John Ratliff wrote: "I'm also thinking of the 10-14 year old kids who are simply trying to find a safe way to school. Are what you advocate for good for this part of the cycling community too?"

This is one of the excuses that John Ratliff offered for bike lanes. He objected when I wrote that one of the standard excuses for bike lanes was that they make cycling safe for the incompetent.

He says specifically that these people believe that bike lanes make cycling safe. There's no other conclusion to be drawn about that. Any person who cycles on the roadways without vehicular cycling skills is incompetent; that's without question. Now why specifically offer the example of 10-14 year old kids, except to indicate that they are most unlikely to possess vehicular cycling skills?

It is this confused way of thinking that makes so much of this discussion difficult. Americans have been raised to believe that cycling on the roadways is both very dangerous and that there is so little skill required to do it that any child can do it safely, just so long as he stays out of the way of cars. When people are raised in such a society, they find it extremely difficult to discuss cycling in any reasonable way.