I think we debunked the old cyclist-inferiority phobia nonsense pretty easily.

So what's next? Pick a wacky theory, any wacky theory. OK, I will...how about we discuss the 'enemies' list. I think it deserves some quality face time, since it seems to declare most of the world as enemies of the 'one, true, way'.

Now you are being like Bek (actually, I think that Bek acting a parody of you with all his repetition, doing exactly what you do, but simply not rephrasing things each time). If everyone here is utterly misunderstanding Forester based on what he wrote, then, please, it should be relatively easy for you to pull out some of his statements and explain to all of us plebes where we are misinterpreting things.

If it's not so easy to correct the misinterpretation, then perhaps some people here have a point. Hint: standard rules in academics states that it's not plagarism if the comment was published to the public and proper recognition of the author is given. So, please, put up some of Forester's writings (or link to them) and give your analysis of them. If there is a misunderstanding or misinterpretation, then it should be revealed pretty quickly.

Otherwise, quit being like a big brother. I doubt that a man like Forester needs or wants your protection from us apes in these forums.

A few comments:

Cyclists’ inferiority complex: When I moved to New York I found driving my car in Manhattan an uncomfortable experience, so I avoided driving. One day I helped a friend move and rented a U-Haul and I drove through the city and I found that to be a more comfortable driving experience then driving my car as I could easily get other motorist to respect my turn signals. Now is my reluctance to drive my auto in Manhattan traffic due to some sort of inferiority complex? I certainly can make a strong case for that but is fixing my inferiority complex the solution to get me to drive my auto more in Manhattan? I will also assert that I drive a moving van and my auto in a similar fashion and my education and skill set is the same with both vehicles so why the difference and what is the fix?

There are a lot of parallels here with cyclists and their reluctance to ride in traffic sure all cyclists in theory could be taught how to ride VC but that still may not make it a comfortable experience and they still may not ride or ride safely in traffic. I will strongly assert the fix cannot be directed solely at cyclists (as JF often implies or asserts.) We need to look at the comfort factor (for all road users) as well as society’s perception on just how this safety dance between cars and bikes is supposed to work, it is more complex then just the same road, same rules. If motorists are uncomfortable with bikes in the road then so will (some) cyclists feel uncomfortable being in the road. If education is the fix then I strongly assert that it needs to be applied to ALL road users and not just cyclists. The problem is not about inferiority but the lack of societies agreed upon rules and behavior for all road users.

read this: https://americandreamcoalition.org/forester.pdf

Forester marginalizes every cycling group in his paper except "voluntary transportational cyclists," (VTC) those cyclists that by his description tend to be professionals and who prefer higher speeds on their trips. At the same time, he readily dismisses "involuntary transportational cyclists" (ITC) who oddly enough according to some studies** make up a larger portion of the cycling population... and therefore have as much right and need to cycling advocacy as the "voluntary transportational cyclists;" the vast difference between the two is that VTAs tend to ride vehicularly, where as ITCs tend to ride on sidewalks, paths, etc.

**No I cannot cite the studies at this moment, but I have seen them and they tend to be the reasoning behind the lower speed design of bike paths... as the general population tends to NOT ride at higher speeds. The result is that vehicular cyclists tend to dismiss paths as unsuitable... which indeed they often are, for high speed cyclists. Regarding the ITCs, my personal observations also lead me to the conclusions that there are far more ITC than VTC... on a typical day in the area I live, I see scores of sidewalk riders, yet few truly vehicular cyclists.

Further, Forester dismisses studies that show a relationship between facilities and increased ridership in areas by saying that there is a casual coincidental relationship. Forester also states that 30 years of "cycling advocacy" have yet to produce significant gains for transportational cyclists... dare I mention that "effective cycling" advocacy hasn't fared much better either.

Now I am not dismissing vehicular cycling, but I am suggesting that cycling promotion and advocacy should look at the bigger picture... and work to enable ITCs to access roads and offer wider forms of "education" via signs, PSAs, and yes, even lines on the road, to guide cyclists to better use available roads and to guide motorists to accept all cyclists on the road (thus reduce the "inferiority complex" which Forester states "benefits motorists" far more than cyclists).

