Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
Same old, same old Mr. Forester putting his own spin and words into creating a straw man (my "thesis") to knock down, as well as defending his use of ad hominem criticism as a response to pointed criticism.
"The best data" available for determining a safety record for vehicular cyclists is the same as the worst, non existent.
Mr. Forester's manipulation of data from various studies, none of which identified any study subject cyclist as meeting any definition of being vehicular, and his guessing which cyclists might have been vehicular cyclists in order to make claims about their safety record is a joke. That he also bases his claims about the effectiveness of his proprietary training program from the same studies "data" when none of the study subjects were identified as ever VC "trained" is an even bigger joke.
More of ILTB's typically nasty objections. Road traffic operates under the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles. Collisions typically result from violation(s) of those rules of the road by either or both parties. Typical American cyclists, even the adult ones, do not operate according to those rules. Some groups of American cyclists have operated much closer to those rules than have the typical American cyclists. Those groups who operated more closely to the rules of the road have a much lower collision rate than the typical American bicycle riding population. The traffic portion of the Effective Cycling Program trains cyclists in the skills of obeying the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles. It is reasonable to conclude that cyclists so trained will acquire the lower collision rate associated with rules of the road cycling.
And ILBT considers the whole program some kind of big joke. It is clear that ILBT has some ideological opposition to training cyclists to obey the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles, which ideology produces his stream of rather nasty criticisms.