Originally Posted by sbhikes
VC stands for Vehicular Cycling and can be summed up as:
There is much debate around here about what "act as drivers of vehicles" means and whether or not being "treated as drivers of vehicles" is something worth enforcing by law or leaving to cyclists to try and elicit from drivers with various behaviors.
It should be noted that Diane does not even understand what the debate (at least with me) is about here.
Yes, much debate here is about what "act as drivers of vehicles" means. However, no one, as far as I know, certainly not me, has argued that cyclists being "treated as drivers of vehicles" is something that is not worth enforcing by law, or should be left "to cyclists to try and elicit from drivers with various behaviors.". I have argued that cyclists should act like vehicle drivers in order to be treated like vehicle drivers (in fact, if they don't act like vehicle drivers they can expect to not be treated like vehicle drivers), but that's different (though Diane obviously does not understand the difference, no matter how many times one tries to explain it).
Many here believe that "acting as drivers of vehicles" means eschewing bike lanes, even good bike lanes.
False.
Many others here believe that bike lanes are just traffic lanes like any other, and that the use of bike lanes is included in those practices that make someone a vehicular cyclist.
There is debate about whether riding in a bike lane necessarily constitutes "using" a bike lane.
But being pro- or anti-bike lane is not vehicular cycling.
True. And no one disputes this, for the alternative is nonsensical.
I think most of us would agree that "vehicular cyclist" means we follow the rules of the road.
True.
It includes at the minimum that we ride in the street, not the sidewalk, travel in the same direction as other traffic, use destination positioning, use hand signals and use whatever other equipment (lights, bells or whatever) are required by law.
Sort of. VC only applies when riding in the street.
I think most of the arguing comes down to this: We disagree on what it means to act as drivers of vehicles
OK.
and we disagree on how much responsibility drivers of motor vehicles have to treat us as drivers of vehicles.
I know of no disagreements on this point.
Secondarily we disagree on what constitutes "the street" or "the roadway" and what consitutes "defensive" driving.
I know of no disagreements on any of these points.
Otherwise, among those of us who argue the most, we are all vehicular cyclists.
A meaningless statement from someone who does not know what it means.