I also suggest that cycling advocacy work to design paths to work beyond ITC type cyclists and to serve all cyclists, including high speed VTC, such that well designed paths can act as "bicycle hiways" and allow fast "inertia preserving" access to far reaching areas within a transit corridor.

This claim has been made several times, but I haven't found anything that stacks up to it on the Forrester web site. Can somebody give a reference to this? I'm curious because while I can see some valid complaints about his (Forrester's) views, I'm just not getting the Forrester as evil demon aspect of this.

Speedo

Thanks for the reference genec.

This paper specifically excludes recreational cyclists from its analysis. He seems to be addressing purely transportation in urban/suburban areas. I'm still not seeing the Forrester wants fewer (and only high mileage recreational) cyclists aspect.

Reading this, I only had one big complaint. That is the assumption that the status quo, the current mix of transportation types and users, will remain static forever. If I were a planner, I'd be thinking about the impact that the fight against global warming, and the tipping point of oil availability (limited sources, ever-increaing demand from big populations like India and China) will have on the transportation equation. I agree with his conclusions about current voluntary and involuntary transportational cyclists. The voluntaries do it because they like to, the involuntaries would give it up if they could. Where he goes wrong, I think, is that in the future there may be many many more involuntaries thrown into the mix.

Perhaps you missed the 'enemies' list: https://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.p...7&postcount=68

Baloney! I understand PERFECTLY what Forester is saying and has written. I don't need to search though the works of a notorious and habitual fabricator of safety data and nonsensical risk analyses to search for a few pearls of wisdom.

Forester has earned the complete disrespect he gets for any and all his quantitaive claims about cycling safety, especially as it relates to his totally fabricated fantastic safety recod of Vehicular Cyclists. Forester's track record for bending the truth to fit his agenda goes back 30 years. You want to believe a habitual fabricator and distorter of the facts (in relation to bicycling safety), be my guest and continue to have problems with "misunderstandings."

I did. Thank you. The man certainly has enemies.

You know, I don't want to seem like a Forrester apologist, but I'm not seeing "I want fewer cyclists" or "I want only recreational cyclists" or "I want only voluntary transportational cyclists." I'm still not seeing the Forrester as demon aspect.

There was a big exchange about the "Phobia" earlier in this thread. I read the Forrester Phobia page and it's 99.9% pseudo science crap. But there is a kernel of truth to it, in the sense that the fear of riding on moderately busy roads is out of proportion with the actual risk.

I'm just wondering if totally savaging this guy is productive.

Speedo

More about the scientific method employed by the debunked authority to arrive at a quantitative conclusion. Note especially the last paragraph and how the Forester's quantitative conclusion on risk comparison ("ratio of dangers") was arrived at using Forester Brand Scientific Methods.

From: John Forester <forester@j...>
Date: Wed Oct 4, 2000 5:10 pm
Subject: Re: [CG] Dangerous bike paths

Answers to two different comments.

First, the comment that comparing cycling on urban sidepaths to cycling on the roadway is like comparing motoring on the street of a city designed in medieval times with motoring on a rural highway. Sure, that would be an unfair comparison, but that was not the comparison that I made. I compared cycling on a roadway with cycling on the adjacent sidepath, because the law required that the sidepath be used instead of the roadway, ostensibly (But not actually; the truth is more complicated.) for the reason that the sidepath was safer. The comparison that I tested was between the hazard rates of using two different facilities to achieve the same transportation utility, when cyclists were required to use only the more dangerous facility (or find another, less direct, route entirely). The choice that this demonstrated was that the cyclist who chose to operate according to the law had the choice of either operating at the same speed as he had used on the roadway, at the cost of tremendous danger, or of operating at the much slower speed that would provide equal safety as the roadway had provided at much higher speed. That's the choice forced on the cyclist by the bikeway activists: normal speed or normal danger, but not both simultaneously.

