John Forester

Hagen bases his way of thought about traffic, so he writes, on "general principles for traffic regardless of specific laws". Well, Hagen, please provide these "general principles of traffic" on which you base your way of thought about traffic. In short, put up or shut up.

John Forester

Hagen, your ignorance of the history of American bicycling affairs leads you to write nonsense. You claim that the same political conditions that allowed some Europeans to demonstrate for, and to obtain, safe bike infrastructure over the opposition of the motor lobby, existed in America. It is correct that in the 1960s American cycling grew. However, the American reaction to that was the creation, by the motoring establishment, of a bikeway system designed to keep cyclists out of the way of motorists in order to protect and promote the convenience of motoring. And, read carefully Hagen, the only Americans to oppose this restriction of cycling to promote the convenience of motoring, were the few well-informed adult cyclists. In short, everyone in America, except the few actually cycling according to law, thought it right and proper that cyclists be shoved to the side of the roadway, or off it if possible, to make motoring more convenient. When those who created this system discovered that their restrictive and discriminatory scheme had some opposition, and that it came from cyclists, they were first astonished and then nasty. I was there, Hagen, talking to them frequently; I know what happened, and you, Hagen, don't.

Furthermore, when the first and second statistical studies of car-bike collisions were performed (the Cross Santa Barbara study and then the Cross national sample study), they completely disproved the safety superstitions on which the motorists relied for their public support. But, of course, the actual facts did not deter the motorists from continuing on their anti-cycling program.

After the motorists' anti-cyclist bikeway program was launched, the anti-motoring environmentalists jumped on the motorists' anti-cycling-motivated bandwagon. The anti-motorists preferred the support of the ignorant and superstitious millions to the knowledge of those who had actually been cycling through all these years.

Please, Hagen, don't write about American bicycling affairs until you have learned the facts on which to base your thoughts. Writing without facts is bad enough, but writing on the basis of erroneous views on what the facts are (superstition or ideology) produces nothing but nonsense.

genec

Sounds a lot like the "rules of the road for drivers of vehicles" which you have never really provided yet constantly refer to.

John Forester

Originally Posted by Bekologist

[referring to my argument that cycling in the VC manner is unlawful]
"this is a complete and utter fabrication."


So Bek has decided to join this discussion. For those who don't know, Bek, who is a bicycle advocate and a cyclist, is probably America's most voluble defender of the motorist-created, discriminatory, anti-cyclist American traffic laws that only cyclists have to obey. Bek's voluble but unreasonable campaign in defense of these laws has had the discussion shut down on several other discussion groups. Bek has never explicitly explained why he defends these laws, but he has made statements that strongly suggest his motive. Bek's motive in defending the American motorists' view of cycling is political fear. I suggest, on the basis of his own statements, that Bek is afraid that if the vehicular cycling view attains any importance, political or in practice, the motoring establishment will respond with even worse restrictions on cycling.

That said, consider Bek's actual arguments. As I have written, American traffic law for cyclists requires them to obey the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles, except that they must be limited to only the right-hand edge of the roadway, (or off it where a usable sidepath is available) except, on the other hand, circumstances exist when cyclists should obey the standard rules of the road instead, the list of exceptions. The result is that everybody recognizes the prime principle that cyclists are prohibited from the general use of the roadway, while the conditions which allow them to operate, instead, according to the standard rules, are just too complicated. Bek hangs his arguments on this complicated list of conditions which allow operation according to the standard rules for drivers of vehicles.

This list of exceptional conditions was created by the motorist members of the governmental committee that was supposed to reform California traffic law for cyclists. Of course that was not its specific purpose, but that had to be discovered by investigation. I was the only cyclist permitted on that committee. Naturally, I argued that the Far-To-the-Right law contradicted the proven rules of the road and should be repealed. So the committee, whose real purpose was to work out additional laws limiting cyclists to bike lanes and sidepaths, for the convenience of motorists, protected both the FTR law and the bikeways law from their inherent contradictions by listing some exceptions. That is, they could have done good for cyclists by recommending repeal of the FTR law and against enacting a bikeways law, but they chose to protect the motorists' view of cyclists as inferior roadway users by recommending discriminatory laws that would withstand legal controversy. I was there at the table with them as they did this; I know what happened.

