Ed Holland

I'm sure many people would refuse to try horseback riding because they are afraid, uncomfortable or both - and would refuse to participate as a result. It's just that horse riding doesn't have advocacy tripping over itself at every opportunity looking for reasons that keep everyone from riding a horse

Ed

sbhikes

A true phobia interferes with the normal functioning in some part of your daily life. For example, I have a true phobia -- wasps. I have been stung by swarms of wasps on more than one occasion. The last time was the worst. I walked into a hive and was stung multiple times on my scalp (under my hat), on my arms, legs and back. 20 wasps, still stinging madly, were pulled off my backpack alone.

Since that time I jump whenever I see a wasp. I try not to be so affected, but if I go out for a picnic and wasps appear I will eat standing up. I would prefer we declare the picnic over and done with but I stifle that urge as much as possible. But I won't sit and eat calmly with my friends. This is an example of a phobia interfering with my normal functioning.

Being active in your community to improve the conditions for cycling is not a phobic anxiety response akin to leaving a pleasant picnic screaming and swatting whenever a wasp appears. On the contrary, it's a sign of a well-adjusted person to be active in their community.

Being afraid of traffic from the rear is not a phobia. It's a natural fear born out of our experiences driving and walking. Everybody knows drivers are crazy and it's only natural not to want to mix it up with them. Most people who are fearful won't even use a bike lane.

When bicycle advocates advocate for on-street facilities to make cycling easier they are doing it to get more people to choose cycling over driving, not because they are swatting at wasps. And this type of advocacy actually works.

JF and his ilk have no desire to see more cyclists so they have to justify their existence somehow I guess. I suppose berating people and playing on their emotions to get them to feel inadequate so they'll maybe sign up for classes (that teach them to believe they are suddenly true scientists and clear thinkers (isn't this sounding like scientology all of a sudden?)) is one way to do that. But it's not very effective.

I'm not so sure they want to be effective. In fact, I think they actually would rather work to make regular advocacy less effective. After all, getting more people to ride bikes means less people driving cars. JF believes the car is the economic engine of America after all.

Helmet Head

Exactly. And, yet, we have a name for the fear that someone like that suffers from: equinophobia.

Of course, the cyclist-inferiority phobia is different, since the source of the fear is not the bicycle, or riding the bicycle, but riding a bicycle in a certain context: in motor traffic. In that sense the cyclist-inferiority phobia is more similar to fear of flying, where of course, the victim does not fear airplanes, but airplanes in a certain context: in the air. Another similarity between cyclist-inferiority phobia and fear of flying is the element of feeling vulnerable to a threat over which the victim feels powerless.

Frankly, I don't understand why there is so much resistance to the theory that the cyclist-inferiority phobia exists. It seems pretty obvious to me. I wish we could just accept it, and move on to talk about what to do about it.

Helmet Head

Diane, phobias do not necessarily have to interfere with normal functioning for them to be "true" phobias.

For example, if someone with fear of flying is sent to jail for life, his fear of flying is not cured simply because his fear will no longer interfere with his "normal functioning" in daily prison life. People with equinophobia can function normally without ever getting near a horse, much less on one. People with severe forms of cyclist inferiority phobia can function normally without ever getting on a bike. People with cyclist inferiority can also function normally, even on bikes, by driving their bikes out of the city on weekends, or just staying on bikeways when they ride.

Frankly, I don't understand why there is so much resistance to the theory that the cyclist-inferiority phobia exists. It seems pretty obvious to me. I wish we could just accept it, and move on to talk about what to do about it.

Edit: the only relevance of interference with normal daily life to phobias is to determine how necessary treatment for the phobia may be.

chipcom 

My mother refused to consider learning to drive until one day my dad got hurt at work and she could find no way to get to the hospital. PEOPLE FEAR NEW THINGS, it's not a cyclist-specific thing.

Helmet Head

No one said fear is cyclist specific.

