chipcom, first of all, no one has branded or packaged the term VC. It just is a term to refer to cycling that is in accordance to the vehicular rules of the road. It is used to distinguish from the cycling employed by most cyclists in the U.S. today, which is pretty much, "anything goes as long as I stay out of the way of traffic unless I have no choice in which case they better yield for me cuz I don't have a cage and I'm not burning up fossil fuel and choking up the environment". Why not have terms to distinguish between these radically different approaches to cycling? While we have no term for the latter, at least we have a term for the former, so at least we can say VC and non-VC. Why are you so opposed to having and using these specific terms? It's just semantics, isn't it? Or are you denying the two approaches exist?
Originally Posted by chipcom
If I wrote a book outlining a method of riding called 'No-brainer bicycling' and outlined those same techniques, you and others would scream bloody murder that I have plagerized VC. It's the riding that counts, HH, not the brand you want to slap on it.
You are so far off it's not even funny. Are you aware of a book called
Cyclecraft by John Franklin? It's a book that describes vehicular cycling without using the term once. No one complains about it a bit. We advocates of VC plug it as much as we plug Forester's book, and many of us actually give it a higher rating. You might take a few minutes to read the reviews of both books on Amazon.com. So call it VC, EC, "cyclecraft" or "no-brainer cycling", I truly don't much care, as long as we all know what you're talking about.
Second, you didn't answer my "what percentage?" question in #4. You did ask, in #9, what did it have to do with what you said. I'll answer your question. You contend that "good cyclists" have been using the approach I refer to as VC "forever". I'm not disputing that point (nor does Forester, who notes this in his book, Effective Cycling). However, I contend that the "good cyclists that are doing this today" amount to a tiny fraction of the cyclists out there. I was wondering what you thought, to see if we're talking about the same thing. For example, if you think that 10% or more of the cyclists out there are practicing what you refer to as no-brainer cycling, then I assure you we're not talking about the same thing, unless maybe you're talking about a European neighborhood with 18 mph (30 kph) speed limits. That's why I asked, to establish if when I say VC and you say "no-brainer" cycling, if we're talking about the same thing.
Finally,
Originally Posted by chipcom
Originally Posted by Helmet Head
For those of you who are choosing VC is just practical, common sense skills for dealing with traffic... please explain why so few cyclists have and use these "practical, common sense" skills.
Perhaps because many VCers spend too much time lobbying against bike lanes/paths and trying to put everyone into neat little boxed categories of cyclists, instead of focusing on teaching and educating?
Do you even know about the efforts of LAB and the LCI program? Classes are available all over the country. The problem is hardly anyone is taking the classes, or reading the books. The problem is that
cyclists don't know what they don't know. They trivialize VC and equate it to "no-brainer" cycling. Why read a book or take a class about
no-brainer cycling just to learn "practical, common sense skills"? Do you really have to read a book or take a class to do that? Come on! This is why hundreds of cyclists are
needlessly killed in the U.S. every year, and thousands more
needlessly injured, because they are employing techniques that make them far more vulnerable to collisions than they have to be. And I'm not just talking about running red lights. I'm talking about stuff like being oblivious to the relationship between lane position and visibility and predictability. The fact that the vast majority of cyclists don't have a clue about this one concept alone shows that VC is neither "common sense" (at least in our culture) nor is it "no-brainer" cycling. It's about making cycling safer, saving lives, and thus ultimately making cycling more popular (based on the assumption that the single biggest factor making cycling less popular than it is in the U.S. is the perception that it is inherently unsafe to ride a bicycle in traffic).
Perhaps that is the problem - too much effort on politics, cult-dogma, branding and organizational self-preservation, not enough effort on real-world, hands-on teaching.
The classes are out there. The books are out there. No one is taking them, or reading them. It's not about politics, cult-dogma, branding and organizational self-preservation (what organization are you talking about anyway? LAB? You think VC is about preserving LAB??? ROTLFOL!) It IS about
advocating, publicizing, the fact taht cyclists can make cycling in traffic much safer by altering their own behavior.
My personal motivation in all this, in case you care, is that I only learned about the "no-brainer" techniques after 30 years of cycling, including club cycling, commuting, and reading books. Somehow I never learned about this stuff until someone suggested I read the book Effective Cycling. After reading it, and applying the techniques to my own commute, my cycling experience changed dramatically. But part of me was p1ssed. Why? Because
no one told me about this stuff for all these years. So I'm here telling everyone so no one can blame me for not telling them... not to mention to save lives, and make cycling safer, more enjoyable, and more popular. It's called cycling ADVOCACY and that's what this forum is supposed to be about it, isn't it?