Some memories and documents have surfaced in recent years showing that a few eminent cyclists, with some influence on politics, were not so concerned because they thought that the anti-cyclist laws, with their exceptions, had become so complicated that they had become unenforceable against well-informed cyclists. In a way that is so, but that has no effect on either the public perception or the police ideology.

Anyway, Bek's argument is that if cyclists have the full rights of drivers of vehicles they will be worse of than if they have the restrictions with their exceptions. Bek has to make his unlikely argument with specious reasoning regarding the words of specific laws, reasoning that has had him shut down in other discussion groups at which he has repeated arguments which most people considered to lack validity.

John Forester

Genec, and you an American, claim to be ignorant of the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles? These appear, specifically identified, in the vehicle code of every American state, though varying slightly from state to state.

hagen2456

I gave a number of examples of general problems in traffic some posts ago, which you never as much as tried to counter. Please read them before you start telling people to shut up.

hagen2456

"the anti-motoring environmentalists jumped on the motorists' anti-cycling-motivated bandwagon. The anti-motorists preferred the support of the ignorant and superstitious millions to the knowledge of those who had actually been cycling through all these years."

You might have been able to be of some use for the safety of cyclists had you joined force with them. But no, for you it was all about equal rights and rules-of-the-roads.

kalliergo 

Wow. Well, nine times out of ten, I see these things more nearly as John does than as Bek does, but, it is certainly not generally true that VC is unlawful in the US. Bicycle laws vary fairly widely from state to state and even town to town, of course, so determining the truth of John's assertion would require examining individual cases.

In California, even with our mandatory BL and FRAP rules, I really don't have trouble cycling both lawfully and in a vehicular manner. We could nit-pick of course. . .

John, what, specifically did you mean?

Hagen, I'm a fan of cycling culture and urban design trends in western Europe. For decades, I've been working to bring some of the wisdom developed there to US cities (not including separate and unequal bike paths). Your posts on these subjects are so arrogantly self-assured, while displaying such massive ignorance of reality, history and culture for the North Americans you presume to instruct, that I am reminded of the worst stories of Christian missionaries in the Third World.

I always liked best the stories in which those missionaries were cooked and eaten.

John Forester

Originally Posted by John Forester
Hagen bases his way of thought about traffic, so he writes, on "general principles for traffic regardless of specific laws". Well, Hagen, please provide these "general principles of traffic" on which you base your way of thought about traffic. In short, put up or shut up.


I have scanned Hagen's posts in this discussion to find any reference to general principles of traffic, and I have found none. If Hagen thinks that he has supplied such for our understanding, he should post quotations to that effect.

kalliergo 

I wrote:

I see, above, John's explanation that the complexity of the exceptions makes them effectively inoperative in the views of motorists, the police and most cyclists. Well, leaving aside that John and I would both like to see the mandatory BL and FRAP rules repealed, I would say that they really aren't much of a problem for cyclists who know the rules and that most police officers in areas with significant numbers of cyclists on the roads have learned the rules and exceptions fairly well in recent years. And motorists learn by experience, too; a few years of repeatedly having to wait to pass cyclists in narrow lanes makes road-sharing expected and normal. That leaves untrained and fearful cyclists creeping along in the gutters, but I know John would agree that education and training is key to solving these problems.

John Forester

Bicycle traffic laws indeed, as you say, do vary from state to state and, in some states with local control of traffic laws, from city to city. However, I think that only two states (a list was posted recently) do not have special bicycle traffic laws. In those two states, cyclists have the rights and duties of drivers of vehicles unsullied by any other laws. In all other states, cyclists are first given the rights and duties of drivers of vehicles (Calif CVC 21200), but the rights are then taken away by the FTR law, but which rights are sometimes restored by the exceptions to the FTR (and MBL in California) laws. As I have recently written, a few cyclists with political connections were not so strongly upset by this concatenation of conflicting legal clauses, because they realized that this made the laws practically unenforceable against well-informed cyclists. I presume that Kalliergo is a well-informed cyclist. So I ask, K, when you are cycling along do you keep a list of the exceptions in your mind to justify every time that you leave the edge of the roadway, or leave a bike lane? What would you say to a cop if challenged? Or are you one of those who carries a card with the texts of CVC 21202 and 21208 printed on it? Or have you just been sufficiently lucky to never have been challenged, partly because the cops avoid dealing with most cyclist violations of these laws?