In a sense, many phobias are "fear of something new". Because, many things which are feared by phobics they have never done. In fact, the best (only?) treatment is to get them to do the "new" thing that they fear. Sometimes they can do it alone, like your mom did, sometimes they need help. But it's all varying degrees of phobias.

Frankly, I don't understand why there is so much resistance to the theory that the cyclist-inferiority phobia exists. It seems pretty obvious to me. I wish we could just accept it, and move on to talk about what to do about it.

chipcom 

We? Care to cite either your, or Mr. Forester's qualifications to make such diagnosis? I don't think any doc in the world would be foolish enough to make a blanket diagnosis concerning a group of people whom they have never personally examined....yet you and Mr. Forester seem very comfortable doing so. In the spirit of respectfulness, I won't repeat the name we give that!

chipcom 

Consider the following:

1. You have no training or qualifications that would move anyone to just accept that such a thing exists.
2. The concept flys in the face of simple common sense.

Does the fact the a pedestrian doesn't want to walk out in the traffic lane indicate that he has a 'pedestrian-inferiority' phobia? Does that fact that you probably would not want to step into the ring with a highly teed-off, drug-crazed Mike Tyson indicate that you have a 'non-boxer inferiority phobia'?

Here's what I think...this makes sense to you only because you WANT to believe that it's true, blinding yourself to any evidence to the contrary. It's not uncommon. Used to happen to me everytime I read some political tell-all "Yes, it makes so much sense now, Billary murdered Vince!" Believing this just makes you like the rest of us nuts who buy-in to every conspiracy theory under the sun.

SingingSabre 

Cyclist-inferiority phobia?

People afraid of cyclists who feel inferior?

Cyclists who are afraid to feel inferior?

Huh?

Which psychologist is diagnosing this new CIP?

Helmet Head

Yes, we English speakers have a word for fear of horseback riding: equinophobia. Aren't you one of us? Don't you speak English?

I'm not diagnosing anyone. I'm talking about words and what they mean. If someone is diagnosed with fearing horseback riding, then he suffers from equinophobia, by definition.

Helmet Head

Yes and yes.

SingingSabre 

Bullcrap.

Equinophobia, as far as I can tell, is a fear of horses. Not a fear of riding horses. Of course, if you're afraid of horses (and, being afraid of a beast larger than you who outsizes you isn't irrational), then you wouldn't want to ride one.

Rope in your definitions, cowboy.

EDIT: To elaborate. One may have been seriously injured in a horse riding accident years ago and be afraid to get on a horse. However, they may be able to work with horses and help train them. That would not be equinophobia.

I have a rational fear of large pianos falling on my head. Does that mean I have claviophobia? No.

SingingSabre 

Oh, come on. A pedestrian not walking out in the traffic lane due to increased risk of getting smooshed isn't a phobia. It's a logical, intelligent way to remove oneself from danger.

Oxford American Dictionary defines "phobia" as "an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something."

Getting hit by a car doesn't seem to be much of a phobia to me. CIP isn't the case for the VAST majority of BL users. Get over yourself and your fake, made up terms.

chipcom 

But fearing to learn to ride a horse does not equal a diagnosis of equinophobia, it may simply mean that they are afraid of trying something they never tried before. Using your logic, we have all had so many phobias that it's amazing we ever learned to walk, swim or watch Oprah!

chipcom 

Well that pretty much explains it in a nutshell. Because YOU are a few cards short of a full deck, the rest of the human race must be too? I think we've put this issue to bed nicely.

Accept it HH, what makes sense to you does not necessarily make sense to everyone else. Once you learn to accept, you can begin to heal.

Edit: 'a few cards short' is just a turn of phrase based on your answer, not being disrespectful. Gawd it really ruins a good line when you gotta attach a disclaimer.

invisiblehand

Turns out I was in a doctors office today ... got to read a bit more of the book. From what I recall of the website, there seems to be a lot of overlap with his book. At least this is true with respect to his prose on cycling safety.

