This is an answer not only to Dave, but to the next two articles in this thread. The emotions are so high because some people believe that I have been the leader in preventing American governments from doing what they want to do to cyclists, and what those advocates desperately want to be done. If that is an accurate statement it is one to be immensely proud of. The American bikeway designs were designed by the motoring establishment to make motoring more convenient by forcing cyclists to ride as if they were incompetent children. The American bicycle safety regulation was designed by bureaucrats who had no knowledge of bicycle engineering. The motoring officials claimed that their bikeway designs were justified because they made cycling much safer. They were never able to provide evidence for that claim, and the evidence that was discovered during the creation of the bikeway program demonstrated the falsity of that claim, and the results since show that these bikeways did not make cycling safer. The bicycle design regulation was claimed to make cycling much safer, but because very few injuries were caused by defective design of bicycles and because the bureaucrats knew nothing about bicycle engineering, that regulation has had no effect on cyclist safety. It was entirely proper that well-informed cyclists should have opposed those programs and managed to remove the most dangerous and deleterious features of each of them. That deserves praise.

Since the bicycle design regulation now does nothing, it is no longer subject to active controversy, only academic. However, the bikeway program is still actively operating and is therefore controversial. The bikeway advocates have never demonstrated that bikeways make cycling much safer. They have long advocated bikeways on the basis of comfort for inexperienced bicycle riders. If that comfort is provided, these advocates believe that a great many Americans will switch trips from motoring to bicycling, which is the prime motivation for these "bicycle advocates". They are emotionally upset because my work has largely killed their safety argument, thereby removing the prime governmental justification for the bikeways that these anti-motoring advocates desire.

If you will read the article whose URL is presented in the first post in this thread, you will see that I have not criticized the arrangements operating in the Netherlands. I have made two statements: There is no evidence that attempting to introduce those arrangements into typical American cities will produce either the large bicycle mode share or the cyclist safety typical of the Netherlands. There are a great many significant reasons, concerned with the differences between the two countries, to believe that any such attempt will fail. These statements greatly upset those with the emotional belief that introducing Dutch arrangements into America will greatly reduce motoring.