Second comment. How did I evaluate the ratio of dangers. Well, I had cycled the roadway route for a year or so on my way to and from work, without, so far as I could recall, any serious hazard from motor vehicles. I never had to make an emergency maneuver to extricate myself from a collision situation. That was about 3,000 miles of travel on those roadways without any problem at all. When I made the test rides (I made two; the bike activists persuaded me that the results of my first ride were dubious, that I might have been misled. So I was a damned fool enough to give them some credence. Damned near killed me.) During those test rides, I had to take drastic emergency maneuvers to extricate myself from collision situations which, for most cyclists, would have resulted in a car-bike collision, at an average frequency of 0.7 miles. I had to do such things as swerve out into the street at full speed without looking, to avoid the car exiting the driveway, or the car crossing the stop-signed crosswalk. At one point, swerving to avoid a car I hit the curb instead of the narrow ramp, which cost me only a tire. At another, I was forced to make an emergency right turn to avoid a right hook, and ended up on the wrong side of the side street (turning radius is limited by speed, you know), and then had to dodge around a car coming the other way. The final hazard was when I tried a left turn from the sidepath of a four-lane street. I looked ahead for the ramp to descend to roadway level. I looked behind for cars coming my way. I looked ahead for cars coming the other way. Platoons of cars in each direction, but far enough away. So I concentrated on the ramp and made my turn. When I could look up again, the car coming from behind in the #1 lane was speeding, far ahead of the rest of the platoon, and would hit me. I was still leaned over for a left turn, so all that I could do was to tighten the turn onto the lane stripe between the #1 and #2 lanes, heading upstream in the wrong direction straight into that platoon of cars. Luckily, no motorist was trying to change lanes at that time, or he would have killed me. I maneuvered across that platoon and out of it across the street center line, only to find that, now, the platoon of cars from the other direction had reached and surrounded me, with their drivers probably wondering where in Hell I had sprung from. I got across that platoon the the curb and sat down to think things over. I realized that these urban bicycle-safety sidepaths were even more dangerous than I had estimated from the first ride, and realized that it was only luck, despite my bike-handling and traffic skills, that had preserved me from a likely fatal car-bike collision.

So how did I calculate a danger ratio for the two facilities? 3,000 miles with no troubles on the road, when I would have had 4,200 such horrifying encounters for the same distance on the sidepath. I think that I was conservative when I gave a ratio of only 1,000 to 1. Sure, there are plenty of vociferous, bike-safety promoting bikeway advocates who have decried the test as mere anecdote. Some have even had the arrogance to condemn me for riding so dangerously, without realizing that this demonstrates the danger of the facilities that they advocate. But note this! Not one of those safety-minded bikeway advocates has had the courage to repeat this test of the facilities that they advocate. Come on, #.#., put your body where you mouth is, repeat the test for some reasonable test distance, say 500 miles, and if you survive we might pay attention to you.
John Forester

Well to put it a little bluntly, Hitler, Charley Manson, David Dukes, Teddy K and other wackos had 'kernels of truth' in their beliefs. I have no problem recognizing kernels of truth, it's how those kernels are put together and manipulated to create the total overall message that I have a problem with. RE: the 'phobia' - people's fear of riding without a helmet is out of proportion to the actual risk too, but I'm not about to claim that all cyclists who wear helmets have a phobia. Yes, people have a fear of being injured while cycling...fine, nothing wrong with doing what you feel is right concerning your own safety - there is the kernel of truth. But what would you think if I took that kernel and made the argument that people should NOT use helmets because doing so is just overkill to compensate for their unjustified cycling-injury phobias, as well as because they are brainwashed by the helmet industry and nefarious government forces - so they should just get over it and ride helmetless or check into a mental ward? Pretty dishonest, don't you think?

Edit: Regarding his views on cyclists, I linked to his 'enemies' list to show you all the groups that he considers enemies - thus not exactly the folks he advocates for. Note that the General Public makes the list. Thing is, cyclists are part of the general public - amateur, non-professional, non-club, cyclists. Note that he also considers cycling advocates as enemies.

If you read more of Forester's stuff, you'll find that he has a low regard for any cyclist other than those who are, as he considers, professionals. He admits these professionals are only a small part of both cyclists and the general population, while at the same time equating non-professionals as ignorant, handicapped or ********. His views on the usefullness of bikeways and other off-road facilities really brings this attitude to light.

HH demands specific quotes because he knows, as some of the rest of us do, that Forester's attitude and beliefs cannot be summed up in a single quote or sound bite, but are again, a collection of truths, half-truths, outright falsehoods and flawed logic that come together to create the big picture.