I broke a promise to myself and scanned the doc that Diane referenced in the beginning. It is a bit out of my field--if you have not figured it out already, my full-time profession is an economist/statistician--but I had a specialty in non-rational behavior. That said, I know that I know little about psychology. Unless someone talks about the tiny part I am familiar with, then it becomes ever so obvious.

Consequently, I have a difficult time criticizing the article from an educated standpoint other than Mr. Forester seems to be stretching it. To some extent, the article reminds me of some really smart physicists I know that begin working in a foreign field. After a year or two of off and on work on the topic, they approach me with a great idea. Typically, my response is, "Good idea! Too bad it was invented, debunked, written about, etc., 20 years ago." Smart people--and I do think that he is a bright guy--tend to overstretch their knowledge. Didn't Will Rodgers have a funny statement about the educated man? Was it ... "There is nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in." ...?

Anyway, I don't think that represents his "best" work.

Some brief comments ... at least I will try to be brief.

I think that researchers typically use data in ways that differ from their original purposes. I will state it in a positive way ... Unless there is structural conflict with the survey/collection design, I see little problems with using the same data to come to different conclusions than the original authors. There are also researchers who will do a meta-analysis or review of many studies to come to a **stronger conclusion** than any individual paper. So for my tastes, I don't have an issue with that.

**I mean stronger in a particular way. Although I do not think that I have enough time to fully explain at the moment. My wife will chase me away before I have that much time.**

Mr. Forester makes a lot of statements and conclusions. I think that the big one he is trying to drive is that bikeways and paths are more dangerous than riding in the street. In a global sense, I don't think he proves that assertion--but there is some evidence for it--and there are some important caveats to that assertion.

In my opinion, a strong underlying notion is that for bikepaths to be safer than roads, it must be the case that bikepaths are safer than roads at all velocities. Long story short, given the evidence, theory, and my own anecdotal observations of the bikepaths around here, I find it easy to believe that zipping along at 15-20 mph on the bikepath is "suicide" compared to riding in the roadway. I doubt that this is true at lower velocities. Although, I admit that my belief is based on my own mental theory of how things work and anecdotal experiences. Put another way, he does not show that roadways are safer than bikepaths using his own definition. Although I do not recall him ever making the claim.

I think that he makes some good points about how many bikepaths are poorly designed at intersections. Although it isn't clear to me that this problem is insurmountable. Moreover, he makes convincing arguments (evidence + theory) about how most accidents occur in front of us and around intersections.

I agree with I-Like-to-Bike that the severity of the accident/injury is important with respect to motivating policy. Put in the context of expected value, then clearly a road rash scrap should not be given the same weight as a head on collision with a Mack truck. This is a problem with the data. I believe that you have to work with what you possess. But how it is presented and whether the conclusions are mixed with the proper caveats is his responsibility.

Moreover, it appears to me that self-selection of behavior is not fully controlled in a statistical sense. That is people choose where and how to ride based on a lot of unobserved factors. Nerds like myself willing to think hard about how to ride safer (and willing to plow through a few hundred pages) might be more cautious (safer) individuals. We might also be more willing to ride fast and on more dense roads and so on. There are a lot of ways to play this hand. My guess is that since a lot of us think that as individuals we can affect the odds of injury, then a lot of us should be willing to accept that the unobserved cyclists' choices and qualities might affect the statistics and conclusions in dramatic ways.

As I-Like-to-Bike points out, there could be an "errors-in-variables" problem with the data. Issues arise whether the error is random or biased. In my opinion, it is a serious problem.

I have not finished the lane-position sections yet. But if there is no data on the matter, it would be important to clearly state what is theory versus what is empirically true.

Whew ... this is way too long. For everyone's sake, I have decided to stop typing. The moderators are going to kill me. Long story short, Mr. Forester has clearly thought about these issues and has important contributions. But in my opinion, it would be a mistake to take it without consideration and out of context.

