[SDCBC] Fwd: Now playing on YouTube - The Rights and Duties of Cyclists

Tue Apr 1 18:09:13 EDT 2008

Dan Gutierrez's recent posting of their videos on
youtube<http://www.youtube.com/user/CyclistLorax>have ignited an
interesting discussion that I'm CCed on.  The latest video
is entitled The Rights and Duties of
Cyclists<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU4nKKq02BU>.
I think it's the first one Dan has posted on youtube in which he has dubbed
commentary.  Again, it's worth a look.

Messages discussing these videos keep getting forwarded between this ad hoc
list and the list of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycling
Professionals (APBP).    I think this started when someone posted a link to
the youtube videos on the apbp list, to which someone responded, that was
forwarded to Dan, and Dan CCed a bunch of us when he responded to that.

This particular message from John Schubert is particularly good, I think, so
I'm forwarding it.  Many of you should recognize his name as he is a fairly
well known and obviously talented and knowledgable bicycling writer, and is
the technical editor of Adventure Cyclist magazine.  Though it's out of
context from the rest of the discussion, Mr. Schubert is providing context
with each point, and there is an earlier message attached as well.   But he
touches on many of the fundamental issues that we discuss and debate on our
San Diego list, succinctly and clearly.  If I was to pick the highlights, I
wouldn't know what to exclude.  I hope at least some of you enjoy it as
well.

Serge

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Schubert <schubley at aol.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 2:19 PM
Subject: Re: Now playing on YouTube - The Rights and Duties of Cyclists
To: [email addresses deleted]

 Robert Shanteau/John Allen,

Could you please forward this reply to the APBP list?  Thanks.

-- John Schubert

Dear APBP list:

Your recent debate has spread far and wide beyond your list members.  A
few quick comments, forwarded to the list by a friend:

-- I roundly dispute the notion that slow cyclists can't ride in a
vehicular manner.  I do it myself all the time.  Anne Lusk (quoted
below) has inferred from the riders' equipment that they were riding at
high speed.  Dan Gutierrez has directly responded that they were not.
I live on a hill with a 13 percent grade, and often position myself for
a left turn while climbing that grade at walking speed in a 25-inch
gear.  One look at all the fat old men and women who are vehicular
cyclists really should put to rest the notion that this is for athletes.

-- If humble equipment is a litmus test for political correctness, I
also note that many people, myself included, ride in a vehicular manner
when wearing street clothes, riding slowly, on very ordinary bikes.  I
used to do so in downtown Washington DC traffic (before they had their
door zone bike lanes) and found Washington a very easy city to ride in
by bike (a three-speed that I brought home from the dump) when I lived
there.

-- If videos of people using humble equipment are necessary to prove
the point, this is a public relations question, not one of operational
effectiveness.  When I'm driving and I encounter cyclists, I don't
divert my attention by looking at their clothing.  I have no quarrel
with using female cyclists in such a video, but then again, this is a
matter of public relations, not proving the validity of the concept.

-- Earlier, Steve Faust raised an interesting (but unproven) notion:
that vehicular cycling "doesn't work" when the bicycle modal share gets
too high.  I guess that might be true if your top priority is to allow
motorists to accelerate to top speed between stop lights.  But what if
that's not your priority?  Then what's the problem?

-- In a lifetime of cycling, I have no experience delaying an
overtaking motorist from safe overtaking by more than about 15 seconds.
 Very few motorists don't already have this level of patience.  I don't
think it matters much to the overtaking motorist whether a cyclist is
going eight mph or 16 mph.  This is the difference between a slow
utility cyclist and an athlete -- it's a big difference for the cyclist
-- but I just don't believe it matters to the overtaking motorist.  (It
takes less road space to safely overtake a slower vehicle than a larger
vehicle, so this teeny difference would actually cut in favor of the
slower cyclist, in terms of the overtaking motorist's convenience.)

-- One thing that none of us can change is as follows:  the distances
in the U.S. are usually greater than in older European cities.  Few
Europeans ride as far as four kilometers; most of their bike trips are
one to three kilometers. For me (I live outside of a small town), the
grocery store is six km away.  My own experience has been that
Europeans ride at jogging speed (six to nine mph).  Because longer
trips have longer trip times, and people the world over are sensitive
to trip time, for cycling to be attractive to potential U.S. riders,
higher speed (if you call 12-14 mph "higher") is a benefit.  But I
repeat:  the great thing about vehicular cycling is that it works at
any speed.  Look at all the delivery bikes riding at slow speed,
claiming the lanes on the main streets in New York.  No one told those
riders to be afraid, so they just ride.

