Originally Posted by Helmet Head
Please answer the question after rereading it (I emboldened the relevant part that you ignored).
I did not ignore it at all... I find that in spite of the issues of visibility, I am treated better in bike lanes, than if I ride a similar road without a bike lane. So no, I do not agree with you.
I did go on to further declare that to act completly unvehicular, I receive the best treatment.
Do you believe vehicular cyclists are more or less "fully immersed" than other cyclists on the road?
Yes... oh greatly... we are mixing it up directly, no doubt in my mind. It is the nearly fastest, nearly most efficient way to us the facilities available (streets designed generally for vehicular traffic), the only "more efficient" way is the way of the messenger, which is a selfish, risky system that fully embraces the positive charateristics of a bicycle while bypassing the legal issues of the vehicular method. Or more accurately ROTR.
By "fully isolated" - what do you mean, and what does that have to do with vehicular cycling (which only applies on roadways)?
Well our railroad system is fully isolated... using such things as crossing gates to ensure that it remains so. Our freeway system for the most part is also fully isolated. As a cyclist for instance I have very little need to access the freeway system, and can easily avoid it. John Forester responds that such a system is impractical... and from a monetary stand point he is probably correct.
No, my response says we fare better when we're treated like drivers than when we're not treated like drivers, and that's all that the principle says (with respect to treatment), and that I don't understand what you're objecting to.
Even if there was not one motorist that treated cyclists as drivers the principle would still be true: the more we're treated like drivers, the better off we are. There is no dependency in vc on every motorist driving perfectly and treating every cyclist like a driver all the time. You're just making that up.
Who wants perfection... I just don't want the opposite, which I do encounter... which is motorists deliberately violating me by doing any thing but "treating me as a driver of a vehicle."
There is dependancy in the VC doctrine... it is like an equation and thus has balance on either side of the equal sign. Cyclist fare best when they act AND are treated like drivers of vehicles.
The issue of "bad drivers" cannot be eliminated with any solution, or any combination of solutions. The best we can do is minimize the danger that they pose to each of us individually. There will always be bad drivers out there who break the rules and treat us poorly. The only solution is to accept it, and figure out how to best deal with it. You can either give up cycling (and walking and driving for that matter), because cycling on bikeways and sidewalks does not isolate you from the bad drivers, and, arguably, makes you more vulnerable in terms of safety, or you can try to improve you odds as much as possible by adopting VC and VC/defensive driving best practices. If you want to mischaracterize that optimal but not ideal solution as "shutup and drive", that's your problem.
I have suggested time and time again that at a minimum, drivers need to understand their role... which you have denied over and over again.
We don't cycle in a vacuum... we share the roads. Drivers need to understand the expectations we have of them. Period. Otherwise the equation is broken.
And that in a nutshell is the bottom line to the OP... that the "flaw" of the VC doctrine is that the other users of the system, motorists, don't know how to treat us. Nobody bothered to tell them. And with that information missing, they use what ever misinformation dances in their heads.
BTW motorists have been told... it is in Driving handbooks and is briefly mentioned in Drivers ed... but is a quiet whisper and so long ago that it is lost in all the other "noise." The concept just needs to be shouted from the rooftops so that it really sinks in. And what the heck, cyclists will hear it too.
