Originally Posted by Brian Ratliff
Does anyone disagree that the main differentiating point between vehicular cycling and other cycling techniques is that vehicular cycling encourages and advises cyclists to use the full roadway and "take the lane" for a measure of safety?
Yes, I do.
What is the main difference between "vehicular cycling" and the so-called "gutter cycling"?
Vehicular cycling is about being integrated with traffic; "gutter cycling" and other techniques are about riding outside of traffic.
The hallmark of vehicular cycling is the act of "taking the lane."
When reasonable, safe and not inappropriate to do so, yes. I have to make this qualification because it is so often misunderstood (as it was earlier today by your dad who thought VC means never riding in bike lanes).
Barring real or imagined
PR issues (which can be handled later and doesn't even really apply here on these forums), is there any reason
not to focus primarily on this one very real difference between vehicular cycling and everything else?
I have no problem with focusing on that aspect of it. I do recommend not referring to that alone as "vehicular cycling", for the "causes confusion" reasons specified earlier.
Put it this way: If you see a cyclist controlling the lane, in the process of making a vehicular left turn, you would say: ah ha!... that's vehicular cycling.
Not necessarily... I wouldn't.
If you see a cyclist who is timidly hugging the gutter, slowing at every minor intersection to avoid some right hook, sharing lanes all the time, you would say: no... that cyclist is not riding vehicularly.
That I agree with.
A cyclist is not operating vehicularly simply because they ride on the road, on the right hand side, and stop at stop signs. All cyclists, to get anywhere using the road system, have to do this. A cyclist who is out there, taking the lane to avoid a danger, who positions him/herself in the middle of the rightmost through lane at an intersection: that's operating vehicularly.
That's an
example of operating vehicularly.
Now, how do you encode this into a working definition? This is precisely what I did in the OP.
Well, yeah, you defined a subset of vehicular cycling and called the subset vehicular cycling.