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’.

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.

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.

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.

Pretty profitable post. I just stumbled upon your website plus wanted in order to say that I have indeed enjoyed inspection your blog posts. Any instrumentation I’ll be subscribing in order to your feed furthermore I hope you post another time in the …

When I see you name above I am tempted to write it MighTkW – Mighty Mike with a 1000 Watt sprint (perhaps from your old racing days.)

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

I admire your bicycle resumé and note that I too had a bicycle paper route as a kid in Napa, longest one for the Napa Register, and while I ride quite a lot nowadays I cannot claim to have the bicycle experience (never played bike polo) that you have riding cross country – and I met my wife at the county agricultural fair.

Please take my respectful comments – some differing with your opinions in the spirit of good fellowship as cyclists.

I am looking at your essay of 1 Oct, 2009 – ‘Possibility or Doom’ which I liked and just recently read:

“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!”

In reviewing your essay today in April of 2012 (shows it had staying power) I now have the unfair advantage of knowledge of events that have transpired since you wrote it.

“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.”

Perhaps you are not seeing the trees because of the forest.
If the fears that you state above are the true cause retarding increases in cyclists, ……..mitigating these factors would seem to be in order.

And no surprise – ‘bicycle friendly’ infrastructure (including bike lanes) does increase the number of cyclists and increases safety.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bikestats.shtml#network

In June 2009, DOT completed the City’s ambitious goal of building 200 bike-lane miles in all five boroughs in just three years, nearly doubling the citywide on-street bike network while reshaping the city’s streets to make them safer for everyone who uses them. The same period also saw unprecedented expansion and innovation of the overall network, including the installation of 4.9 miles of bike paths physically separated from car traffic lanes, 20 sheltered bike parking structures and 3,100 bike racks, accompanied by a more than 45% growth in commuter cycling in that time.

The NYC Cycling Safety Indicator describes changes in cyclist safety over the past decade while accounting for the increase in bicycle use in New York City. The decrease in the Cycling Safety Indicator from 397 in 2000 to 113 in 2010 represents a 72% decrease in the average risk of a serious injury experienced by commuter cyclists in New York City.

Why are you wearing a helmet in your website pictures? Because you are fearful? ….. I doubt it.
But perhaps helmets do mitigate fears (ours for our children) and are just plain common sense in view of accident reports.
http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm

Is that a bike lane in a park you are riding on in your website picture?
Planned segregated bike facilities have increased the number of cyclists and reduced accident rates.

What new laws do you fear?
California has a whole section of law for cyclists – I have not seen a decrease in the number of cyclists but there has been an increase in cyclist safety.
California requires helmet for persons under age 18.
http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/vc/tocd11c1a4.htm

NHTSA statistics

2008 http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/811156.pdf
California Fatalities/1M residents 2.97 vs. Florida 6.82 (Florida has 2nd worst rate of any state in the nation) Florida has a rate more than twice that of California.

2009 http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811386.pdf
California Fatalities/1M residents 2.68 vs. Florida 5.77 (Florida has 2nd worst rate of any state in the nation) Florida has a rate more than twice that of California.

“The segregationists have taken an adversarial stance towards motorists.” I disagree for reasons stated below.

“The dominant bicycle advocacy faction takes the position that bicyclists must be segregated into special facilities in order for significant numbers of people to feel safe when cycling.”

No – I think you overstate the case here – a more reasoned statement might be – transportation planners (utilizing successful segregation features of our highways, such as divider strips on freeways to prevent head on collisions) are successfully developing infrastructure to make cycling in cities safer, easier, and more comfortable.

A larger segment of our population is taking advantage of these improvements to benefit their mobility and health.

“Of course the segregationists will debate this. They believe (or at least they claim, based on extremely weak evidence) that segregated bikeways, separating motorists and bicyclists with paint or raised barriers, improve safety and are the only mechanism by which cycling can be significantly increased.”