I figure Chipcom will slam me for writing academic glop. But if it makes me laugh, it will be worth it. I also can't keep up with CrosseyedCrickt's avatar.

P.S. I agree that the self-test of bike paths is poor evidence

chipcom 

How could I slam anyone who glops so well? Your timing was impeccable anyway, as I think we hopefully put the phobia thing to bed once and for all.

I-Like-To-Bike

Hey Everybody! Speaking of debunking, perhaps the Subject's grasp of reality can best be understood by his own listing of his (and therefore cycling's) enemies. I came across this gem from my archives of Forester Funnies. It was posted on the now all but defunct Bicycle Transportation Institute (BTI) list: Note Initials have been substituted for actual names except for man with all the enemies. Be sure to reasd the last paragraph, its a doozy.

Re: Organization
From: John Forester
Feb 18, 2001 20:15 PST BTI
I have been considering both D.S's assertion that the enemies of vehicular cycling are well organized, and J. A's thought that this is not quite so. As I see it, the enemies of VC consist of a ill-assorted alliance of several groups, some better organized than others.

By far the best organized of our enemies is the highway establishment. However, they are not organized to oppose VC; they are organized to suit the multitude of their purposes, and have been so for almost a century. The highway establishment is controlled by an army of professionals with largely common training, interests, and perspective. At one time I thought that they would be allies, because it seemed to me that they would see that their customers, motorists, would be better off with lawful, competent cyclists than with unlawful, incompetent ones. However, it has not turned out that way. The highway establishment has decided that motor traffic goes better when cyclists are kept out of the way as much as is practical. In making this decision, it has been influenced by the thought that no significant proportion of cyclists will ever become competent. In that it is probably influenced by the failure of American motorists to become supremely competent, because of the perception that riding a bicycle in traffic requires far greater competence than driving a car in traffic.

The least organized of our enemies is the general public, who are powerful despite their lack of organization because they are numerous, because as motorists they both dislike and are afraid of VC, and because they are the customers of the highway establishment. The highway establishment fears going against the public's wishes, for obvious reasons. The general public fear that, as motorists, they will either be delayed by cyclists or will get into nasty accidents because cyclists are using the roads, and they fear, when considering cyclists, that VC is much more dangerous than cycling on bikeways of various kinds, or than cyclist-inferiority cycling on normal roads. Almost by definition, the members of the general public are not professionals in either the highway or the cycling fields.

The environmentalists are pretty well organized for their own interests. Except for the top level in their organizations, they are dedicated amateurs. However, their transportation interests are anti-car, which makes them anti-vehicle and pro bikeway. Their organization is fairly weak when it comes to questions that only concern cycling. They have little connection with the highway establishment, being largely against highway improvement, but they are effective in obtaining environmentalist patches over what they consider to be the worst applications of the motoring ethos. And, of course, those environmentalist patches on highway projects naturally include bikeways rather than roads properly designed for both motoring and cycling. The closest organizational connections that the environmentalists have, at least as is relevant to cycling, is with the urban planners and with the bike planners. Being convinced of the dangers of automobile travel, they do not favor vehicular cycling, but only bikeway cycling.

The urban planners have a well-organized professional organization, whose work is written into the legal requirements for designing and improving urban areas. In this they are powerful, although they cannot go against the wishes of the general public and, particularly, the powerful politicians. For many years, and for the likely future, the urban planning profession has been, and will be, largely anti-automobile. Being convinced of the dangers of automobiles, while they advocate more bicycle transportation, they advocate only bikeway cycling. They are largely ignorant about real cycling, and bicycle transportation is only a minor issue with them.

