Originally Posted by Brian Ratliff
Okay, so his point was specific and trivial.
From our perspective here on this forum in 2007, yes, it was trivial.
But given the context, where the city council was considering banning cycling on the roads on the grounds that cycling on the roads was inherently dangerous, and the sidepath was much safer, the point was not trivial. And, frankly, we all him a debt of gratitude for his efforts, or we might all be living with mandatory sidepath laws all over the place.
So how did his "experiment" morph from showing that there needs to be a tradeoff between speed and safety, to one where sidepaths are "deathtraps" in their own right? Somewhere, you all anti-facilities people pulled a fast one and started labeling sidepaths as "deathtraps" and "dangerous", when, in fact, they are just inconvenient and force you to slow down.
That's a different topic, since that's not a claim Forester has made, certainly not in the post we're discussing.
Now, assume I am in the modern context of anti-facility talk, and someone brings up the test to show how dangerous sidepaths are compared to the road, neglecting to mention that the dangers only occur at high speed and without yielding. Can you see my point now?
Yes, except, has anyone ever done this? And what does it have to do with debunking Forester, the topic of this thread?
Comment #2 of his Chainguard post gets all the play in modern times, while comment #1 describing the tradeoff between speed and safety (this is really what Forester has his hackles up about, not no safety issue) is neglected.
I'm not sure what you mean by "gets all the play in modern times". Where? By whom?
I believe you're confusing your
impression of what Forester said (just comment #2 without the context of #1) with what Forester
actually said (comment #2 in context of comment #1).
This is why all of this is so frustrating. People skim over something Forester has written, see his "quirky" style, or are turned off by his arrogant style, and decide not to take him seriously (up to this point I don't have a problem), but
develop conclusions about what he has said never-the-less. It's that last part that is the shame, and leads to so much misunderstanding.
And then what happens is they criticize his work based on vague generalities that are not really based on anything he actually said, often skipping over crucial details, and are reluctant to get into the specifics.
This is why it seems to me that the goal is often simply to vilify Forester, rather than genuinely understand his point and the context in which he was making it.
No matter how many tens of thousands of dollars he spends of his personal funds in support of bike paths through the Prokop appeal, he is vilified here as the anti-facilities icon. It's ridiculous.