RobertHurst

I love that stuff. All of that is completely foreign to the original version of the Effective Cycling curriculum into which you've been indoctrinated as an LCI.

Safety education for bicyclists means a more intense version of defensive driving. Vigilance, anticipating motorist mistakes, that's what it's all about. Yet Jf ignores it almost completely and even the more enlightened LCIs seem to treat vigilance as an add-on, a throw in, which indicates a fundamental lack of understanding about the risks. These guys are still trying to convince people to follow the rules. That's great for kids and such, but the rest of us adults already know about following the rules and are looking for more developed strategies to maximize safety. Experienced cyclists understand that the act of following rules and acting as a vehicle, by itself, is extremely limited as a strategy for "risk management."


That is not what I purport to purport.

I-Like-To-Bike

Talk about blind trust!
If you really are concerned with what Robert Hurst's views really are on the importance of following the rules of the road, I recommend you read his book and what he has actually written, rather than look over a John Forester "critique" of Hurst's book (or any body else's work for that matter.)

randya

bzzzt! The so-called modern-day 'rules of the road' are designed with one thing and one thing only in mind: regulating the movement of four-wheeled internal combustion motor vehicles, because of their deadly potential when misused.

furthermore, there is nothing universal about the modern day US rules of the road, there are many other countries with completely different rules of the road, and many other countries also do a much better job of taking non-motorized users and/or two wheeled users into account in their rules.

genec

Exactly... the classic example of this is the 85 percentile rule governing speed... there is no way that is a safety "improvement."

JRA

bzzzt! The modern rules of the road are a hodge-podge of laws influenced by a variety of factors and concerns including safety, convenience, environmental impact, economics and just plain stupidity.

That's more or less true. There is nothing God-given or even particularly rational about the rules of the road as we know them.

genec

And here we come full circle...

JRA

I can neither explain nor defend Forester lunacy.

"Vehicular cycling," a term coined by Forester, is a very poor choice of words, if you ask me. If you want to know why JF chose to emphasize the least significant and most ambiguous part of "vehicular rules of the road," you will have to ask him. He obviously considers himself quite the wordsmith so he should have an answer.

I follow traffic rules and call myself a rules of the road cyclist but bristle at being associated in any way with the crackpot ideology of Forester.

invisiblehand

Is there not some consistency in the driving norms across geographic areas? There are differences, but I would think that someone from say France could come to the US (and vice versa) and drive fine with little instruction. Across the US and Canada, anecdotally writing, I would say that this is true. Wouldn't this suggest that local rules reflect some notion of some optimization between the factors -- I'll omit stupidity for this particular question -- you mention above?

Just to be clear, I am not writing that they have achieved an optimal solution. Just that the judicial, legislative, and executive powers work towards one.

The Human Car

When I moved from Arizona to New York City, the first month was heck as I tried to negotiate the streets with my car. I did eventually figure out that in NYC who has the right of way was determined by momentum and not the standard rules of the road as I was taught. Another difference is it is scary as heck to drive in NYC without a horn, in Arizona you don't need a horn at all. So while there is some consistency and I did mange to survive by the standard rules of the road but it was a white knuckle experience.

invisiblehand

Hahahaha ... yes, growing up in NYC certainly taught me how to be aggressive on the roads. But back to the point, I would argue that NYC is the extreme "local equilibrium" in the US. Consequently, if you can make it there -- or if most people could make it there if necessary -- it supports the point. Note that we don't know if most people could make it there if necessary.

I also think that familiarity accentuates differences. That is, if you a trumpet expert ... you can probably tell the difference between a Yamaha and a Bach. Or consider how many roadies feel a difference between 105 and Ultegra components and make a big stink about it. Someone unfamiliar with bikes would probably never notice the difference. Given how much driving most people do, as a population we are probably quite familiar with driving.

genec

In western nations that is somewhat true... I have driven in Mexico, Spain, and France without problems and without further training... I have ridden bicycles in the same locations without further training (and actually found cycling in France and Mexico far nicer than in the US).