Not the ‘only mechanism’ – but certainly one mechanism (among many) that can increase safety and numbers in cycling.

And I submit the evidence is not so weak as you state – motorist/cyclists accidents occur primarily at non-intersection locations where separation does work to improve safety.

2008 NTSHA http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/811156.pdf

Pedalcyclist fatalities occurred more frequently in urban areas (69%), at non-intersection locations (64%), between the hours of 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. (28%), and during the months of June (9%) and September (12%).

2009 NTHSA http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811386.pdf

The majority of pedalcyclist fatalities in 2009 occurred in urban areas (70%). In respect to vehicle crash location in relation to an intersection, most pedalcyclist fatalities in 2009 occurred at non-intersections. Compared to 2008 these numbers increased by 5 percent.

“This debate has been dragging on internet forums and elsewhere for years, and I’m not interested in rehashing it here. Instead, I am interested in discussing values.”

I think the ‘debate’ is being settled by the incoming results from the real world rather than the world of words in any event.

It was the optimistic ‘Possibility’ part of your essay that I liked and I agree – let’s move on to values.

I think our familiarity with bicycles from childhood creates a bond among most people whether cyclist or motorist to view bicycles favorably.

With a thanks to John Forester for a bit of help here …… the artificial categories of anti-motorists cyclists, mountain bike cyclists, delayed cyclists, racer cyclists, vehicle cyclists, driver cyclists, lawful cyclists, competent cyclists, incompetent cyclists, learning cyclists, noobie cyclists, children cyclists and so on does not serve your vision of ‘Possibility’ for cyclists.

We are all cyclists …….. plain and simple. We should work together.

To divide up cyclists into adversarial specialty camps dilutes our capability to influence the cycling environment …. Laws … Infrastructure …. And how best to improve the cycling experience for all cyclists.

As you say in your essay: “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 need to stick together to define ourselves as ‘vehicles without motors’ ………..or be classified as ‘pedestrians with wheels’ ……….. and accept the responsibilities and privileges that follow.

Your program (and others that are similar) educating cyclists is a step in the right direction.

Perhaps like the motorcycle endorsement on a driver’s license …… successful completion of your course should result in an endorsement or operator license for cyclists to operate on public roads. It would be a step to show that cyclists expect to operate according to the state vehicle code when on public roads as a vehicle operator.

Copying the story format of your essay here is a story from Wiki:

The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in India from where it is widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies.

At various times it has provided insight into the relativity, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behaviour of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.

It is a parable that has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu lore. The tale is also well known in Europe. In the 19th century the poet John Godfrey Saxe created his own version as a poem. Since then, the story has been published in many books for adults and children, and interpreted in an ever-increasing variety of ways.

The Buddha twice uses the simile of blind men led astray. In the Canki Sutta he describes a row of blind men holding on to each other as an example of those who follow an old text that has passed down from generation to generation, much like the Christian Gospel (Matthew 15.14) saying about the blind leading the blind.[2] In the Udana (68–69)[3] he uses the elephant parable to describe sectarian quarrels. A king has the blind men of the capital brought to the palace, where an elephant is brought in and they are asked to describe it.

“When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant?

Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?”

The men assert the elephant is either like a pot (the blind man who felt the elephants’ head), a winnowing basket (ear), a plowshare (tusk), a plow (trunk), a granary (body), a pillar (foot), a mortar (back), a pestle (tail) or a brush (tip of the tail).

The men cannot agree with one another and come to blows over the question of what it is like and their dispute delights the king.

The Buddha ends the story by comparing the blind men to preachers and scholars who are blind and ignorant and hold to their own views: “Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing…. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.” The Buddha then speaks the following verse:

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Blind_monks_examining_an_elephant.jpg/800px-Blind_monks_examining_an_elephant.jpg

“Blind monks examining an elephant”, an ukiyo-e print by Hanabusa Itchō (1652–1724)

What do you think?

Cheers,

Neal