However, the public and most of the cops, and many of the judges, know the principle that the law expresses when it limits cyclists to the edge of the roadway or to bike lanes, and they never bother with the exceptions. The fact that competent vehicular cyclists rarely get challenged for violating the FTR or MBL laws doesn't make those laws good. I was last challenged, and convicted, thirty years ago, on a trumped-up charge that I was delaying a police officer, who was not using lights and siren, while allowing a lane of traffic to overtake me on my side of a two-lane street with double center line. Think about that example of misusing an ambiguous law when it suits the purpose of those who desire to discriminate against cyclists.

So, while the well-informed cyclist can generally avoid being challenged for violating the FTR law (but see what happens if some real violation is charged, or in case of an accident, when they add whatever else they can), the FTR and similar laws express and justify the public and official belief that cyclists really don't belong on the road. That's the basic cause of the troubles that afflict America's cyclists, leading to social discrimination on the road, failure to train cyclists in proper traffic skills, and several other discriminatory situations. Defective laws that produce such results should be repealed.

John Forester

Hagen, you have no knowledge of the facts. I might have been of some use for the safety of cyclists? The best evidence showed that that group of American cyclists who were most likely to be obeying the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles had a crash rate only 20-25% of that of the typical cyclists whose incompetent mode of operation the motoring establishment were trying to force all cyclists to adopt. Given that evidence, preserving cyclists' right to operate in the safer mode was the prime safety purpose and was the justification for opposing the American motoring establishment's discrimination against cyclists.

kalliergo 

Well, first, I don't cycle along the "edge of the roadway." I do, in appropriate situations, cycle as close as is practicable to that edge, as the law requires, and as I would (in said appropriate situations) whether the law required it or not. I decide what's practicable. You'd do the same thing, John.

And, yes, I could almost always cite, from memory, an applicable CVC provision if challenged. The fact that I haven't been challenged, in decades, is probably the result of a combination of factors, but I suspect that the major contributors are (1) that I look like a competent and careful cyclist and (2) I've been riding for a long time in places where the police are more than usually familiar with the bike-specific sections of the CVC and don't have an anti-cyclist agenda.

I think the public, in places where cycling is more common, is learning. I know that the police (in said places) are, and I wouldn't be at all worried about convincing the average Superior Court judge, at least in the Bay Area. I suspect, although I'm not certain, that John's perception of these things doesn't account for recent trends.

No, it certainly does not. They are bad laws and should be repealed. They just aren't particularly problematic (in daily practice) for vehicular cyclists in my neck of the woods.

I think I remember this story. You were living on the Peninsula then, right? It is, of course, an egregious example of discrimination and it's obvious that you were not violating any provision of the CVC (assuming that the right lane was too narrow to share). I don't think that sort of thing is nearly as likely to happen now. (Also, of course, you were famous to some and notorious to others around there, so deliberate targeting isn't out of the question).

FWIW, I've become a big fan of video, both on the bike and on patrol car dashboards. I'm pretty sure that evidence from either source would result in your citation being dismissed in short order, these days.

We agree. I've agreed with you on that for a looong time.

hagen2456

Here https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...1#post14245359 I mention some of the basic problems cyclists will meet in motorized traffic, no matter where in the world. But why did I have to remind you of that? You don't really read what your opponents have to say, do you?

Edit: I'll admit that "general principles" is probably too hard and fast a word for it. The closest I can get to a general principle is probably that as far as possible, traffic should be segregated according to vulnerability and speed.

hagen2456

Weird. I posted an answer to this some minutes ago, but it never appeared on the site. I'll try again:

What kind of statistics back you up? Educated cyclists versus uneducated cyclists? If so, it's a no-brainer: Just about any education on how traffic works vis-a-vis cyclists will be of benefit, no matter if it's VC training or something else. Oh, and how comprehensive was the study? Who did it? When? What kind of crashes?

