts. But head-on isn’t the primary crash type for ww riders.”
Keri – Again, can you direct me to that “empirical evidence”? It seems to me we’re falling victim to the same anecdotal logic in those who oppose bike lane solutions as evidenced by those who support them. It may not be of much importance to the general public, but it is to me if I’m going to be talking about them in classes. Certainly there seems to be evidence that unless very carefully planned, they contribute to intersection collisions, but I’d like some more research-based information on their effects on these other considerations. I want to be able to make positive arguments based on the bes”t information I can find, or at least be able to say, “Well, the jury is still out….”
Thanks,
Bruce
I also have noticed no evidence that bike lanes get people off the sidewalk.
5. October 2009 at 10:57 pm :
….And please excuse the quality of my editing with the misplaced quote marks and the inadvertently copied last sentence.
Bruce Lierman
5. October 2009 at 11:08 pm :
Fred makes some good points and other points can be found on the LAB Reform page. http://www.labreform.org/
Some of the volunteer safety committees at my employer have advocated that cycling be restricted in areas where there are not dedicated facilities. This advice has been given by people who have little or no expertise in cycling, cycling safety, traffic management, or traffic engineering. Some are even self-identified “bicyclists”. Its advice given in part due to a lack of confidence in cyclists riding ability and motorists driving ability. Such good natured but bad advice does little to promote cycling or protect cyclists rights to travel freely.
To these folks I respond that there is no special magic to riding safely. I have been riding as a racer, a commuter, and a recreational cyclist for 31 years without depending on facility design or cycling specific facility availability. Nor am I Lance Armstrong or do I have quads of steel any more. Sure, we could use better facilities simply to make multimodal use more efficient, i.e., so people can travel at different speeds easily. But as Fred alludes, some of these designs create as many problems as they solve.To use them requires competence and careful thought. Basically, a cyclist is sharing the road and has to take that responsibility seriously. That’s simple enough.
Its important to have a full and critical picture of facility design if one is to advocate for such things. Keri’s idea of insidiously getting inside cyclists heads with rides but without compelling them to take a 10 hour proficiency course is a dang good one. That’s probably how a lot of us cyclists learned.
5. October 2009 at 11:29 pm :
Please note I’ve made a few changes, though nothing that would change the essential points
6. October 2009 at 12:57 am :
Bruce,
Empirical evidence: originating in or based on observation or experience.
To my knowledge, no studies have specifically been done on this. But bike lane proponents love throw in that little sidewalk and wrong-way riding canard with no evidence at all. It’s suspect to anyone who’s actually paying attention to how people ride.
I spend a lot of time observing cyclists everywhere I go. I had an office overlooking a street with a bike lane for 6 years. I rode, drove or walked that street every day. It sees a lot of cycle traffic and a distressingly large share of cyclists ride against traffic there. There’s no doubt the bike lane attracted them (I’m sure they weren’t doing that when Edgewater had 4 narrow lanes and no bike lanes), but it has no influence to make them ride properly. A slightly smaller (but still too large) share of cyclists ride on the sidewalk there, too, despite the sidewalk being such an obstacle course of utility poles and worthless shrub trees that it’s hard to even walk on it.
BTW, I was not making an argument against bike lanes. I was making an argument against your assertion that Mighk’s numbers should have included crash types involving salmon and sidewalk riders. Mighk was right not to include them, there’s no evidence to support it and it’s not relevant to the essay. Mighk also didn’t include the notion that bike lanes exacerbate many of the other more common crash types, because there is no statistical proof for that. And it’s not relevant to the essay.
6. October 2009 at 11:50 am :
Going back to the Politics of Possibility stuff.
The Hawaii Bicycling League used to publish a ride series in its magazine and web site. These were rides during the week and weekend of varying length and intensity, designed to attract everything from the weekend warrior to someone just getting their feet wet. The beginner rides were especially good to get people riding and in an informal setting, pass on a lot of the Traffic Skills/Effective Cycling ideas and techniques while disguising the tutoring as a bike ride rather than as an eight hour ordeal. These were led by experienced riders, some of whom were LCIs.
Seeing the lack of interest in the formal classroom training up here in Los Alamos, I am also thinking that we need to step outside the box rather than beat our heads against the wall.Cycling is by nature a grassroots activity, and I don’t think it is well served by trying to shoehorn it into a nationally-directed training program.