RE: John Forester and his side path test:

I thought it was common knowledge that one doesn't ride sidepaths at the same speed as on the road. It sounds like he rode a sidepath at over 20 mph and never yielded at an intersection to get the results he did.

His test only proves that one cannot ride at 20 mph on a sidepath. He leaves out the obvious conclusion that there are probably speed bands on various cycing environments. On the road, he might well be unsafe at speeds from 0-10 mph while safe at speeds from 10-25 mph. On the sidepath, it is likely that 1-15mph is likely safe, but 15mph and up is unsafe. Another conclusion he conveniently leaves out is that sidepaths require different yielding patterns than the road.

So, you can argue that a facility wrongly imposes a speed limit on a cyclist and forces them to yield where the path crosses a street, but I don't see how you can argue from this that sidepaths are more or less dangerous than the road. His formation of the 1:1000 ratio is laughable, since he is not comparing apples to apples.

No he never states that he wants fewer cyclists... but he dismisses off hand the larger segment of cyclists... the involuntary ones. He prefers to only deal with his form of "idealized" cyclist.

Imagine if we said that only "effective drivers" could use the roads.

Exactly... and by the very fact that involuntary cyclists now exist... should not cycling in general try to meet the needs of all cyclists. We address all forms of motorist with roads... from the highly experienced trucker to the commuter in a clunker... yet, we tend not do the same for the cyclist... prefering to marginalize anyone that is not "effective" or does not wear the "brightly colored pajamas" of the "speedy" cyclist.

I'll go further with the "assumption." The assumption is based not on any mix of transit, but primarily on individuals with individual motor cars... that alone is self defeating as the number of roads remains limited. Eventually other forms of transit will have to be used to relieve the congestion that an ever growing population will bring.

That would be blunt. A little over the top maybe, but blunt.

Speedo

I'm not comparing Forester to any of them, just trying to drive the point home that kernals (edit; kernels, sheesh) of truth can be put together to create an overall message that is indeed, over the top.

not the Hitler card again....

This would be good critical analysis, except it totally ignores the context in which the test was made, which Forester clearly explains:

(copy/paste from ILTB's quote above)

Thank you for the replies.

I really don't have an argument, but a comment. Where I live, and on the roads that I ride, there really isn't much in the way of bicycle specific accomodation now. There is a rail trail, and that's about it. Bikes are otherwise out on the road. What I find laughable is Forrester's fear (phobia?) that "Government", among his other enemies, is out to put bike lanes all over the world. There sure doesn't appear to any danger of that here!

In the abscence of bike facilities, it is important for people to know how to ride on the road. To me, and to many others like me, the facilities arguments are simply academic exercises, and Forrester is not the reason behind that. On the other hand, Forrester, love him or hate him, has had a role in educating people in how to go about riding on the road. At the very least he is serious about taking bicycles seriously.

I'm just a little sad that someone, who should be viewed as something of a grey beard to all cyclists, has managed to attract all the venom that I'm seeing here.

Speedo

At least you're acknowledging that Forester's work includes pearls of wisdom for which I, for one, am very appreciative.

You're just trying to vilify Forester and discredit his complete body of work again.

I don't want to "believe" a habitual fabricator and distorter of the facts.
I don't want to "believe" anybody on such critical matters as my safety in traffic, and I don't.

I don't "believe" you, Bekologist, Chipcom, Diane, Gene, Al, Daily Commute, Robert Hurst, Geof, Jeffrey Hiles, Stephen Goodridge, Brian Ratliff, John Ratliff, John Eldon, John Franklin, John Allen or John Forester on these matters. Do you? Does anybody? Do you know anybody who does?

But just because I don't "believe" what anyone says, doesn't mean I won't listen to it, try to understand, give it careful consideration, and critically evaluate. After all that, I may walk away with something that I will try to use. Most likely I will. I think I've probably learned something valuable from every person in that list, but yet I did not "believe" any one of them.

Like I said, then the problem you have is not necessarily the safety aspect, but the speed limit aspect. There is no question you ride the different environments differently. This is a separate issue than absolute safety. Does anybody argue that you can ride at over 20mph without yielding at intersections on a sidepath?