China on the other hand was a bit daunting... I rode a bike there, but only on the paths. Forget driving... it was like nothing I've ever seen.

Chipseal listed some basic rules that seem to apply in most of the western nations... the problem is how motorists view cyclists... as equal road users with whom the road is shared, or as toy users that have to be tolerated and avoided by what ever means.

But as much as these basic rules seem similar, there are also nuances that can get you into trouble... even in the US there are differences in various states that can throw you off and cause problems... Oregon's bike lane laws for instance vice the BL laws of most other states. Idaho and the red light rules for cyclists are vastly different from the other states.

France had red lights just for cyclists... another difference... subtle, but there none the less.

Oulu Finland as another example was vastly difference for cyclists... I rode a bike there for a few days... and it was great. I didn't drive there but it didn't seem to be different from what I have seen in most other western places... except for the respect given to cyclists.

The Human Car

Granted there is some difficulty in arguing a point with no clear dividing line but I will strongly assert that there is and there isn't differences between localities. So there I win.

invisiblehand

No winning or losing here bud.

Just to be clear, there are differences in my opinion. I just think that they tend to be subtle in the grand scheme of things.

And Gene, I should point out that I have little experience overseas. So my reference to France in my earlier post is really a question. Just that my prior says that physics and human cognition will be the same across geography and I suspect that the politics and economics will be similar (although I imagine that certain outcomes are path dependent). Consequently, I expect the similarities to outweigh the differences.

genec

It does tend to work that way for western nations... (at least the ones I have been too... more than I listed BTW)

As to the Asian nations... Korea and Okinawa and the Philippines are much like western nations... again from what I have seen (several trips over a long range of time to Korea) But China is vastly different... no doubt you have seen the videos of driving in Vietnam... (search youtube); Driving in China is a much more organic system then the rules based system you are generally familiar with. Chinese people that I have worked with that have drivers licenses here in the US tell me the Chinese system is vastly more complicated and much more difficult to learn, where as in the US they find it quite easy to get a license.

In China at times I had a difficult time crossing the street... unsure of how and when. About the only rule I could really discern was that you generally drove on the right side of the road.

But again, while this does highlight the general similarities of the "rules of the road" or the "traffic rules," what this discussion doesn't address is how and where cyclists fit into the picture... That varies widely depending on the national view of cyclists...

In America cyclists are "athletes" or the "downtrodden" (drunks, poor, homeless) or children.... (on toys) Cycling is not viewed as transportation by the vast majority of motorists, (or even the secretary of transportation) thus the treatment of cyclists tends to be "yeah they can use the road as long as they stay out of the way." So we tend to get a brush off behavior here in the US.

In many of the other countries I have visited, the treatment of cyclists varies from cyclists being an equal road user, to the extent that cycling was encouraged (absence of auto parking) to the extreme of cycling being a whole supported system in of itself (Finland), to a certain benign acceptance, the latter case being France, where cycling was not viewed as unusual and there was infrastructure, but there was also a certain near indifference as to how to treat cyclists.

So while traffic rules are indeed somewhat similar, the application of said rules pertaining to cyclists is different.

The Human Car

And I will counter that with when my horn was broken in NYC, I mostly took mass transit, it was that scary to drive without a horn. That does not pass the manage to get along despite the differences test.

Bekologist

whichever vague or codified 'rules of the road' are commonly held and followed by enough motorists to get the roads to function transportationally for them,

the vague but commonly held 'rules of the road' for bicyclists encompass a different set of 'rules' regarding collision avoidance, lane sharing and others that maximize the functionality of bikes in traffic.

Robert Hurst addresses this in his book.


The traffic dynamics affecting bicycling differ among cities (even within cities) in the USA to a greater degree than differences for motorists. if a mayberry driver gets plopped down in manhattan, maybe they will cope, but bicycling conditions are much different between mayberry and manhattan island.