-- The exercise benefit of cycling at 6 mph (it barely makes your pulse
flicker) isn't so wonderful that we should abandon all concern over
intersection accidents to encourage cycling at 6 mph.  We don't have an
established base of millions of 6 mph cyclists; what we do have is an
established base of millions of people who ride at higher speeds than
that.  Note that two of the three cyclists killed in bikelane accidents
in Seattle and Portland last year were riding at speed.  Those riders
_are_ our constituents.

-- The incoming anecdotal and statistical evidence keep me very focused
on the need to base public policy on _not_ designing collisions into
our roads and special facilities.  This includes some traditional
"malign neglect" issues such as sewer grates and slippery steel
grating.  It also includes putting bicyclists in the blind spot of
turning motorists, the door zone, and other sad consequences of taking
marginal road space and calling it "exclusive" for bicyclists.  Note
that Copenhagen reported a 30 percent increase in the accident rate
 from their cycle tracks; Berlin reported a sharp uptick in accidents
when they installed sidepaths; Toronto has documented a large
percentage of dooring accidents.

-- What these facility-based accidents have in common is that the
individual cyclist who obeys the traffic control devices (lane lines,
signs, whatever) is the one who will have the accident.  I can't think
of any non-bicycle-specific traffic control device that has a similar
safety problem.  I don't believe society can get all motorists to look
at their five o'clock bearing for an ant-size cyclist zooming downhill
on their right at 25 mph, just as the motorist is making a right turn.
Even if they did look, not all would see.  I've spent enough time in
large commercial trucks, and studied human visual perception enough, to
know a bit about the visibility limitations.  It so happens that Dan
Gutierrez, whose video started this discussion, once parked his car,
looked behind himself, opened his door. . . and almost doored a cyclist
who had popped out of a driveway into the door zone at just the wrong
time.

-- The very notion of "separated" is a myth except in the case of rural
rail trails and other park-like settings.  Certainly for any urban
transportation function, bicyclists and motorists will always be in the
same corridor, and not very far apart.  Pursuing the illusion of
separation, with the consequence of making intersections more complex,
does not have a good track record.

-- Traffic cycling, vehicular cycling, integrated cycling, whatever you
want to call it, suffers in popularity in large part because its
traditional spokesman, John Forester, is such a wretched salesman.
(I've said this to John to his face many times.)  This is a hidden
agenda behind many of these discussions:  people don't want to be
thought of as "Forester-like."  But the viability of a thought exists
apart from the person who had the thought.  I consider Forester to be a
good friend, and I somehow manage to disagree with him, politely, in
many areas.  I grant that not everyone has the same experience.  But
that should't be the basis for policy decisions.

-- Roads of the coming century will accommodate an increasingly strange
mix of vehicles.  I'm waiting for small-displacement motorcycles to
come back; they're extremely widely used in many other countries.
Electric versions of same become more and more practical every year.
The Twike (side-by-side human/electric powered faired recumbent) and
similar machines are waiting in the wings.  Every month, Popular
Science seems to have a story about another machine that's somewhere in
the continuum between roller skates and the traditional car.  Many of
these devices are closer in speed to a bicycle than to a regular car.
Are we going to build special lanes for all of these categories of
conveyance?  No, and I sure hope we don't even try.  From the
standpoint of making viable public policy to accommodate all these
conveyances safely, I believe we already have a superb plan in place:
one set of rules, with speed positioning and destination positioning by
individual need.

-- I dispute the notion that "motorist wrath" is exacerbated by people
wearing ordinary clothing when riding, for several reasons.  This
notion doesn't fit my personal experience; it requires more atttention
spent looking at the bicyclists' "kit" than I think most people devote;
and the public comments I see from non-cyclists tend to focus more on
ridiculing spandex cycling clothing.

-- Ian Walker's study purporting to show more space given to unhelmeted
bicyclists is unworthy of serious consideration.  The difference he
measured was a few inches, an utterly insignificant finding because the
average space given was around five feet.  He chopped the Y axis on his
graph to make this difference look more dramatic than it really was.
This small difference most certainly was not operationally significant.
 But if you want to stick up for that study, you have to live with the
fact that it purports to show greater motorist courtesy given to people
who didn't look like athletes on their bikes, which runs counter to the
assertion that such cyclists are magnets for "motorist wrath."