The bicycle planners are a different profession from the urban planners, being officially concerned only with bicycle planning. Insofar as cycling is concerned, the bike planners are the most intensely organized of our enemies. They are organized because their entire livelihood depends on making and implementing bike plans. Therefore, for them everything depends on the credibility of what they like to think of as a learned profession. However, they cannot operate alone. They need the cooperation of the highway establishment, to fit into the highway system, and they need the generosity of the national and state legislators for money and of the local city councils and county supervisors for space in which to spend the money. They also depend on the national highway establishment for their intellectual credibility, because organizations such as the National Highway Administration, the National Traffic Safety Administration, and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials provide the research and the documents that provide, however weakly, the intellectual justification for the bike planning activity. Not that the highway establishment does this without self-interest; the highway establishment has provided the bike planners with the means of carrying out the highway establishment's desires regarding bicycle traffic. With their intensity in belief and their organizational connections with the highway establishment, the bike planners are our strongest opponents.

The bicycle advocates are the amateurs, at least they are largely amateur, who want to promote bicycle transportation because they think it good. One may consider them misguided, in that they predominantly advocate bikeway spending. They are organized around bicycle advocacy organizations, from the national to the local levels, but, at present, that organization is not very strong.

The bicycle industry wants to sell bikes, and it sees that the best way to sell more bikes in total (dividing up a larger pie, rather than each working to get the largest slice of the existing pie) is to get bike paths built. That is their realistic evaluation of public opinion, and that won't change unless public opinion favors more roadway cycling. The industry is organized, and exerts whatever political force it can, but it is a weak industry, both financially and intellectually. An enemy, yes, but only a minor one.

We must not forget that there is another strongly organized and coordinated enemy that pervades all of the above, although it has no members, as such; all that it has is believers. It is the cyclist-inferiority superstition and phobia, the belief that the cyclist who rides in traffic must either delay the cars, which is Sin, or will be crushed, which is Death, and the Wages of Sin is Death. Without that pervasive public belief, all of the above would have been discredited long ago. It is discredited in any respectable intellectual sense, for there is no science behind the cyclist-inferiority superstition. All that keeps all of this alive is the strength of the superstition's grip on its victims' minds. We must remember that, because without recognizing that situation, we can develop no rational strategy, for all normal strategies fail before such an emotional commitment by our enemies.

John Forester

chipcom 

Priceless.

I-Like-To-Bike

Just how poor can be read by our comrades from a Forester posting on the Chainguard list describing his "test" of bike path safety.

From: John Forester <forester@j...>
Date: Fri Sep 8, 2000 5:14 pm
Subject: Re: [CG] HELP! (required sidewalk use)
...

5: Forester's test. I know of no test by bikeway advocates in which they have tested such bikeways for safety when used at normal road speeds in the vehicular manner. So far as I know, I am the only person who has performed such a test. The dangers terminated the test after five miles of cycling along streets that I had, before the bikeways, regularly used in the normal manner and hence knew very well. I rode at the same speed and with the same rules for right-of-way that I had used on the roadways. An average of 0.7 miles apart, I incurred car-bike collision situations that I was able to prevent from becoming collisions only by using extremely high skills of traffic awareness and of bicycle handling. The seventh such encounter would have killed me in a head-on collision with a pack of cars going 40 mph, except for dumb luck. That convinced me to stop the test. On the basis of comparing the collisions on the bikeway avoided only by extreme skill or dumb luck against the absence of any events even faintly similar while regularly using the same roads at the same time of day for several years, I estimated the risk ratio as 1,000:1. This account has been published and republished in Cycling Transportation Engineering and in Bicycle Transportation. I repeat: no bicycle advocate has had either the courage or the foolishness to repeat this test, which is why such results have never been published to demonstrate the safety of the facilities that he or she recommends. The fact that such a test has not been repeated demonstrates, not the anecdotal nature of my test (which is what the bikeway advocates claim), but the sheer danger of this type of facility when used at normal roadway speeds.

chipcom 

OMG how have so many ignorant, amateur cyclists survived all these years when the master almost kilt himself on his only attempt to negotiate these dangerous contraptions!

invisiblehand

Awww, c'mon Diane. Do you really believe that JF does not want more cyclists?