Even within 21st century Mayberry USA, a motorist can move between a 25mph neighborhood road and a 55mph freeflowing merge/diverge arterial easily and with less change in operational rules, but a bicyclist will be presented with differences in functional 'rules of the road'- heck, even john forester endorses the distinctly unvehicular position of riding between faster lanes of traffic at certain times ....talk about different 'rules of the road'...

forestor is more mayberry and idylls of post-war Britain, Robert Hurst is much more 21st century and Manhattan.

invisiblehand

Well I think this statement is true.

invisiblehand

That is a good point.

buzzman

hadn't poked my head into the VC subforum in a while and lo and behold find this thread-

JF returns?!!! and calls for the return of HH!!??

May I remind you:


This should be really interesting

The Human Car

Originally Posted by Albert Einstein
Which is mathematically equivalent to:
while others

rando

yeah, I just peeked in too... the more things change...

Daily Commute

I read Hurst after I read Forester, but I saw Hurst as a proponent of Forester's basic ideas, but not of Forester personally or of Forester's style of persuasion (which I concede can sometimes be counterproductive, and which unfortunately sometimes mirrors the style of several of the paint and path advocates in this forum).

It's been a while since I had the texts in front of me, but I didn't see much of a difference. Hurst put a more emphasis on times when you have to ride defensively, but they both essentially advocated following the standard rules of traffic. Contrary to Hurst's comments in this thread, I never read Forester (or other LCI's) to say that cyclists should not ride defensively. Contrary to Forester's comments here, I never saw Hurst as a proponent of renegade cycling.

On another topic, Forester was more emphatically against bike lanes than Hurst, but I came away from reading Hurst believing that he shared a healthy skepticism of the value of road paint and of paint and path advocacy. Again, same basic philosophy, different emphasis.

Maybe I misread Hurst. Maybe I misread Forester. They are stylistically very different, but their substance is a lot more similar than either would like to admit.

LittleBigMan

I suppose that since John Forester is the OP of this thread, the responders will reply with typical political correctness, regardless of their respective polarities.

It would be refreshing if people could just look at both sides of any particular situation, and just be open to truth from any source. While I am not as dogmatic about vehicular cycling as John Forester from a theoretical persepctive, I tend to ride, for all practical purposes, as a motorist would drive: according to the established rules of the road.

This does not mean I would now attack anyone who does not ride as I would, because all riders are not as I am; it just means that I honestly do ride as John Forester so ardently (much more ardently than I) prescribes.

Yet, I have broken many a law in my day, ridden the wrong way on one-way streets, hopped curbs, and lane-split. I'm a bad boy...

But I would raise the point that established road rules have been tried and tested over many years and found to result in fewer crashes for vehicles following them. However, these same roads are the killing grounds of tens of thousands of American motorists every single year, so perhaps some changes are in order concerning a transportation system that is both extremely efficient, and extremely deadly. Now that I also ride a motorcycle (something that frankly sometimes scares hell out of me, ) I see ever more clearly the problem facing cyclists: lack of protection in a crash.

Still, as a vehicular cyclist riding many thousands of miles a year, the only serious crash I had was due to being attacked by a pedestrian, go figure. Never had a crash with a car, thank goodness...

But to be honest, apart from political polarization that so often occurs on these forums, I don't do a lot of comparing between "cycling expert" authors. I just ride.

dynaryder

At a guess,I think the main difference between Hurst and Forester is that Hurst has ridden in DC in the past decade,while Forester rides with HH.

Keep up the good work Robert. Your book is spot-on for cycling in the DC area,and I found it very helpful when I first started commuting. If you're ever in town,look up the Pirates and we'll do a pillage for you.

JRA

LMAO. So funny and so true.

What amazes me about Forester is how a guy can have so much knowledge and experience and still get so many fundamental things so fundamentally wrong. Arrogance and pride conquer all. Having all the answers before you start doesn't hurt, either. Forester's the perfect example of what my father used to call an expert who knows a lot of things that aren't true.

The most amusing thing about Forester is that he has followers. What a hoot!

The fact that Forester would cast the first stone is amusing, as well.