Riding CV in the manner of the guy in the video I linked to, does not seem like a strategy that would save lives...

kalliergo 

You guys divide yourselves into narrow and, IMHO, illogically-defined camps.

I'm an "anti-motorist," in the sense that I think car culture has (as the immortal Ms. Jacobs says in the quote in my current signature) has been the most destructive, dangerous and ugly force in American cities over the past century.

I want the domination of our city streets by the auto to end, the sooner the better. I know of no more effective way to encourage that result than to make urban motoring less convenient and less advantageous over other modes. The presence of vehicular cyclists, with whom the motorists must share the roads, has exactly that effect.

Building separate and unequal lanes and paths has exactly the opposite effect: it gets bikes out of the way for the benefit of motorists.

kalliergo 

Hagen, just so you'll know, I'm ignoring you. I've decided that you really have nothing of value to contribute here.

hagen2456

As for criticising CV, that in itself has very little to do with history, culture etc. See https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...1#post14245359

I pointed to some, er, problems in the video I linked to. All you (arrogantly) could answer was "ROFLMAO" etc. If I've been arrogant myself, I'm sorry, but it's something that will easily happen when one tries reasoning with people who stubbornly misread; tell you that you just don't get it ("it" being irrelevant to the specific issue); or simply espond with "ROFLMAO".

hagen2456

Said the man who never was able to give reasons for his "ROFLMAO".

John Forester

The US National Safety Council made two studies of the use and crash rate of typical American cyclists, one group in school, the other group college-associated adults. Kaplan made a study of the use and crash rate of members of the League of American Wheelmen, who at that time were the group in America most likely to ride in the vehicular manner. The British CTC studied the use and crash rates of newer members (therefore typical of the general cycling public) and of longer-time members. In both the American and the British comparisons, those groups of cyclists whose members were most likely to ride in the vehicular manner had crash rates between 20% and 25% (depending on type of crash) of those of the general cycling public. At the time of the American studies, cyclist training was in the form of what I called "bike-safety" cautionings for staying out of the way of motorists; Effective Cycling had not yet been published. England had had an on-and-off history of cyclist training programs.

John Forester

That ride was a very easy ride along a rural highway, mostly two lane, and probably (gauged from comparing the road to the vehicles) of 28-foot width, with, at that time, only medium traffic with 40mph speed limit signs. Hagen objects to the cyclist taking the through lane instead of going straight from a turn-only lane, and of using a left-turn-only lane when making a left turn. What's the problem with these, Hagen; after all, the cyclist made his moves when he had seen that there was no traffic to endanger him?

John Forester

I accept your answer about your idea of general traffic principles being "that as far as possible, traffic should be segregated according to vulnerability and speed." Since that is all that you have ever offered, I presume that this is as far as your understanding of traffic principles goes. I see, so that we need to segregate vulnerable passenger cars from invulnerable trucks? And where do buses fit into this scheme? Do their passengers get them classed as vulnerable, or does their size class them as invulnerable? And we need to protect vulnerable fast cyclists from the incompetent slow cyclists who endanger them? And how do you manage to arrange that all these classes manage to travel throughout the city, each vehicle on its own route to its desired destination?

That's it, Hagen's scheme for traffic, based on his understanding of its principles.

hagen2456

Don't be silly. You now start hammering on the "principles" part of the discussion, istead of telling us what you think of the very real problems facing all cyclists in the world. We were NOT discussing segregated-or-not as principle. Don't use your usual evasions based on some irrelevant detail, please.

Oh and the bus passenger part. That's the manner of discussing that makes conversations with you so frustrating. Stay on the subject, man!

hagen2456

The ride being easy or not is irrelevant.
I did not mention the left-turn lane thing.
AND I told you exactly what was the problem. This time you really have to read back for yourself. I'm losing my patience with your little games.

hagen2456

That's all rather vague, I'd say. Not exactly the stuff usefull facts are made of.