Congratulations, Diane. After 7 pages and over 170 posts in a thread entitled Debunking Forester, finally good critical analysis that shows in detail how Forester, as invisiblehand put it many pages ago, "might be stretching it a bit".

But, again, all this shows is that the concept to which Forester refers to as a "phobia" might best be called something else, that "phobia" is not a good term for it. Now, I've been saying that this is a "much ado about nothing" semantic argument, but, really, since the whole point of his paper is show that that condition really is a phobia, or a Simple Phobia per the DSM manual, this is a fair criticism.

But for me, what's much more important, is that the condition exists. Goodridge is probably right that the better term is taboo. But there are plenty of examples, as I demonstrated in #162, that the condition exists, and is a significant factor in people deciding not to ride their bikes, or not to ride their bikes as often, as well as influencing many to support separated facilities for bicyclists, regardless of whether it is a "true" phobia or not.