Mr. Forester set the sidepath test up for failure by not staying within the sidepath's safe operating range. If he were testing safety on the road vs. safety on the sidepath, then he needs to follow safe operating proceedure for each environment. This is what he claims he is doing, and in light of this, his test is flawed.

What he is actually doing, is choosing the road operational parameters as the baseline and testing how well these operational parameters work on the sidepath. It's not a surprise that the sidepath failed the test. His test didn't test the relative safety of the respective environments, it merely validated the well known limitations of sidepaths with respect to limited speed of travel, and excessive yielding at every intersection.

Both of these limitations are restrictive to "voluntary transportational cyclists" of the subclass of which are high mileage and travel fast. But to the average (average by numbers of cyclists, not cycling miles) cyclist, both these limitations posed by sidepaths are not restrictive.

HH, either put up your own, competing analysis of Forester's writings or go home. If ILTB is simply disrespecting Forester, then it should be easy for you to simply put something up that Forester has written that belies the ill-repute that ILTB holds for him.

To date on this thread, I've seen lots of analysis on Forester's writings from many people. I've seen none from you. Show me something. Take apart one of Forester's essays for us and show us where we are all misinterpreting what he has written.

Forester took issue with the blanket statement that sidepaths are safer for cyclists because they seperate bicycle traffic from motor traffic. A blanket statement like that implies that under any conditions, the sidepath is safer. He set out, albeit possibly not in the best manner, to prove that blanket statement false. You freely admit yourself that sidepaths are not safe above certain speeds, speed that many cyclists meet or exceed safely on the street.

It's similar to the argument about sidewalk riding. I would admit, that if one took into account all of the limitations of riding the sidewalk and rode accordingly, that sidewalks are safer than the roadway. The problem is that by taking into account all of those limitations, your progress would be pitifully slow (imagine stopping/slowing to a crawl at each and every driveway, commercial and residential, to check for traffic) negating the benefit of riding a bike over walking.

There are very few comments in this "debunking" thread that even attempt to address what Forester actually meant, much less being a critical analysis of that.

These are presentation style criticisms. Forester's main point in the piece cited in the OP - that the cyclist inferiority phobia exists - is acknowledged by Gene and others, even Diane, the OP.

Criticizing him for having a "lack of enthusiasm" is on thing. Using it to discredit his life's work is quite another.

Indeed, and I, for one, encourage critical analysis of anything he or anyone else has actually written.

I agree with the above - the blanket statement at sidepaths being less dangerous than the roads is misleading as well. He was applying a reductio ad absurdum test to the side path. Which is fine, except that it ignores reality, which is that the people that the side paths service ride in the speed range where they'd be in danger on the road. He was also fighting a different battle at the time; he wasn't fighting over whether one facility was more dangerous than the other, he was fighting over legal use of the road, and using this test as a tool to show that it was more dangerous for him (and people like him) to use the sidepath rather than the road. This test was simply demonstrative retoric which he was applying to the use of the road battle he was fighting.

Self described "serious, high mileage cyclists" many times draw the conclusion that you do with your last sentence, that "taking into account all of those limitions... [would] negat[e] the benefit of riding a bike over walking". This vastly underestimates the usefulness of even slow cycling over walking. Walkers are lucky to get even a couple mph at reasonable effort. Riding a bike even at 10 mph is 5 times faster than walking, and less effort besides. But, as many people have pointed out, Forester does not consider these cyclists worthy of his advocacy. His advocacy is aimed narrowly at trained, voluntary transportational cyclists, of the subgroup of which is high mileage and bicycle at high speed.

My point is that his test was not about absolute safety at all. It is about how valid it is to apply roadway operating procedures to a sidepath. Implicit in the assumption that this test related to absolute safety is the assumption that roadway operating procedures were the safest procedure to operate by in any environment. This implicit assumption is clearly false, as you have agreed with above.

I have no inclination to do that, and it would be off topic anyway.

This thread is about "debunking Forester", which Diane has clarified to mean "Debunking Forester's work".

What you're talking about belongs in a thread entitled something like "In defense of Forester's theory on blah blah blah".

The only posts I've seen that are analysis of Forester's writings in this thread are those from invisiblehand.