Vehicular Cycling

Cyclists should behave as and be treated as operators of vehicles.  The primary focus of all bicycle advocacy should be the preservation of our right to safe accommodation on the public roads.  Too many so-called bicycle advocates waste precious resources lobbying for bike paths and lanes.  These facilities only create an illusion of safety.  This illusion is based on an exaggerated fear of cyclists being struck from behind by passing cars.  Collisions with passing cars represent a very small percentage of injuries to cyclists.  Simple falls, collisions with dogs, pedestrians and other cyclists injure far more cyclists than collisions with cars.  Most car-bike collisions happen at intersections.  Too often in car-bike collisions, the cyclist caused or contributed to the crash by riding against the traffic, riding on the sidewalk or making a left hand turn from the right hand lane.  These are proper behaviors of pedestrians, not vehicles.

Bike paths are far more dangerous than roads because they increase the risk of collision with the large numbers of pedestrians, dogs and inexperienced cyclists that these facilities inevitably attract.  These risks are often exacerbated by unsafe designs.   Bike lanes promote unsafe turning practices by both motorists and cyclists.  Bike lanes tend to collect road debris that would normally be swept to the curb by passing cars.  Both types of facilities discourage competent vehicular cycling and undermine our status as legitimate road users.  There can be no substitute for competence. 

Every cyclist should learn the principals of vehicular cycling.  You can do this by reading and studying Effective Cycling by John Forester (available at a discount through Chainguard-Online). You can take an Effective Cycling™ course from the League of American Bicyclists.  

Follow these links to learn more.

• Bicycle Advocacy: Chainguard-Online
• John Forester's Home Page
• Cyclist Inferiority by John Forester
• The Dilemmas of Bicycle Planning by   Paul Schimek
• Defects of the AASHTO Model by John Forester
• Vancouver Cyclist: Why Bike Lanes are a Bad Idea
• Bike Paths and Lanes: The Case Against by Piaw
• Trying to blaze a trail of local bike paths by Lynne Tolman
• The Franconia Notch Bike Path Fiasco by John Allen
• Wrong Way Cycling by Ken Kifer
• Our Right to Use the Roadway by Ken Kifer
• How to Ride in Traffic by Ken Kifer
• The Roads We Have by John Anderson
• Modern Bicycle Myths by Lauren Cooper
• Road Vogue by Wayne Pein
• Bicycle Commuter Issues by Fred Oswald
• A Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General argues that bicycle paths should be held to a lower safety standard than roads!.

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About Tom Swenson