When I think back to where I picked up my early ideas and experience in bike commuting in the early 1980′s, it was from a guy who lived in a basement apartment underneath my apartment. He was a researcher who worked nights in the Sleep Research Lab at SUNY Stony Brook. He was outfitting his bike, which was his normal way to get to work, with the earliest of the high tech, high powered headlights, fenders, and other goodies. I picked up a lot of pointers from him on commuting and during this time greatly expanded my own confidence and mileage in an informal setting. The social aspect of cycling was important both as encouragement and as a way to pick people’s brains in a non-structured, non-stressful environment.
6. October 2009 at 5:05 pm :
SeeClickFix.com is a great way to build social capital and weak ties among the cycling movement.
Even though the site is a very new concept, there are already examples of issues reported on SeeClickFix that had 250+ votes to fix, and where legislation was passed as a result.
It’s a way to create a report on any issue, then invite your neighbors, community groups, governments and media to comment and come to a quick solution.
6. October 2009 at 5:21 pm :
Thanks for a great article, Mighk; a welcome addition to your many years of great advocacy for cyclists.
If anyone’s interested, I’ve had some success lately in getting thru to people quickly with this:
“Cyclists with the same level of training as drivers, have the same level of safety.”
Thanks to everyone for their good work on behalf of cyclists & cycling.
Lauren Cooper
6. October 2009 at 6:12 pm :
Although cycling and walking are safe, enjoyable and incredibly cost- and time-efficient — particularly within some central areas of American cities — it is helpful to be realistic and informed about the facts:
“It is much more dangerous to walk or cycle in American cities than to travel by car. Per kilometer traveled, pedestrians were 23 times more likely to get killed than car occupants in 2001 (140 vs 6 fatalities per billion kilometers), while bicyclists were 12 times more likely than car occupants to get killed (72 vs 6 fatalities per billion kilometers). Walking and cycling in American cities are much more dangerous than in many other countries. As shown in Figure 3, nonmotorist fatality rates in the United States are much higher than in The Netherlands and Germany.”
This is from the American Journal of Public Health — and the APHA is probably the nation’s most powerful advocate for more attention to walking, cycling and transit use — in a piece that attempts to explain why American cycling and walking rates are so much lower. It doesn’t just have to do with mixed-use development or bicycle facilities. See September 2003, Vol 93, No. 9 | American Journal of Public Health 1509-1516 Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health: Lessons From The Netherlands and Germany John Pucher, PhD and Lewis Dijkstra, PhD
“There are 2 problems with proposals to increase walking and cycling: their current danger and inconvenience in most American cities. As documented in this article, walking and cycling in the United States are much more dangerous than car travel, both on a per-trip and per-mile basis. Moreover, the lack of proper pedestrian and bicycling facilities makes walking and cycling not only unsafe but also inconvenient, slow, unpleasant, and unfeasible in most places.”
“The good news presented in this article is that it is indeed possible to achieve safe and convenient walking and cycling conditions, as demonstrated by the experience of Germany and The Netherlands. Those 2 countries have implemented a wide range of policies over the past 2 decades that have simultaneously encouraged walking and cycling while dramatically lowering pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and injuries and keeping auto use at only half the American level. The Netherlands and Germany provide valuable lessons for integrating more physical exercise into the lives of Americans.”
All that said, groups like ours definitely can help change the perceptions about safety (e.g., the widely-held perception, within many neighborhoods, that cycling and walking is simply too dangerous to even consider doing), which will help encourage more people to bike and walk.
That will start a self-reinforcing loop to make it even safer, i.e., by calling for lower speeds on urban roads.
6. October 2009 at 6:18 pm :
[...] Here is the link to the entire entry on Mike’s blog: http://mighkwilson.com/2009/10/which-cycling-politics-doom-or-possibility/ [...]
6. October 2009 at 8:29 pm :
This article gets it completely wrong in the first sentence…
“bicycle advocates focus? Bike lanes, new laws, and helmets”
Bike advocates do NOT focus on these things. Never have.
People with an agenda to create an aura of danger and isolation around bicycling impose these false “improvements” on the public in order to marginalize an activity that does not generate the personal profits that an exclusivly automobile society does. This has been a strategy by car centric industries started in the 1940′s adopting propaganda and messaging techniques developed by the government’s war effort.