I am no Forester scholar, but I get the sense that he is passionate about cycling, wants people to cycle as safely as possible, and wants more people to cycle. If I understand his argument, roughly speaking, he wants to demonstrate how safe cycling can be such that more people will cycle.

I don't think he is right about everything. But I believe that he is genuine.

genec

Good, because I can show you a bike path I regularly ride at speeds approaching 20MPH and higher... and hardly find it suicidal at all.

I-Like-To-Bike

ONLY if they meet his narrow definition of lawful and competent (i.e. trained in Forester approved Vehicular cycling Techniques).

See the following explanation that only those who can be convinced to subscribe to Forester's cycling theories of "proper" cycling are worthy of Forester Clan advocacy:

Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 14:30:21 -0800
From: John Forester <forester@johnforester.com>
Subject: [CG] Bicycle advocacy goals

L. S. wrote in labmembers: "Don't fall into the trap of trying to emulate thriving advocacy organizations by adopting their agendas, instead, adopt their methods. Focus on those issues that matter *ONLY* to bicyclists, and not to anyone else. Focus on those issues that ONLY the League and no other advocacy organization is behind. Don't dilute the message."

This is not a good recommendation. Consider bikeways. The interested
parties are motorists, environmentalists, and cyclists. Since bikeways
matter to all three groups, should cyclists ignore the bikeways issue? And
then have the motorists and the environmentalists force more bikeways down
our throats? The recommendation that a cyclist protection organization
should focus only on those issues that pertain only to cyclists is
therefore proved wrong.

The analysis must start with consideration of what kind of cyclist is to be supported by the organization. Beginning cyclists, incompetent cyclists, off-road cyclists, people who advocate bicycle riding because bicycle riding is a 'good' thing? Those are not my choices. My choice is the body of lawful, competent cyclists, those called vehicular cyclists. Sure, we can advocate beginning cyclists, but only insofar as we aid them in becoming lawful, competent cyclists. Sure, we can advocate more cycling,
but only as it gets done by lawful, competent cyclists. There are many
reasons for making this choice, but I won't go into them here.

Having decided that the organization is to protect and encourage lawful, competent cyclists, the next step in the analysis is to determine which characteristics of these cyclists and of the world they operate in are most important to their continued operation. Is an increase in the number of bicycle riders to be advocated? Well, not per se, because most of those who would be attracted by the conventional enticements will be not merely incompetent cyclists but believers in incompetent cycling. Their increase
would be bad for the members of the organization. The only desirable
grounds for attracting new cyclists is to have more lawful competent
cyclists. Therefore, the method of attracting them should select those most
likely to become lawful and competent cyclists, and the organization must
have a plan for training these new cyclists. How about bikeways? These are
not only bad for lawful, competent cyclists, but they give increased power
to the prevalent superstition that well-designed roads are too dangerous to
cycle upon. Therefore, it is to the strong interest of the organization to
oppose bikeways. How about equity in law? There are so many superstitions
about the state of the traffic law about cycling, superstitions that are
used to discriminate against lawful, competent cyclists, that attaining
equity in both the law and in the administration of the law should be a
large part of the efforts. How about the various off-the-road facilities
and programs, such as bicycle parking, bridge access, mass transit
cooperation, long-distance travel baggage arrangements, and the like?
Insofar as these are important to lawful, competent cyclists, they deserve
attention.

This is the proper method for determining what a cyclist protective and advocacy organization should be doing.

John Forester

sbhikes

Me too, except I only approach 17MPH. I could go faster but I'm not capable I guess.

I have no trouble at all on my bikeway. I even walk near it (not on it because I'd get run over by bikes, which I guess gives me a walking inferiority complex) at lunch.

ILTB--keep it coming. Forester's own words speak better than I do about what he's about.

Type this into google:

define:crackpot

See if that second definition doesn't match Forester perfectly.