Originally Posted by
holytrousers
thanks for explaining it to me. it's a complex issue, but from my own experience, it definitely is safer when i take the whole lane and consciously expose myself forcing the drivers to slow down than to delude myself thinking i'm safer on the right while letting dangerously wide trucks threaten my life. there is no lower speed limit so better learn to enjoy them getting angry and wave them back with a smile, after all we are doing the effort to move whereas they are relaxing and polluting the air that belongs to all of us.
so VC makes sense: unless we have a proper bike infrastructure, bike lanes will keep the mentality that we don't belong to the streets while forcing us to use them in dangerous situations, and the focus should rather be on educating cyclists to take back the streets and car drivers to be humbler and drive slower. 15mph speed limit (30km/h ?) is not such a bad idea in urba areas and maybe should be made compulsory on the right lane..
You're a bit late to the party. The basic problem is that the number of people who actually want to ride like that is so small that requiring it would just result in fewer bikes on the roads.
Feel free to try refighting the battle, but it was already a rout. In the real world, bicyclists don't ride much in the center of the lane and that's not showing any signs of change. In the meantime, the paths are more crowded than ever.