It has been so wildly successful we are imprinted to think of a car centric culture as “normal”. If you actually study and think about our car society and especially juxtapose it against successful non-car societies, it is anything but “normal”.
6. October 2009 at 10:12 pm :
Velocentric:
Perhaps it might be more appropriate to say “people who focus on these things are not bike advocates, but bike lane, bike helmet, and special-bike-law advocates.”
I’ve read Fighting Traffic, which explores the auto interests’ efforts to change the frame of public streets in the 1920s (there’s an essay elsewhere on this site reflecting on that book). I’m curious as to what evidence you see that auto interests actively promoted bikeways, helmets and special laws as ways to increase or reinforce the public’s fear of cycling.
13. October 2009 at 7:43 am :
Angie wrote: “One thing I struggle with as a newer cyclist is that, though the statistics make a case for cycling being almost exceptionally safe, it seems that a high proportion of people on cycling forums have had some sort of accident with a car…”
Angie, you’ve got to remember that cycling forums, or any internet forums, are not representative of everything that happens in the real world. The forums are a self-selecting source of statistics, i.e. if somebody is involved in a cycling accident, one of the first things they’ll do (after getting any necessary medical treatment) is jump on a forum and say “I was in a cycling accident today!” However, every time they ride their bike and DON’T get in an accident, they don’t get on the forums and say “I was NOT in a cycling accident today!”
14. October 2009 at 4:26 pm :
Great article, Mighk! While the point has been well made about the difference in perception of safety between cycling and motoring, I’d like to add an anecdote that really hit home. A neighbor of mine, a retired park ranger in his 60s, is an avid transportation cyclist and has been since the 1960s, which coincidentally was when he bought his first and only car (a ’67 beetle). Until he and his well-preserved bug were t-boned at a signalized intersection at the entrance to our neighborhood, that is. The car was totaled and he and his passenger were well banged up, but recovered fully. Several months later, he replaced the totaled car with a similar vintage model, and started driving again (still not very often).
About a year later, he was involved in a serious bike accident on a multi-use path within a mile of home (no cars involved). He and the other bicyclist (who were riding together) were both hospitalized with significant injuries (both are in their 60s and significantly larger than your average cyclist, which no doubt contributed to the severity of their injuries). Several months later, he began riding again, at which time he was continually confronted by well-meaning neighbors and friends with the question: you’re riding again? Don’t you think it’s too dangerous? Not once had anyone made the same comment to him when he returned to driving his car.
Along the same lines, and with reference to the tandem fatalities, I think child abduction is a good parallel situation. Abduction of children by strangers occurs at the same rate as it did when I was growing up in the 60s, yet parents today won’t let their children walk or bike to school because of this fear (along with the fear of traffic). The difference is publicity. Today, every child abduction in the nation is national news within hours and for weeks. Fourty years ago, you would have only heard about it if it happened in your city, or the abductee was a celebrity. I’m afraid we spread fear in our efforts to memoralize those who have become fatality statistics. I’m not sure how we avoid it, but certainly an overall focus on the positives of cycling would help.
5. November 2009 at 7:32 am :
[...] Which Cycling Politics: Doom or Possibility?: [...]
27. April 2010 at 12:31 pm :
Imagine this. We already give special protection to “vulnerable users” and we, as a society, support such measures.
1) We support higher fines and jail sentences for drivers who hit highway construction workers. Mr. Wilson would contend that the courtroom wife in his parable should (rightfully) be outraged that the plaintiff in her husband’s case received a much lower fine than that of the driver who killed the highway worker. I think most reasonable people would agree that the courts got it right.
2) Helmet laws. Mr. Wilson says that cyclists ” account for about six percent of traffic-related brain injuries, and three percent of all brain injuries.” While that seems like a low number at first blush, remember that cyclists account for far fewer than 3% of all traffic (actually less than 0.5%). In that light, cyclists are far overrepresented with respect to brain injuries.
3) More helmet laws. Mr. Wilson would contend that mandatory seatbelt laws for drivers/passengers reinforces the belief that driving is dangerous.
30. September 2010 at 6:44 pm :
“According to the Florida Department of Health, three times as many pedestrians, three times as many motorcyclists, and ten times as many automobile passengers suffer brain injuries as bicyclists do each year.”
