Originally Posted by billh
I don't see these two ideas as separate. I would draw a distinction between pure VC, which I characterize as drawing almost no distinctions between cyclist and motorist, and realistic VC, which allows for bicycles as slow-moving, non-motorized vehicles. Call it "RVC".
I don't know of anyone who advocates what you characterize here as "pure VC". The only VC I know is what you describe as "RVC". VC definitely "allows for bicycles as slow-moving, non-motorized vehicles". That is certainly the VC that is described in books like John Forester's
Effective Cycling and John Franklin's
Cyclecraft (though Franklin does not call it VC, he is describing the same thing as Forester).
The point is that the same vehicular rules and rights apply to both cyclists and faster vehicle drivers, however they tend to apply a little bit differently to cyclists because cyclists fall in the category of slower traffic much more often than do motor vehicle drivers. So those rules that apply to slower drivers apply to cyclists more often (in particular, between intersections, slower traffic keeps to the right),
but all the other rules apply the same.
The RVC approach still gives bicycles the right to travel on the road. Yet, there must be standardization of the interactions between cyclists and motorists. This is done by a combination of education and appropriate facilities, which may include bicycle lanes.
The "standardization of the interactions between cyclists and motorists" is already established by standard vehicular rules of the road. It works great, it really does.
It is the treating cyclists as a separate class, with a modified set of rules, and separated facilities, is what
complicates and
muddles the interactions between cyclists and motorists.