To summarize:  vehicular cycling works fine at any speed, with any
equipment.  I think it would be a great idea to have videos that show
this, and I'm glad that Dan said he's working on that.  I think Dan
deserves some praise for insisting on professional quality production
standards.  Nice clothing on good-looking cyclists is part of Dan's
passion for perfection, not automatic evidence that riders get harassed
for riding in street clothes.

John Schubert
Secretary, Pennsylvania Pedalcycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee
Member, National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices Bicycle
Technical Committee
Accident Reconstruction Expert Witness
Freelance writer & author of two cycling books
Coopersburg, PA

-----Original Message-----
___________________________________

Dear All,
  In studying the video, I noted the quick release pedals and cleats.
The riders were on touring bicycles and, especially with cleats, better
able to maintain the faster speeds of the cars. They were not using old
slick black rubber pedals, riding heavy bikes, or carrying children and
groceries.
  Mighk Wilson nicely suggested that the video should include female
cyclists. In the U.S., there are many experienced female cyclists who
easily ride a touring bike, wear lycra, and use cleats. Thus, if this
video just included females riding the touring bike, wearing cleats,
and riding quickly, it still would be a singular vehicular bicyclist
able to ride at fast speeds. These women might wear regular clothing
but, to maintain the speeds, they still might want to be on a lean bike
and wear cleats (or at least have toe clips). The slow speed bicycling
and the very different non-vehicular-riding "look", as discussed by
Andrew, causes frustration on the part of the car drivers or the driver
just doesn't know what to make of a bicyclist that looks like this (a
study suggested that a wider distance is given by car drivers to
helmet-less bike riders).
  Perhaps with the U.S. push by John Forester in the 1970's to have
vehicular cycling as the singular mode, we have created an iconic image
in the U.S. of the solo high speed bicyclists who can bicycle
effectively in traffic. A car driver will see this singular bicyclist,
know they can behave properly as a vehicular cyclist, and give them
their due. When the bicyclist does not look like that iconic solo
vehicular cyclist and they are traveling at much slower speeds, that
can bring on the wrath of the car driver (as experienced by the skilled
bicyclist Andrew). Thus, a slower bicyclist without even toe clips, on
a heavy bike, not wearing lycra, sitting upright, and perhaps carrying
groceries, could be subjected to even "more" wrath from some car
drivers than the vehicular cyclists, causing them to be doubly stressed
riding in traffic. This bicyclist, as Andrew has commented, will doubt
if he or she wants to continue bicycling if their only choice is
vehicular riding.
  The model that we have built in the U.S. for bicyclists as vehicular
riders is to have males or females riding solo, at a relatively high
speed, on fast bike, and with gear that makes them "look" like a
vehicular cyclist. The car drivers know and respect these bicyclists.
Even if we change the perception of the car drivers and tell them that
all bicyclists now can behave effectively as car drivers but they just
don't look like the iconic vehicular cyclists (old rubber pedals, heavy
bike, groceries, girls bar with some females wearing skirts), we still
will have the slow speed issue. Bicyclists on these bikes can't ride
any faster. It will be hard to tell the car drivers that they have to
adjust their behavior and drive at 10 MPH (the comfortable speed for
the laden bikes) behind these bicyclists. It will also be hard to tell
the car drivers that they have to follow behind many bicyclists going
10 MPH.
  John Forester was an effective champion for the solo fast vehicular
cyclist who didn't want to pick up groceries (Steve's comment). The
model for this vehicular icon should continue because they ride
effectively in the road and are respected by the car drivers (yes,
there are exceptions). We should probably not, based on Andrew's
experience, expect many more people to ride heavier bikes and become
regular riders in car traffic, especially because when they ride slowly
in their shoes with their clothing on their heavy and laden bike, they
receive more wrath from the car drivers than a touring bicyclist. For
these people, we might need other models, especially if we want to
encourage them to bike.
Anne

Anne Lusk, Ph.D.
Harvard School of Public Health
665 Huntington Ave Bld II Rm 314
Boston, MA 02115
AnneLusk at hsph.harvard.edu
617-432-7076 work
617-872-9201 cell
617-432-2435 fax

-- 
NOTE: Any opinions expressed above are mine and not necessarily shared by
any organization in which I am involved.
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