None of that is the basis for arguing that helmets are unnecessary for cycling. If anything, this is an argument for wearing helmets while walking, motorbiking and driving. While I agree that helmets feed fear and tend to make helmet-wearers feel invulnerable, the problem is the fear and the false perception, not the helmet use.
30. September 2010 at 7:02 pm :
Ian said “None of that is the basis for arguing that helmets are unnecessary for cycling. If anything, this is an argument for wearing helmets while walking, motorbiking and driving.”
But that’s the point. Nobody is arguing for wearing helmets while walking or driving. Our society’s concern about brain injuries is highly selective.
10. March 2011 at 11:35 pm :
But that’s the point. Nobody is arguing for wearing helmets while walking or driving. Our society’s concern about brain injuries is highly selective. ds
11. March 2011 at 7:28 am :
But so what? Helmets are good. If you want to wear one (on a bike, in a car, or while walking), you have the right to do so. The fact that cyclists are focused on for helmet use is a GOOD thing for cyclists – it helps more of us to be that little bit safer. My point is that I think people should work to defuse the fear of cycling, and that the societal focus on safety that benefits cyclists should also be applied to motor vehicle use and walking. If it were, we’d ALL be safer.
11. March 2011 at 8:58 am :
Khal Spencer wrote:”My problem with some of the VC “advocacy” as opposed to VC technique for riding is that some of the VC partisans see their role as one dimensional. Some are to cycling what the Taliban is to Islam or the Puritans were to Christianity. The Taliban could blow up the Buddhas at Bamiyan, but that didn’t make Islam any stronger.”
I think that’s a very unfair analogy. No VCer has ever hanged opponents as the Puritans did, nor has any VCer ever advocated or done anything like what the Taliban have advocated or done. We should not be demonizing anyone – especially not those of us who are trying to make road cycling popular.
VC makes cyclists stronger and safer. When you boil it down, that is its goal and its effect. Bicycle infrastructure advocates make cyclists weaker and less safe. As such, the former is good for cycling, while the latter is very bad for cycling. Weak and poor cyclists are overwhelmingly the ones who get injured or killed when they interact (as they must) with the road. Bike paths don’t go everywhere and until they do, VC is the best and safest way to go. I have never understood why so many people choose to demonize a way of cycling that is demonstrably better and safer for all cyclists.
11. March 2011 at 9:18 am :
Mark cited the American Journal of Public Health:
“It is much more dangerous to walk or cycle in American cities than to travel by car. Per kilometer traveled, pedestrians were 23 times more likely to get killed than car occupants in 2001 (140 vs 6 fatalities per billion kilometers), while bicyclists were 12 times more likely than car occupants to get killed (72 vs 6 fatalities per billion kilometers).”
I’m sure the American Journal of Public Health data is honest data, but I think it is most likely comparing apples to oranges, in that it takes into account freeway driving. No cyclist travels 120 miles in a couple of hours on a freeway: freeways are a very different matter than the average street, having fewer distractions, fewer and safer intersections, no oncoming traffic hazards and less speed differential between users. When freeways are taken out of the equation and similar trips are compared, the statistics I’ve seen seem to indicate that cycling becomes as safe as or even safer than, driving a car.
27. October 2011 at 12:15 pm :
On running red lights:
Cyclists do break laws that were designed for cars on roads designed for cars. That’s a fact.
However, from my own experience, the only time I’ve ever been in an accident was when I was following the rules.
1988: Doored on my first day as a bike messenger. That never happened again because I took the lane whenever I needed it after that day. I was not found to be at fault. Zero additional accidents 4 years as a messenger “breaking the law” and not waiting for lights to turn green.
1990: motorist made a right turn into me, no signal. I was obeying all rules. He was found at fault by the Allston Cops.
2006: motorist made a right turn into me, no signal. I was obeying all rules. Cop found me at fault. I wasn’t in the mood to fight it, my hand had just been crushed by a emergency room nurse in a Rav 4. Sadly, I didn’t press charges. I will if there is a next time.
Most people who enforce road laws, enact road laws, design roads, build roads and live in this country don’t ride a bike to work 190 times a year or 3 times a year. Therefore, they really have no idea what is and what isn’t safe for a cyclist. Most Americans only ride a bike once or twice a year and then they are sore for days afterward.
When I get to a red light, I check for cars and then I go. I feel safer doing that than being at a red light with a texting teen looking down at their new iPhone 4S approaching from behind me in their parents Lexus SUV. It’s against the law for me to do that. It’s also against the law to text and drive, yet a large majority of drivers does it. Both are wrong, but if you are in a car, you might live. If I’m stopped waiting for the light to change and get rear ended on my bike by a car doing 30 or 25 or even 20, the prognosis is less positive for me. So, when I get to the red light, I’m going if I judge it safe to go. I don’t “just blow through lights” blindly. Yup, it’s still illegal, and in all three instances where I have come into contact with a car, it was not my fault and I was following the law. So, I say, do what you need to do to feel safe. The road designers/DPW folks, cops, drivers, law makers and all the rest are in their Ford Excursions texting, updating their facebook status, trying to get SA-821 passed to eliminate Transportation Enhancements and complaining about how all those cyclists are so brazenly breaking the law and doing so many bad things. It’s likely they are just mad that they are stuck in traffic and the cyclist is not.
From my own experience (currently commuting 12 miles round trip about 150-190 times a year in suburbia) cycling is generally pretty safe, however, most people don’t ride bikes enough to realize motorists don’t want to hurt them(unless you are 35 miles southwest of Cleveland and get beer bottles thrown at you, but that’s pretty rare). Most don’t know how to ride to protect yourself. Also, it’s scary to be riding 10-12 inches from a moving car because that doesn’t happen when you play Call of Duty, Black OPS. I don’t blame people for not riding, cycling is scary when you are so used to being in a massive machine/living room detached from the outside.
27. October 2011 at 3:55 pm :
Thanks for writing this. It is a good perspective. I assume you have already made the edits alluded to in earlier comments, because I wouldn’t have you change a thing from when I read it.
27. October 2011 at 6:23 pm :
The American road network was built for bicycles, NOT cars. Look up the ‘Good Roads Movement’.
As for breaking laws, EVERYONE breaks laws. That’s cyclists, pedestrians and motorists. The human who doesn’t break laws on the road has yet to be born and probably never will be. This is why motorists who go on about scofflaw cyclists are hypocrites.
4. April 2012 at 11:22 am :
American society strongly believes that cycling is dangerous. This belief is used by both those who wish less cycling, shall we call them motorists, and those who wish to reduce motoring by creating much more cycling, shall we call them bicycle advocates. The bicycle advocates use this belief not because it is right, but because it is strong, particularly in the minds of anti-motorists, so they try to encourage cycling by advocating bikeways to alleviate that fear.
In this society, those who encourage cycling can be thought of as those who avoid the roads, mountain cyclists, those who avoid delays caused by traffic, would-be racers, and those who accept the roads and their traffic as the normal environment for travel by bicycle for a wide range of purposes. These latter, that’s us, are the only group who encourage cycling as normal travel on normal roads for its pleasures and benefits.
We emphasize the pleasures and benefits of cycling when it is done right, using all the skills developed over more than a century of cycling. We should not be bothered that the rest of society feels different; rather, we should be proud that we are the ones who have learned the right way to cycle, and we should endeavor to instill that pride in those we persuade to cycle with us.
It does no good to bother about the strategies of the others. Motorists won’t be changed; they don’t care enough to think about cycling. Bicycle advocates are too wound up in their anti-motoring beliefs to be susceptible to change.
We, vehicular cyclists, bicycle drivers, lawful and competent cyclists, call us what you will, should go our own way, happy and confident in our activity, persuading people one by one to come cycling with us.
The only political activity that we should engage in is removing the governmental discrimination against us, repealing the laws that make us less than drivers of vehicles. I think that we can arrange to do this in ways that won’t bring out motorist opposition, and certainly won’t bother the bicycle advocates.
9. April 2012 at 8:44 am :
Neal:
I’ve spent years as a bicycle transportation professional actually trying to defend the use of bike lanes. I finally found that I couldn’t. Rather than spend hours writing a point-by-point response to your comment, I prefer to spend time on what I actually want to see happen in the world; particularly, help more people become confident and competent cyclists.
9. April 2012 at 9:31 am :
I find it difficult to accept Neal’s view that ‘We are all cyclists’ -as if our differences are cosmetic. The thing is, anyone can claim to be a cyclist, and for many of us, cycling is just one aspect of our lives. For others, it’s a major part of our lives. There’s a big difference between someone like me who has spent years on a bike and someone who spends a few days per year cycling while on holiday. There’s a big difference between someone like me whose only personal transportation is his bicycle and someone who drives a car most of the time. There’s a big difference between someone like me who has taken a multitude of cycling safety courses, LCI courses, and who has spent hundreds of hours studying cycling laws, cycling safety, etc., and someone who hasn’t. There’s a big difference between someone like me who commutes by bicycle and someone who cycles for fun. There’s a big difference between someone like me who sees integrated cycling as a matter of personal freedom and rights and bike facility advocates who care more about getting bike paths and lanes more than they care about their right to use the road. There’s a big difference between someone like me who enjoys the feeling of competence of being able to cycle in traffic and someone who fears traffic. There’s a big difference between someone like me who strives to cycle carefully and lawfully and someone who doesn’t care about the rules of the road or the safety of himself or others.
These are not negligible differences that our love of cycling can overcome. They are vast and fundamental differences that define the way we cycle, how much it means to us and how we advocate for the use of the bicycle. This is why bike facility advocates treat integrated cyclists with the barely contained contempt that seems evident to me in many of their posts, and this is why we integrated cyclist treat bike facility advocates like they’re either naive or actively trying to destroy cycling.
We are only ‘all in this together’ if our goals are the same and if we act together to realize them. Our goals are not the same and we do not act together – nor should we. If bike facility advocates get their way, it has become quite clear that it will mean the end of integrated cycling, because government has already shown time after time that it is perfectly willing to close off cyclists’ access to roads.
9. April 2012 at 9:41 am :
This is why I believe that integrated cyclists need an advocacy organization to rival the League of American Bicyclists. The League’s advocacy work has been almost entirely focused on bicycle facilities to the detriment of cyclists’ rights to the road. We need an organization that will fight for our rights to the road. The League does not do that.
I think we need a clear split, so that we are no longer presumed to be part of a generic bicycle advocacy. This will prevent the paint and path advocates from acting as if we are some kind of traitors to the cause. The fact is, I’ve never been a traitor to the cause of bike facilities – because I’ve never seen them as a good thing. You cannot betray what you’ve always seen as evil, and I see bicycle facilities as evil.
So let’s stop pretending that we’re all one big happy family. Let’s accept that our differences are fundamental, and go our separate ways and fight for what we believe is right.
11. April 2012 at 12:51 pm :
My objective is not just to protect cyclists by good training, clothes, & maintenance. My objective is to make more non-cyclists into cyclists, and more trips into cycling trips.
Ian Cooper wrote, “If bike facility advocates get their way, it has become quite clear that it will mean the end of integrated cycling, because government has already shown time after time that it is perfectly willing to close off cyclists’ access to roads.” My reply is, CHANGE YOUR GOVERNMENTS! Other governments, at municipal, state, and national levels, like in the Netherlands and Germany, have the objective to reduce car dependence. For one thing, it’s cheaper as well as cleaner to support more transit and cycling, and closing off roads to cyclists means just more congestion.
It’s all very logical. Cycling is healthier for the cyclist and everyone else. Cycling is cheaper for the cyclist and the government. The problem is old habits and laziness, and perhaps weather…
11. April 2012 at 1:39 pm :
Change my government? Yeah, that sounds so simple. But in the real world, it’s not. The idea that the integrated cycling lobby can bring positive change to the US in the current environment is laughable, especially since most bike advocates are so enamored with pretty colored lanes and obsessed with trying to get cyclists out of the way of drivers and onto their little play-paths.
I’ve cycled in the Netherlands and Germany – these countries are not cyclist-friendly – they are car-friendly. German and Dutch cyclists are perfectly content to allow their governments to deny cyclists their right to the road, because, just like American ‘bicycle advocates’ they are afraid to use the road.
I don’t care that much about supporting transit or the environment – people will support those things when it makes financial sense for them to do so. I don’t care about car dependence – I don’t care how people get around – that’s their business, not mine. I don’t care about other people’s health – if they want to be unhealthy, why should I get in their way? I’m a cyclist – I just want to secure the freedom to cycle on the roads that my taxes pay for. That’s all.
My point is that the self-professed ‘bicycle advocates’ don’t want cyclists to have full and free access to the roads. That’s why I think we need to split, if only so people know there’s a better way – not through so-called ‘bicycle advocacy’ (which is really motorist advocacy), but through ‘bicyclist advocacy’.